The Green Jobcast, is a short news segment with information about green jobs making headlines across the country. This is our 3rd episode. Transcript below. (download mp3)
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Sponsored by Jobs in Solar Power & Jobs in Wind Power.
TRANSCRIPT
First up…An Ohio company transforming its business model will build its headquarters in the town of Greenville. LAH Development will become a wind turbine manufacturer and installer after years of constructing commercial buildings.The company’s new building is expected to cost $1 million, according to the local tv staton WHIO. The state of Ohio has granted the company a tax credit of almost $400,000 to help create jobs. The company expects to hire 100 new employees.
Some green jobs wont pay well…Massive investment in renewable energy could ultimately create 4 million manufacturing jobs. But for the workers in the bottom rung of this movement, the shift to green jobs could very well mean a pay cut of nearly 60%, a trend spreading across the entire manufacturing sector. Many of the entry-level jobs making green energy components start at $12 an hour, much less than the now extinct $28 an hour job that had allowed high school-educated workers in the auto sector to achieve middle class status. “Particularly at the lower end, these are not very good jobs,” said Philip Mattera, research director at Good Jobs First, a labor-friendly research group, also acknowledging that the renewable energy sector paid wages that were “all over the map.”
Vice President Joe Biden and two Cabinet secretaries unveiled a national program Tuesday to train workers for “green jobs” that will make public housing more energy-efficient. Biden, Housing Secretary Shaun Donovan and Labor Secretary Hilda Solis announced the plan in Denver at a meeting of President Barack Obama’s task force on the middle class. Donovan said some of the $4 billion from Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus plan that was budgeted to renovate public housing will be spent to create jobs for making the dwellings more energy efficient. Solis said $500 million will be distributed as grants for training workers. That sum includes $50 million for communities battered by job losses and restructuring in the auto industry.
New York says it could create as many as 50,000 jobs by converting 45 percent of its electricity needs to renewable energy sources by 2015, Governor David Paterson said on Monday as he unveiled plans to reduce the state’s reliance on Wall Street. Paterson proposed modernizing the electricity grid, making broadband technology available throughout the state and investing $600 million into stem cell research over 10 years. New numbers for green jobs…Renewing our manufacturing base through clean energy — already one of the fastest-growing sectors of the U.S. economy — isn’t just a pipe dream.
According to the respected clean tech website CleanEdge.com, the domestic market for solar panels, wind turbines and biofuel equipment will reach $325 billion annually by 2018. In Ohio for example, nearly 100 manufacturers — including companies like Canton-based Timken, a maker of ball bearings and other steel products for wind energy equipment — now make up the state’s expanding clean energy supply chain. Even Michigan, a state whose manufacturing sector has been devastated by job losses, produced more than 3,000 new jobs — mostly in the solar and wind industries — over the last 20 months.
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