Jobs Insight

Green Collar Jobs Still an Answer to Employment Crisis

Tay Yoshitani

The most recent government employment reports have been disappointing because they show a profound lack of job creation on the part of the private sector.

In addition to calling the health of the overall U.S. economy into question, many analysts say that the latest data raise troubling issues about the viability of clean technology as a positive force for 21st-century prosperity. After all, we've been told repeatedly that legions of new green-collar jobs will materialize and generate growth for communities all across the nation.

I believe the analysts are wrong; my view remains that the creation and proliferation of well- paying green-collar jobs in America will ultimately help us address the biggest employment crisis since the Great Depression.

If you look closely and carefully, you can see tangible signs of the green jobs revolution starting to take hold everywhere today. Buildings are being retrofitted for greater energy efficiency; new energy systems are being installed; electric infrastructure is being rebuilt; and smart irrigation systems are being put in place.

This represents meaningful and next-generation work for -- among others -- many of the nation's 1.7 million truck drivers, 969,000 carpenters, and 400,000 welders. Indeed, I believe that over time the green-collar job revolution will eventually start to replace a good number of the 4.1 million blue-collar jobs we've lost in the United States since 1998.

As I survey the present landscape, and look over the horizon to the future, I see three main ways that our country will continue to create green collar jobs.

The first way is through transformation. This means re-orienting a company or business so it operates on a clean, green basis or meets new clean, green market needs.

At the Port of Seattle, which I lead, we've developed one of the cleanest and most energy efficient ports in North America, a green gateway with the lowest carbon footprint for goods traveling between Asia and the Midwest. But we've also demonstrated that America's ports can help add a green hue to meaningful, ongoing and valuable blue-collar work.

Indeed, the Port of Seattle has supported more than 200,000 family-wage jobs, generated nearly $18 billion in business revenues, delivered close to $900 million in annual state and local tax revenues, and invested $54 million to help small businesses at the same time that we've reduced emissions, removed contaminated sediment, restored shoreline, and created parks and wetlands.

Hemlock Semiconductor Corporation is another good example of how green-collar jobs are being created. The world's largest producer of polysilicon, a key material in photovoltaic devices like solar panels, Hemlock has doubled its workforce in Michigan, and will open a new plant in Tennessee in 2012.

Johnson Controls, which creates products, services and solutions to optimize energy and operational efficiencies in buildings, is also a bellwether worth noting. Based on anticipated demand, the 125-year-old company says it expects to hire 60,000 new green-collar employees around the world over the next decade.

The second way that we will create green-collar jobs is through leadership. And here there is no greater example than Wal-Mart, which happens to be one of the Port of Seattle's largest customers.

When it comes to sustainability, Wal-Mart has definitely set some aggressive and ambitious goals for itself. It intends to double its fleet's efficiency in the U.S. by 2015 from 2005 levels, for example; the retail behemoth has already achieved a 60 percent increase in fleet efficiency over the past five years.

But Wal-Mart wants to go further, and it has taken the high road in terms of green-collar job creation by setting up and funding a Green Jobs Training Initiative that serves communities from coast to coast. It has also established a Green Jobs Council, a partnership with many of its leading sustainability suppliers to facilitate the creation of green jobs in the United States.

The third way that we will create green-collar jobs is through insourcing.

Gamesa, based in Spain and one of the world's largest wind energy developers, has several plants in Pennsylvania, for example, and employs several hundred green-collar workers there.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee, which has lost 55,000 local manufacturing jobs over the last decade, recently announced that Ingeteam, a Spanish supplier to the wind and solar industries, had selected the Wisconsin city as the site of a new production facility.

Right now, two-thirds of all green collar jobs in America are in the energy conservation and pollution mitigation area, but capital is rapidly moving into clean energy, energy efficiency, and environmentally friendly products and services. Meanwhile, many existing blue-collar jobs that truly matter to families and communities all across the country are turning green.

These are the next waves of the green-collar job revolution. And, if we're fortunate and far-sighted, I believe that this revolution can lift our nation higher -- much higher -- as it reaches for even greater prosperity in the decades to come.

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Tay Yoshitani is CEO of the Port of Seattle. This article was originally published on Greentechmedia.com.