Protecting Workers' Rights, Broadband Key to Green Jobs Being 'Good Jobs'

Protecting workers' rights and building out high-speed broadband to every community will spur the economic growth our country needs and create quality, union, green jobs, Communications Workers of America (CWA) President Larry Cohen told participants this week at the Good Jobs Green Jobs Conference.

Cohen said access to high-speed broadband networks is critical to the economic survival and growth of rural communities and towns across the country, just as water rights and highways were in years past. "Without access, those communities will disappear."

Some 3,000 labor and environmental activists, business leaders, elected officials and others attended the Washington D.C. forum that focused on ideas to help build a new, green economy that creates good jobs, reduces global warming and preserves America's economic and environmental security. CWA is a member of the Blue Green Alliance, which sponsors the forum.

Attending the forum were CWA and IUE-CWA members already doing some of the nation's greenest jobs: building out high speed broadband, and manufacturing zero-emission buses in St. Cloud, Minn., hybrid car batteries in Springfield, Ohio, low-voltage wind transformers in Washington, Mo., and clean jet engines in Lynn, Mass.

IUE-CWA President Jim Clark said that green, clean energy jobs will mean growth for American workers and our economy. We must ensure that "going green in the U.S. doesn't become another excuse for companies to outsource jobs overseas."

Also attending the forum's first day were House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, Steelworkers President Leo Gerard, Sierra Club Executive Chairman Carl Pope and others.

Networking the Green Economy (Speed Matters)

Good Jobs Green Jobs Conference