Today’s Good News: Labor, Environmentalists Join Hands For Inner City Jobs
Progressive States tips the hat to Oakland’s City Council, who unanimously approved $250,000 as seed money to create the nation’s first Green Jobs Corps. The Green Jobs Corps will train unemployed residents in areas such as bio-fuels manufacturing and solar panel installation, plus set them up with paid internships in renewable energy and energy efficiency projects.
How did this happen, you ask? Well, remember Enron and the California energy crisis? California sued the energy companies for their role in creating the mess, and once the Enron boys and the others had to stop laughing, they wound up paying cities around the state, with the money earmarked for energy-efficient projects. Oakland got more than $4 million.
The Oakland Apollo Alliance (part of the national Apollo Alliance) cooked up the idea for the job corps and worked to make it happen. It’s a coalition effort of labor unions, environmentalists, community-based organizations and green businesses, working together to create quality jobs in the new energy economy. It is run in Oakland by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW Local 595).
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