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Stressing Green Jobs, Low-Income Advocacy Group Worries About Post-Nickels Seattle
This Wednesday, local low-income advocacy group Puget Sound SAGE put out a paper detailing how low-income communities in the Seattle-area are in dire straits. For SAGE, the situation ups the ante on Seattle's two mayoral candidates: How will either Joe Mallahan or Mike McGinn help low-income people get back into the workforce?
The numbers in SAGE’s report are grim. They show two out of five households in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area lacked sufficient income to support a family of four before the worst of the recession hit. And the numbers come with a depressingly familiar addendum: they are worse among people of color. Tri-county poverty rates are highest among Latinos (19 percent) and African Americans (23 percent). In 2008 African-American unemployment stood at 10.8%, more than two times the regional average of 4.5 percent. But in 2009 the overall unemployment doubled, shooting past 9 percent, its highest point since the Reagan years. If the 2008 trends among African-Americans continued apace, unemployment among that demographic group could exceed 20 percent in 2009, plunging whole communities into upheaval.
SAGE has been promoting several initiatives to cushion poor communities, and particularly poor communities of color, from the worst effects of the recession. They believe the quickest short-term solution may be putting workers from communities wracked by unemployment to work in low-skill green jobs, like weatherizing residential homes (basically retrofitting them for energy efficiency). And there is money for it too, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provides money for just this purpose.
“There is $500,000 in the stimulus for Pathways Out of Poverty grant program,” says Howard Greenwich, Research Director for SAGE. “It’s run by the Department of Labor specifically for training low-income people for green jobs. But even though we have programs preparing them for these jobs, at the end of the day they still have to compete against [high skill-experienced] workers.”
And with so many workers suffering the recession’s effects (there has been a 20% downturn in construction work alone), the competition will be especially fierce. SAGE fears that without some assistance, the low-income unemployed won’t stand a chance.
“You can train all the people you want, but unless you have a job at the end of the pipeline it doesn’t work,” Greenwich says. “There need to be reserve jobs for people coming out of the training programs. It really takes government to make a concerted effort to make sure these disadvantaged youth, a lot of whom are African-American, have opportunities to work on weatherization.”
SAGE brought their concerns to Mayor Greg Nickels’ office several months ago, and despite his defeat in August City Hall’s policy shop has been working diligently on it ever since.
“We haven’t settled on a specific percentage [of the jobs that will go to low-income workers],” says Michael Mann head of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment. “This is an issue that has been near and dear to this administration and we are in the last stages of finalizing contract language that will be included in the work that we contract out for the stimulus funding.”
But Greenwich is unsure who their organization’s next political champion will be now that Nickels is on the way out. “Mayor Nickels was really providing leadership around green jobs,” he says wistfully.
Last week, mayoral candidates Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan put out their green economy press releases, covering everything from “restoring our tree canopy” (Mallahan) to expanding “the work of the Seattle Climate Action Partnership” (McGinn).
McGinn who seems to have read his Van Jones (Obama's ousted green jobs policy czar), seemed more on SAGE's wavelength than Mallahan, devoting a bullet point in his press release the need for an inclusive green jobs policy.
“The green-collar job training partnership must be strategically aligned to maximize outreach to low income communities and communities of color, extending an open invitation to participate in the green economy,” the release reads.
(Calls to McGinn for comment have not yet been returned.)
Mallahan gave only a passing nod to “family-wage, green energy jobs” in his release, neglecting to include specifics about how those jobs would be allotted. But he did have a better response than McGinn to getting jobs to disproportionately impacted minorities at a recent candidate forum in Southeast Seattle. Slyly spinning the tunnel (McGinn's nemesis) as a job creator, Mallahan told the largely minority crowd at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center candidate forum that he would sign agreements that channeled the jobs to "certain zipcodes."
Mallahan spokeswoman Charla Neuman says other solutions are needed too, like attracting capital to low-income areas.
“We’ll look at Nickels’ proposal more specifically before I say yes or no, but in principal, we should try and get low-income workers to benefit more from a growing green economy,” Neuman says. “But green jobs aren’t the only part of it. There are a couple different things you can do, and one would be to attract manufacturing, call centers, and light industrial businesses to low-income neighborhoods, which not only creates jobs but also injects more money into the local economy.”
Neuman has a point. Weatherization projects will not last forever, and long-term solutions to poverty are needed. (Other low-skill green jobs, like operators for expanded public transit, will have more longevity.)
The trouble, as SAGE lays it out, is that the unemployed are unemployed right now and the quickest way to get them working is through the money provided by the stimulus package which can be used right now. And special attention needs to be given to those who need the government’s help.
No matter who wins, concrete policy initiatives will need to be drawn up and enacted rapidly. 10 percent regional unemployment is devastating, but upwards of 20 percent unemployment concentrated in already vulnerable communities of color would be an utter disaster. They cannot afford to lose any time in the transition.
UPDATE:
Mike McGinn says: “I requested and received a briefing on this issue from Michael Mann, and I intend to aggressively pursue the stimulus funding if elected.”
