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ECONOMY-US: “Green” Jobs Should Be Black and Brown Too

Haider Rizvi

NEW YORK, Nov 13 2009 (IPS) - The Barack Obama administration’s drive to promote a “green” economy is not working in the interest of poor people in the United States, especially those who belong to minority communities, according to a new study by a leading think tank.

“The communities of colour are hardest hit [by joblessness],” said Terry Keleher, who co-authored the report, “Green Equity Toolkit: Standards and strategies for advancing race, gender and economic equality in the green economy”.

“They can benefit from the emerging green economy. But that is not happening,” he told IPS.

The report, released this week by the Oakland, California-based Applied Research Center, says that a vast majority of green jobs are being filled by white men, even though there is no scarcity of talent among people of colour and women of all ethnicities.

According to Keleher’s findings, which he concluded in collaboration with his colleague Yvonne Liu, African Americans and Latinos comprise less than 30 percent of those employed in green industries and economies.

“Gender disparities are even starker,” said Liu, who found that African American women are employed in only 1.5 percent of the energy sector workforce. The numbers are even worse as far as Asian and Latino women are concerned. Their share in jobs stands at 1.0 and 0.7 percent, respectively.

The term “green economy” refers to businesses that care about environmental protection, energy efficiency, preservation of biodiversity, community self-reliance, and sustainable development.

Soon after taking office in the White House last January, President Obama declared that his administration was determined to boost green businesses across the nation, creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs throughout the country.

Last February, the Obama administration earmarked 200 billion dollars of the 787-million-dollar American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for creating green jobs programmes.

Keleher and Liu decided to investigate whether those 200 billion dollars have made a difference in the lives of poor U.S. citizens, and found it a harder task than they had anticipated.

“Tracking funds from the Recovery Act has proven to be difficult, because there is no centralised, authoritative source of where the money is going to and what it’s being used for,” Liu told IPS.

The act does not require recipients to stipulate race and gender in their data.

However, the report’s authors said their findings regarding recovery allocations by race, gender and class are “troubling”. A sample of their analysis shows that the funds are not reaching those hardest hit by the recession.

The report mentions several cases where both the authorities and recipients seemed to lack concern for compliance with U.S. anti-discrimination laws. In Florida, for example, African Americans received only about two percent of the total contracts. Latinos got six percent, and women received less than two percent.

Amid the lingering economic recession, the U.S. unemployment rate has jumped over to more than 10 percent. On Thursday, President Obama publicly acknowledged that unemployment has continued to climb despite relative economic growth in the past three months.

“The economic growth that we’ve seen has not yet led to the job growth that we desperately need,” Obama said. “This is one of the great challenges.” He has invited corporate officials, economists and labour leaders to take part in an upcoming summit on job creation.

According to the U.S. Labour Department, currently, nearly 16 million people are unemployed. The centre’s research shows that a vast majority are people of minority communities.

One recent study by the Economic Policy Institute shows that with regard to poverty rates this year, Latinos and Asians have shown marked increases by 1.6 and 1.4 percent. Last year, about one-third of all Black and Latino children lived in poverty. Millions of single mothers are also suffering from joblessness and hardship.

Both Keleher and Liu argue that the Obama administration should continue its quest for economic recovery and the efforts to promote a green economy. But, they insist that such efforts are not likely to produce positive results if millions of jobless people from minority communities are not offered equal opportunities.

The authors prepared a comprehensive guide for policymakers, labour leaders and community activists to work together to help the new administration devise a more equitable policy on job creation in green industries.

They hold that green jobs must be well-paid and contribute directly to preserving or enhancing environmental quality. “If a job improves the environment, but doesn’t provide a family supporting wage or career ladder to move low-income workers into higher-skill occupations, it’s not a green-collar job,” said Liu.

She notes with concern that many green companies are behaving the same as traditional firms whose profit is mainly derived from low labour costs. “The hourly wage for a green job can be as low as 8.25 dollars [per hour],” said Liu, “which what one Los Angeles recycling centre pays its workers.”

Keleher thinks that this situation can be overcome if policymakers, labour leaders, and community activists decide to work in unison to create sustainable and equitable models for economic development, employment and the environment.

“We believe that race and gender equity would not happen by chance,” he told IPS. “It requires continuous attention and concrete actions.”