Update — July 2009

 

Dear colleagues,

We had a lot to celebrate on Independence Day this year. For the first time we are seeing real efforts at the federal level to help America move toward independence from polluting energy sources.

At the City level, the City Council is considering the "Greener, Greater Buildings" initiative. This ambitious initiative includes four separate pieces of legislation all aimed at making buildings more energy efficient. We recognize the tremendous importance of the legislative package and applaud the bill sponsors. On June 12th, Mijin Cha testified and provided suggestions to make sure this important piece of legislation is great by incorporating job standards, protections for affordable housing tenants, and effective enforcement mechanisms.

Policy changes at the federal, state, and local level are demanding that New Yorkers be prepared for jobs in the growing green economy. Seizing this opportunity is the goal of the Green Collar Jobs Roundtable. We all need to remain committed to building a green collar workforce — where good jobs sustain our environment and also offer family-supporting wages, good benefits, pathways out of poverty, and career ladders.

I am delighted to welcome the new members of the NYC Apollo Alliance Steering Committee who share this work with us: Kellie Terry-Sepulveda from The Point, Miquela Craytor from Sustainable South Bronx, Laura Caruso from SEIU Local 32BJ, and Myles Lennon from the Laborers’ Local 10.

I hope you had a great 4th of July.

Joanne Derwin
Executive Director

---

FEATURED PARTNER

Conservation Services Group and Elizabeth Weiner

Conservation Services Group (CSG), a national energy services firm based in Massachusetts, was founded in 1984. CSG has 15 offices throughout the country and designs and implements energy efficiency and renewable energy programs in 23 states. Other services it offers include program administration, appliance recycling, customer education, solar electric power design, and training in building science, HVAC installation and working with the building trades to obtain “green” new construction certification. CSG also plays an active role in working with local, state, and national legislative groups to shape responsible public policy for energy conservation and renewable energy. Clients include utilities, state and government agencies, public housing authorities, and other groups. For 25 years, CSG has been devoted to the high quality installation of energy efficiency measures, health and safety, and indoor air quality.

Elizabeth Weiner became CSG's New York City program development director in 2007, after more than 20 years as an editor with BusinessWeek. Elizabeth has been on the New York City Apollo Alliance Steering Committee since 2008. "This is an exciting time and place to be in the energy efficiency business -- the city and state are leaders in progressive energy policy, and now even Washington is coming on board. Working with the NYC Apollo Alliance gives me a great forum to learn from my peers and help contribute to important policy locally and even nationally."

---

Green Collar Jobs Roundtable: 170 Organizations Convene to Bring NYC to the Fore of the Emerging Green Economy

The multi-stakeholder campaign, the Green Collar Jobs Roundtable, met for its third convening on June 17th, to celebrate its work and launch the next phase of its dynamic process. For over a year, more than 170 organizations have worked together to put forward a just and comprehensive workforce development strategy to prepare New Yorkers for green collar jobs.

“We are very humbled by the great work done by so many important organizations invested in the future of our City,” said Joanne Derwin, Executive Director of Urban Agenda, convener of the Roundtable campaign. ”This was not only a truly grassroots process, but a unique undertaking, and the culmination of a lot of hard work over a sustained period of time.”

Myles Lennon, from Urban Agenda said that the expanding awareness of environmental justice "is one of the greatest strengths of the green jobs movement."

Read the press release (PDF)

---

Green Building Legislation Brings All Sides to City Council

On Earth Day, the Bloomberg Administration and City Council announced the introduction of the Greener, Greater Buildings plan. The plan is a package of four pieces of legislation aiming to make commercial buildings over 50,000 square feet more energy efficient by requiring, among other things, benchmarking, energy audits, and building retrofits with a five-year payback.

Buildings are the largest consumers of energy and produce almost 80 percent of the City’s carbon dioxide emissions, a leading contributor to global warming. The Greener, Greater Buildings plan is a fundamental first step to curbing these emissions and making our City more energy efficient. The legislation also has the potential to create thousands of new jobs.

Representatives from labor, business, environment, and environmental justice, building management, government, and other sectors testified at the City Council’s Environmental Protection Committee on Friday, June 26th, for the first hearing on the bills. While the legislation is ambitious and far-sighted, several concerns were raised. Among them:

• The lack of clear job titles or standards;

• The potential of the cost of the retrofits will be passed onto affordable housing tenants;

• A lack of enforcement provisions.

Mike Fishman, President of SEIU local 32BJ explained, “We need to ensure that workers are trained and certified to do the work. Just as importantly, newly created green jobs must be good jobs that pay livable wages”. Mijin Cha, director of Campaign Research at Urban Agenda, testified that there are available trainings and certifications that can be inserted into the legislation: “These trainings and certifications should be explicitly included in the legislation, since it cannot be assumed that the right training and certification would be automatically applied."

The legislation is still in Committee. Please take a moment and tell Speaker Quinn that with necessary changes, the legislation will bring New York City to the forefront of the fight against climate change while also creating thousands of good, green collar jobs.

---

SPOTLIGHT

One City, One Future

One City/One Future: A Blueprint for Growth That Works for All New Yorkers was released at the end of March 2009, the result of over four years of collaboration by 65 leading community, labor, housing, and environmental groups. The effort was led jointly by the National Employment Law Project, New York Jobs with Justice, and the Pratt Center for Community Development.

The report offers 54 concrete, wide-ranging recommendations for city leaders, aimed at stimulating economic recovery and sustainable growth for New York City while promoting stronger partnerships between local communities and city government. The report puts forward three key strategies: the need for clear standards for economic activity in the City, especially activity that benefits from public spending or actions; better design and management of investments in housing, transportation, and employment to improve opportunities and strengthen neighborhoods; and a more open and democratic environment for planning and development, so that communities and the City work as partners instead of adversaries to create livable neighborhoods.

For more information: www.onecityonefuture.org.