Green Collar Jobs Idea Lab
| At the heart of the Green Collar Jobs movement is the goal to shape the emerging green economy in a way that strengthens our nation’s foundation by empowering impoverished individuals with new skills and economic security. The University of California, Berkeley is perfectly situated to contribute substantially to this most worthwhile dream. Our long history of social activism, combined with today’s vast array of cutting edge research in clean technologies and green policy provide us with the expertise and motivation to make a difference helping to shape the future dynamic of local communities and state-wide policy in this field. California is taking the national lead in implementation of energy efficiency and air quality standards; we want to ensure it is taking the lead for the establishment of the Green Collar workforce as well. Yet, anyone with a realistic outlook of the current global crisis knows that a solution that hopes to make a real difference cannot be contained to the United States. Countries such as China present an interesting dilemma, where the pace of construction has created a massive blue collar labor force that will continue to build extremely inefficient buildings without regulatory changes. Even when new regulation is enacted, there will be a dearth of foremen and crew leaders with the skills needed to implement green building policies. Combining the Do-It-Yourself skillset that in part led to the American housing boom and local “green” training with Chinese foremen and crews could help create a global labor force for green building reform - deployable to any country in need of an infrastructure or building sector transformation. Green collar jobs are a promising idea, but more research needs to be done to examine which jobs merit the label. Is a welder a green collar worker when assembling windmills? This sort of delineation must form the basis for regulation, incentives, and strategic public investment to scale and shape a green collar workforce. Our lab will examine existing green collar policies and propose new policy directions in conversation with green collar decision makers in the area. We would like to capitalize on the momentum of the various campus groups working in areas of clean technologies, social justice, environmental advocacy and international human rights to forge lasting bonds with the organizations dedicated to local, national, and global Green Collar movement. We want to take advantage of the wealth of opportunities and connections in the larger bay area – the Ella Baker Center in Oakland, the San Francisco office of the Apollo Alliance, Urban Habitat, the East Bay Green Corridor project, and the innumerable business, legal and financial players in the cleantech sector in order to make this happen. Our Idea Lab members will include students from a variety of graduate programs on campus. In addition to sharing ideas, news and current research, we hope to use our monthly Idea Lab meetings as a launching pad for long-term relationships with the bay area centers devoted to the Green Collar Job movement. We would like to set the stage for recurrent internship or externship programs, assist the centers in policy research, and help throw the weight of this great University behind the cause. Lastly, we hope to develop stronger relationships with local city governments as they implement the policies affecting the Green Collar economy, in order to assist in their social and political efforts. By Spring 2009, we intend to combine our collective research and connections to create a document outlining the different ways UC Berkeley community members can get substantively involved in and contribute to the Green Collar Jobs movement. We would like the information made available as a link on the website of related campus research groups and organizations. Main Contacts: Avery Cohn and Merrian Fuller |
||