Many young people enter the job market wanting to ‘make a difference.’ This has probably been the case since the dawn of time: people want to do “good work.” But good work does not always mean a “good job,” of course, and in fact there are many employers who sell underpaying and in some case “sweatshop” jobs to young idealists who believe they are making a difference. In a wild open market, these employers are able to win contracts thanks to their lowered costs.

A report released in February examines the green economy, just as the US government has earmarked some stimulus money for so-called green jobs that include, for example, home updates that save energy, along with jobs in the solar and wind farm industries. The report’s author, Good Jobs First Research Director Philip Mattera, said, “Many proponents of green development assume that the result will be good jobs. We tested that assumption and found it is not always valid.”

While many companies in the green sector treat employees with respect and pay them fairly, there were examples in different sectors of the green economy that showed less fairness to workers. Mattera cites the example of “Two wind energy manufacturing plants where workers initiated union organizing drives in response to issues such as poor safety conditions and then faced union-busting campaigns by management.” He also noted that there are U.S. wind and solar manufacturing firms that weaken the job security of their workers by opening parallel plants in overseas low-wage havens like China, as well as Mexico.

A report by Labor Notes (http://labornotes.org/) offers similar cautions. Tiffany van Eyck says that community-labor partnerships in Newark, Los Angeles, and Seattle are rising to the occasion to make sure that green jobs in the stimulus package end up in the right hands, that unions are recognized and workers are compensated fairly. These community-labor partnerships are “creating a blueprint to help building trades unions dig into the green economy, while bringing new workers, many of them women and people of color, into the unions.”

An alliance in Puget Sound, Washington has been able to win a bill that stipulates “prevailing wage criteria.” This essentially means that stimulus money must go to projects that pay fair wages.

Previously, unions were critical of training models used in some federally subsidized weatherization projects. These favoured entry-level candidates who only took dumbed-down classes on specific tasks. As Union spokesman Bill Hayden put it, “when that work is done, there’s no other work for them.”

While they do acquire a little experience and do receive training,  only a few ever make it into a union or are able to develop their careers. “We don’t want to see more green sweatshops,” Hayden says.

The concern across the country is that people are able to get into a union pipeline, so they can truly make a decent living at green jobs.

And in the end, argue the unions, it is the consumer and the taxpayer who benefit from seeing their money spent best, on people qualified to do good work (people with “good jobs”).

As Good Jobs First Executive Director Greg LeRoy says, “Many states and localities already apply job quality standards to companies receiving job subsidies or public contracts by federal as well as state and local agencies.” The Good Jobs First report, says LeRoy, “only wants to ensure this.”

To learn more, see:
goodjobsfirst.org/pdf/gjfgreenjobsrpt.pdf
labornotes.org/node/2318

The Detroit News is reporting that the higher than expected offers from GM will likely entice as many as 15,000 GM workers into early retirement. Read more here.

A report in Bloomberg.com says that Ford buyouts will eliminate as many as 9,000 jobs. We’ve reported on the Ford buyouts a few weeks ago. The latest report puts an estimate on the number of jobs that will be lost. That number represents 12-14% of Ford’s North American workforce. The full article is here.

Meanwhile, GM has announced that it will offer early retirement incentives. GM has offered early retirement in the past but this time around the offers will be richer than those offered two years ago. Skilled trades workers will be offered $62,500 to leave early while production workers will be given $32,000.

Union workers in Detroit picketed a midtown apartment construction site this week, protesting that the contractor hasn’t hired a proper quota of local workers to complete skilled-trades work. The protest was 250 strong at one point.

Barabas Shabazz, of Carpenters Local 687 said that city policy dictates that at least 50% of skilled-trades workers on any city construction project must residents of Detroit. The construction project involves a parking garage, apartment units and retail space.

Mike Houseman, the owner of Houseman Construction Co., the contractor for the project, stated that the company is trying to reach the 50% mark of Detroit workers, and he also added that the project is privately funded except for the parking garage.

The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Ford is in the process of implementing richer buyouts for early retirement packages offered to skilled laborers and production workers. The news has a bad side, too, of course, in that it indicates that the company is intent on ‘asking’ more staff to leave the company.

This has been a tough year for auto manufacturers (and others) of course and if Ford announces lower-than-expected profits (as is predicted) severance package offers may be made within the next few weeks.

If they can lose some of their high-priced, late-career skilled laborers they can hire younger people at much lower wages, “a starting rate of $14.20 per hour, or about half the salary of outgoing UAW workers.” This lower rate was secured in the terms of Ford’s recent contract with the UAW. 

Previous buyouts were set around $35,000 but Ford plans to offer production workers an early-retirement lump sum of $50,000 and skilled workers as much as $70,000. If you want the full story, read it here.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has settled a lawsuit against the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Ford Motor Company and two related companies. Ford and its co-defendants will pay $1.6 million in the settlement of a racial discrimination lawsuit over a written test that determined the eligibility for a skilled trades apprenticeship program. In addition the companies will “provide other relief.”

The suit was part of a series of cases begun in 1998 in Cincinnati. In an earlier suit, Ford and the UAW also agreed to payout, in this case $9.2 million covering 3,400 people. The latest settlement accounts for people who were not included in the earlier settlement. The cases were filed in Cincinnati because complaints were generated at plants in Sharonville and Batavia.

The suit alleges that a written test administered at that time was discriminatory against blacks.

Ford spokeswoman Kristen Kinley denies that the test was discriminatory but it wants to move forward. “[The test] was approved by EEOC when it was developed,” said Kinley. “However, Ford favors the settlement because it is in the company’s and the public’s best interest to work toward developing the best possible test.”

Yesterday’s settlement of $1.6 million goes to the 700 people nationwide who have taken the test (and been denied by its results) since Jan. 1, 1997. The settlement awaits final approval by Cincinnati U.S. District Court Judge S. Arthur Spiegel following a fairness hearing.

Ray Kurzweil is a noted futurist who has written recently about how our increasingly rapid rate of progress and change will affect trade unions in the coming years. The web will lead to an increased decentralization of unions and these unions will be driven by technological change (not opposed to it, as some unions have been in the past). Kurzweil predicts that traditional trade labor unions will be gone soon and will be replaced by web-based affiliations that will help them strive through a virtual hurricane of coming change.

We don’t know about you but we love this kind of stuff because these guys are always a little bit right and a whole lot wrong. There are examples of this everywhere, of course, but check out this futurist’s prognostications from a century ago: http://blogoscoped.com/files/what-may-happen-in-2000-large.jpg

Like we said, part right and lots wrong. So which part is right and which is wrong in Kurzweil’s? No way to find out about the future but to go there.

While the news at General Motors does not seem so good these days, 64% of skilled trades (and 87% of production workers) workers at Ford have voted to ratify the new contract between the auto giant and the United Auto Workers union. The new labor agreement promises to keep several factories in exchange for a “two tier wage system” that will give new hires lower wages and less benefits than existing union members. The union also agreed to transfer responsibility for its retiree health care fund to a union run trust. Presumable many of those who voted against the agreement are leery of the way in which these compromises sell out union principles.