middle class strengthening - page 2

When the White House Task Force on Middle Class Families, led by Vice President Joe Biden, began in February, its first order of business was to evaluate green jobs as a tool to strengthen the middle class. The task force broadly defined green jobs as employment that involves some task associated with improving the environment; providing a sustainable family wage, health and retirement benefits, and decent working conditions; and encompassing diverse workers from across the spectrum of race, gender and ethnicity.

“That is not a given,” said Kate Gordon, co-director of the Apollo Alliance, a coalition of labor, business, environmental and community leaders working for a clean energy revolution that they believe will create millions of high-quality, American green-collar jobs.

“You have to make a conscious policy choice for any job to be a good job. Things like labor standards, health and safety requirements, you have to put those into place,” Gordon said. “A lot of the emerging green jobs are good jobs because there is an advocacy group pushing for that to happen. There are a lot of people focusing on making sure the green economy is a good economy.”

Gordon and some labor activists — notably the giant AFL-CIO — are concerned that public policies and increased demands are creating more jobs overseas because the American manufacturing sector isn’t ready yet.

But “the administration is committed to creating as many jobs as possible in the green sector,” Jones said.

The green jobs movement is gaining ground because shoppers, business owners, labor unions, lawmakers, environmentalists and community leaders are planting seeds, saying green jobs are an ideal tool to solve multiple problems.

“It is not just a California thing. It is a nationwide thing. Each region has its strengths. And there are some amazing things going on around the country,” Gordon said.

Jen Boulden and Heather Stephenson, co-founders of IdealBite.com, have been reviewing those amazing things since 2005, and they believe green products have been growing and getting better every year.

Their daily e-mail connects “enlightened” companies with consumers who want to make small changes to save the planet. In the beginning, armed with a strict editorial review process and insightful wit, the pair scouted co-ops for green products worthy of the Ideal Bite bump. In the early days, it was slim pickings.

Today, they employ 25 people, produce seven daily e-mail editions (one national edition, five city editions and a moms’ edition) and still have reviews left over. There are plenty of new, quality green products to choose from these days, especially food, bath and body, cleaning products and DIY (Do It Yourself), they said.

“If you want to get a green job or start a green business, you do not have to get up and move to do it,” Stephenson said. “…You are going to find pockets of these things all over the country. …

“There are opportunities everywhere. It is going to take time, opportunity and effort. People looking back — people are going to marvel at how rich a vein the green movement was to tap.”