When asked if he would ensure that green jobs, and specifically weatherization jobs, would be accessible to low-income people he said: "I believe that is part of the city's application being developed, and I support those concepts."
The numbers in SAGE’s report are grim. They show two out of five households in the Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue area lacked sufficient income to support a family of four before the worst of the recession hit. And the numbers come with a depressingly familiar addendum: they are worse among people of color. Tri-county poverty rates are highest among Latinos (19 percent) and African Americans (23 percent). In 2008 African-American unemployment stood at 10.8%, more than two times the regional average of 4.5 percent. But in 2009 the overall unemployment doubled, shooting past 9 percent, its highest point since the Reagan years. If the 2008 trends among African-Americans continued apace, unemployment among that demographic group could exceed 20 percent in 2009, plunging whole communities into upheaval.
SAGE has been promoting several initiatives to cushion poor communities, and particularly poor communities of color, from the worst effects of the recession. They believe the quickest short-term solution may be putting workers from communities wracked by unemployment to work in low-skill green jobs, like weatherizing residential homes (basically retrofitting them for energy efficiency). And there is money for it too, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) provides money for just this purpose.
“There is $500,000 in the stimulus for Pathways Out of Poverty grant program,” says Howard Greenwich, Research Director for SAGE. “It’s run by the Department of Labor specifically for training low-income people for green jobs. But even though we have programs preparing them for these jobs, at the end of the day they still have to compete against [high skill-experienced] workers.”
And with so many workers suffering the recession’s effects (there has been a 20% downturn in construction work alone), the competition will be especially fierce. SAGE fears that without some assistance, the low-income unemployed won’t stand a chance.
“You can train all the people you want, but unless you have a job at the end of the pipeline it doesn’t work,” Greenwich says. “There need to be reserve jobs for people coming out of the training programs. It really takes government to make a concerted effort to make sure these disadvantaged youth, a lot of whom are African-American, have opportunities to work on weatherization.”
SAGE brought their concerns to Mayor Greg Nickels’ office several months ago, and despite his defeat in August City Hall’s policy shop has been working diligently on it ever since.
“We haven’t settled on a specific percentage [of the jobs that will go to low-income workers],” says Michael Mann head of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment. “This is an issue that has been near and dear to this administration and we are in the last stages of finalizing contract language that will be included in the work that we contract out for the stimulus funding.”
But Greenwich is unsure who their organization’s next political champion will be now that Nickels is on the way out. “Mayor Nickels was really providing leadership around green jobs,” he says wistfully.
Last week, mayoral candidates Mike McGinn and Joe Mallahan put out their green economy press releases, covering everything from “restoring our tree canopy” (Mallahan) to expanding “the work of the Seattle Climate Action Partnership” (McGinn).
McGinn who seems to have read his Van Jones (Obama's ousted green jobs policy czar), seemed more on SAGE's wavelength than Mallahan, devoting a bullet point in his press release the need for an inclusive green jobs policy.
“The green-collar job training partnership must be strategically aligned to maximize outreach to low income communities and communities of color, extending an open invitation to participate in the green economy,” the release reads.
(Calls to McGinn for comment have not yet been returned.)
Mallahan gave only a passing nod to “family-wage, green energy jobs” in his release, neglecting to include specifics about how those jobs would be allotted. But he did have a better response than McGinn to getting jobs to disproportionately impacted minorities at a recent candidate forum in Southeast Seattle. Slyly spinning the tunnel (McGinn's nemesis) as a job creator, Mallahan told the largely minority crowd at the Rainier Valley Cultural Center candidate forum that he would sign agreements that channeled the jobs to "certain zipcodes."
Mallahan spokeswoman Charla Neuman says other solutions are needed too, like attracting capital to low-income areas.
“We’ll look at Nickels’ proposal more specifically before I say yes or no, but in principal, we should try and get low-income workers to benefit more from a growing green economy,” Neuman says. “But green jobs aren’t the only part of it. There are a couple different things you can do, and one would be to attract manufacturing, call centers, and light industrial businesses to low-income neighborhoods, which not only creates jobs but also injects more money into the local economy.”
Neuman has a point. Weatherization projects will not last forever, and long-term solutions to poverty are needed. (Other low-skill green jobs, like operators for expanded public transit, will have more longevity.)
The trouble, as SAGE lays it out, is that the unemployed are unemployed right now and the quickest way to get them working is through the money provided by the stimulus package which can be used right now. And special attention needs to be given to those who need the government’s help.
No matter who wins, concrete policy initiatives will need to be drawn up and enacted rapidly. 10 percent regional unemployment is devastating, but upwards of 20 percent unemployment concentrated in already vulnerable communities of color would be an utter disaster. They cannot afford to lose any time in the transition.
UPDATE:
Mike McGinn says: “I requested and received a briefing on this issue from Michael Mann, and I intend to aggressively pursue the stimulus funding if elected.”
When asked if he would ensure that green jobs, and specifically weatherization jobs, would be accessible to low-income people he said: "I believe that is part of the city's application being developed, and I support those concepts."
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