Right on time for the 2009 Green Jobs Conference, this week Change to Win released a report titled High Road or Low Road?  Job Quality in the New Green Economy.  The report looks at wages and conditions for jobs in a variety of green workplaces, and finds that not all is well in the green collar economy.

More across the flip, including the good, the bad, and what this means for the stimulus package...

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Yesterday Andrea Batista Schlesinger and Rep. Jerry Nadler co-authored a piece on cleaning up our ports in the Huffington Post.  The piece, partially inspired by the Clean Trucks Program in Los Angeles, calls for a reversal of trucking deregulation in the early 80s which allows truck companies to classify their drivers as independent contractors.

That deregulation was a double-whammy hurting both the labor movement and the environment.  On the one hand, allowing trucking companies to classify their drivers as independent contractors effectively prevents truckers from unionizing and negotiating for fair wages and working conditions.  The Teamsters have been complaining about these unfair regulations for years; this argument is at the heart of their FedEx Watch campaign.  On the other, it also allows the companies to force drivers to pay for their trucks; consequently, the trucks going through are ports tend to be poorly-maintained and not fuel efficient.  And they tend to pollute the air, disproportionately hurting low-income communities that surround the ports.  Schlesinger and Nadler are calling for New York to follow LA's lead and to implement a Clean Trucks Program of its own.  They argue that regulations which compel trucking companies to hire their drivers, coupled with clean truck regulations, will benefit the environment while helping workers.

The push to clean up New York's port prompted Jason Lefkowitz at Change to Win to remind us that green jobs must also be good jobs.  I think that is a key point as we move forward with the economic stimulus package - that greening the economy and making it equitable must go hand-in-hand.  I discussed this a bit in last week's review of The Green Collar Economy; as Van Jones argues, environmentalists need the support and participation of low-income people in order to assemble a winning political coalition.  But I think there's an essentialist argument to be made that's economic as well as political, and the cause of clean ports draws that argument into focus.  In an economy organized around pollution, green goods and services cost more money.  So long as the economy is inequitable, more and more people will be unable to afford to green themselves, their homes, and their workplaces, and environmental action will continue to be a boutique option for the rich.  But, as wealth and the externalities of business are more fairly shared throughout society, transitioning to a green economy will become more and more accessible.  Really, that's what the clean ports campaign is about - transferring the externality of trucking pollution to the trucking companies, where that burden properly belongs, in order to reduce the burden and raise the standard of living for truckers.

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Regardless of who you support, we should all agree that people like Mark Penn and his PR firm (who are not only spinning trade deals from Colombia, but also worked with folks like S. Berlusconi) do not belong anywhere near a democratic candidate (or the White House).

In an earlier diary (http://www.mydd.com/story/2008/4/4/16316 79816) I noted that Change To Win (a coalition of seven unions and six million workers) had called for the resignation of Mark Penn in the wake of his ill-advised meeting with the ambassador of Colombia.

Well, it appears that the lack of action on the part of HRC has fueled their anger.

TPM has the story:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsm emo.com/2008/04/obamabacking_unions_dema nd_hil.php

It surely can't bode well that HRC's own Paul Begala seems to echo the sentiment of both Change to Win and Obama.
http://thepage.time.com/2008/04/11/begal a-i-have-nothing-but-contempt-for-penn

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It would appear that Penn's conflict of interest in meeting with Colombia's US Ambassador to talk about a bilateral free-trade is not going away.

While many have tried to argue that Mr. Penn was simply wearing a different hat, Penn himself has already admitted that his decision to meet with the ambassador was an "error in judgment". (http://thepage.time.com/mark-penns-state ment-on-colombia-trade-deal-talks/).

Change to Win - which involves seven unions and six million workers - is now calling for the resignation of Penn. Their statement has been posted on the Change to Win www site (http://www.changetowin.org/connect/2008/ 04/mark_penn_has_to_go.html).

I repost it here for convenience:

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One of the coolest things about Take Back America last week was the deep sense of cooperation on display among the various factions of the progressive movement. In past years, getting liberal interest groups to see beyond their own issue-oriented goals to work together has been likened to herding cats, but in 2008, with a newfound sense of solidarity as a result of having been together in the wilderness for 7 years as well as matured political and technological organizations, we are now seeing unprecedented cooperation among several groups all of which are devoted to mobilizing voters in unprecedented numbers in November.

At a press conference on Tuesday, Robert Borosage of Campaign For America's Future introduced an impressive array of progressive leaders who outlined their goals for the coming campaign season. Borosage put the amount these groups intended to spend in 2008 in the $400 million range, an unprecedented mobilization of forces on the left in a single election season.

Borosage included in his calculation Rock the Vote and Women Voices-Women Vote, which promote voting by young people and unmarried women, respectively; ACORN, which advocates for expanded housing opportunities; and the National Council of La Raza, which backs Hispanic causes.

Those groups are barred by their nonprofit tax statuses from backing candidates or engaging in partisan politics, but Borosage said they intend to spend a combined $75 million registering and mobilizing voters.

Then there are labor heavyweights SEIU, Change to Win and the AFL-CIO. They can spend money on both mobilization and partisan politicking. Plus, a Supreme Court ruling last year granted them more flexibility in funding and airing often hard-hitting issue ads right up until Election Day. [...]

As for MoveOn.org, which has endorsed Obama, Hogue said it would enthusiastically unite with the other groups behind Clinton if she carried the nomination into a general election showdown with the presumptive GOP nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

What's different this year than four years ago? For one thing, election law is a bit looser allowing more groups to coordinate with each other, while still not able to coordinate with candidates. But also, the political environment is much different than it was in 2004.

"In '04 the right mobilized its base and its resources," Bob Borosage...said in an interview. "Liberals mobilized, although we were still building at the time. Well, we've continued to build and expand and gotten more enthusiastic and more mobilized and their coalition has collapsed." [...]

"The progressive infrastructure was really evolving in '04," said Iliyse Hogue, campaign director for MoveOn.org Political Action. "Now what we've got is not only really good establishment roles, but also the kind of relationships and trust and confidence in each other that comes from working together in the trenches."

While the level of cooperation among the groups is impressive, each of them fills its own niche with its own set of goals. Some highlights from the press conference:

The AFL-CIO plans to focus on mobilizing 13 million union members in battleground states. They intend to spend $53.4m to fund a communications effort with union members to get across the message that John McCain represents Bush's third term. To that end they've launched the excellent McCain Revealed campaign. Promised Karen Ackerman: "Everywhere McCain goes working Americans will be there to confront him on his economic policies."

Women's Voices Women Vote plan to focus their mobilization effort on unmarried women who now make up 26% of the voting age population. For the first time ever, single women make up the same share of the population as married women and they are overwhelmingly pro-change and pro-Democratic. As Paige Gardener put it: "Unmarried women will be to Democrats in 2008 what evangelicals were to Republicans in 2004."

Rock The Vote, as you can imagine, will be targeting young people with a goal of registering 2 million new voters between the ages of 18-29. Registration is the biggest barrier to this group's voting; 82% that are registered actually do vote in the presidential election and to that end, Rock The Vote has launched an easy to use online reg tool, which users are offered the moment they hit the homepage. So far in 2008, we've seen unprecedented participation by young people; in state after state, youth participation is either doubling, tripling or quadrupling that of 4 years ago. Rock The Vote is uniquely qualified to tap into that excitement to translate to Democratic victory in November.

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