Organized Labor

It is all the vogue among politicians to talk about preparing workers for "green" jobs. Exactly what they mean is not always clear, maybe not even to themselves. Clearly where construction is concerned anyone who wants to prepare workers for a "green" future should be sending them to our apprenticeships.

It was our skill that built the Federal Building on Seventh Street and the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park, both outstanding examples of "green" building. It is our skill that is erecting wind farms, constructing cogeneration plants, and installing solar arrays of all types and sizes across California. It will be our skill that will best plumb the new recycled water systems, rework heating, ventilation, and air conditioning to achieve maximum efficiency, and bring electrified public transit everywhere it needs to go. Glazing, insulating, steel framing, roofing – these and other skills so essential to "green" construction reach their highest level among us, as well.

And our apprenticeships will adapt quickly to new materials and new technologies, as they always have. A visit to the Electricians' apprenticeship center in the former St. John's Ursuline High School on Mission Street will demonstrate this; they have been providing up-to-date training on solar energy there for as long as it has been commercially available.

In his recent State of the City address, Mayor Gavin Newsom proposed extending the CityBuild program to "green" jobs.

To this point, CityBuild has served as an effective gateway for residents of underprivileged neighborhoods to Building Trades apprenticeships. Through a 12 to 14 week "CityBuild Academy" it has helped them understand our work, its physical demands, and our ethic. In helping them succeed in our apprenticeships, it has already prepared them for our "green" jobs.

When Mayor Newsom speaks of other "green" jobs, then, we can hope that he's talking about jobs other than in construction; to propose sending San Franciscans through CityBuild to construction jobs other than ours would be to propose a future for them of low pay, few if any benefits, and the most uncertain of retirements.  We can hope that the mayor is speaking instead with some "green" research and manufacturing in his jacket pocket.

Beyond construction, perhaps the most central field of "green" economic activity and jobs will be in energy use and its related equipment and facilities. As such new "green" technology is developed and before its manufacture can be reduced to simple steps on an assembly line, its research and early assembly is likely to require skilled machinists, industrial electricians and sheet metal workers, and welders adept in a broad range of processes. It may need steelworkers, boilermakers and shop ironworkers. Even as it moves to large-scale manufacture it will require stationary engineers for plant maintenance and building trades workers for plant construction and upgrade.

The city actually provides some potential advantages for such work. Industrial land still exists along and near our waterfront, in part though the efforts of activists. We have an underutilized shipyard and port. We can imagine how an adept economic development team could use these facts as part of a case for locating research facilities for tidal and wave power generation or other "green" energy processes in the city. A skilled local workforce would of course help their case. And although potential manufacturers will always have an eye toward the lower cost of labor in many other maritime countries on the Pacific Rim, a high level of resident skill in San Francisco workers might help turn their attention here.

If the mayor and his team are trying to convince "green" researchers and manufacturers to locate here, they can be assured that for this work, too, the skills they need reside already in large degree in us, in the shipyard and industrial branches of our trades, and in our sister apprenticeable trades not involved in building and construction. Where new skills will be required, we can readily adapt our apprenticeships or even create new apprenticeships. No one else does this as well as we do. CityBuild has never been a program that by itself could impart enough knowledge and skill for a career. It has been a gateway to programs that could – that is, to our apprenticeships. To speak of extending the CityBuild program to "green" jobs, then, means little without those jobs being tied to our apprenticeships.

Mayor Newsom and other politicians talking of "green" jobs should be clear on this.