Steelworkers join Sierra Club for environmental jobs drive

By LARRY RINGLER Tribune Chronicle
NILES — A factory that symbolizes the destruction of middle class jobs could become the national launching pad for a new manufacturing segment, fueled partly by an unlikely alliance.

‘‘Environmentalists and organized labor haven’t always been bosom buddies, but we realize as we deal with issues that our paths cross,’’ Susan Knight, national field coordinator for the Blue Green Alliance, said Wednesday at a news conference with the United Steelworkers in front of the shuttered Amweld Building Products plant in Niles.

‘‘It’s a shame this plant had to close. The Steelworkers plan to address that with trade and the Blue Green Alliance,’’ echoed George Calko, a Niles-based USW organizer for the alliance that Wednesday launched the six-month ‘‘Green Jobs for America’’ campaign.

Joining the 1.2 million-member Steelworkers and 1.3 million-member Sierra Club is the National Resource Defense Council, which claims 1.2 million members, on another national conservation drive called the ‘‘Green Paycheck Campaign’’ Tuesday, Calko said.

Designed to push jobs linked to ‘‘green’’ industries such as alternative energy and conservation, the ‘‘green paycheck’’ campaign was launched on the same date as the Work Progress Administration, or WPA — April 8, 1935, Calko noted. He added the green compaigns have the same goal as the WPA — lift the nation’s economy out of its doldrums by providing jobs and paychecks.

‘‘The WPA helped the country out of the Great Depression. Sierra and the Steelworkers can do the same thing with green jobs,’’ he said.

Running through Sept. 15, the public education campaign will take place in Ohio and 11 other states from Oregon to Florida. Teams will hold grassroots organizing activities, conduct public events and generate petitions calling for green jobs, clean energy solutions and fair trade agreements.

An independent study conducted last year for the Blue Green Alliance by the Renewable Energy Policy Project found the 12 states stand to gain nearly 170,000 new manufacturing jobs in wind turbine manufacturing and almost 93,000 new manufacturing jobs making the parts for solar power equipment.

One example bringing ‘‘green’’ jobs to the Midwest’s manufacturing Rust Belt is Gamesa, a Spanish company that Knight said located in Pennsylvania. The company employs about 600 union workers to make turbines for wind-generated electricity. The company hopes eventually to employ 1,000, she said.

An example is steel giant ArcelorMittal, which makes components for wind turbines and owns a coke-making plant in Warren, Knight said.

An average size wind turbine measuring 400 feet high uses 40 tons of steel and could use as much as 90 tons, depending on the size of the turbine, Knight said. Besides the turbine, jobs could be created to make everything from screws to engines to the grid to carry power.

‘‘Those are the kinds of jobs we’re trying to bring to the U.S.,’’ she said.

Officials noted companies wouldn’t be apt to move ‘‘green’’ kinds of jobs out of the country, something that happened to about 250 workers at Amweld plants in Niles and Garrettsville when their owner shifted work to Mexico.

Brian Ulrich, president of USW Local 5962 at Niles, said the company’s new plant in Monterrey, Mexico, has about the same number of workers as the two local plants had, ‘‘so technology didn’t replace our jobs. We used to make $18 to $18.50 an hour; it’s hard to find that now no matter your education. Something needs to be done.’’

In a letter to the group, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown noted a study by the Renewable Energy Policy Project ranked Ohio second behind California in the potential number of jobs created by significant investment in wind energy.

‘‘Through strategic investments in alternative energy we cannot only create jobs, we can grow an entire industry. In particular, many of the states that have suffered the greatest loss of manufacturing jobs now have the greatest potential to supply our growing alternative energy industry,’’ he stated.



lringler@tribune-chronicle.com