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The Green Economy Means More Color-Collar Jobs
By Rubin Patterson
Guest Column
Yes, we all know about blue-collar jobs and white-collar
jobs, and many of us even know about so-called pink-collar
jobs, which are jobs women predominantly hold, such as in
nursing and secretarial occupations. Fortunately, of late,
everyone is also talking about new green-collar jobs.
Generally, however, when people think about the latest color-collar
jobs, what many have in mind are entirely new occupations in
the green sector that have no conspicuous connection to
existing job categories. Nothing could be farther from the
truth.
Truth be told, green jobs are primarily graphed onto
existing jobs. You might think of it as traditional blue and
white-collar jobs applied in the green production and
distribution of products and services. Hundreds of thousands
of Ohioans are already working in jobs in which they are
applying some of the skills that are required by green
producers and their suppliers. In other words, the skills
associated with traditional white-collar and blue-collar
jobs are transferable to the green sector, but such skills
must first be augmented with additional knowledge and
skills.
Will blue-collar jobs applied in green industries become
known as “turquoise-collar” jobs (mixing blue with green)
just as white-collar jobs applied in green industries may
become known as “lime-collar” jobs (mixing white with
green)?
The overwhelming majority of so-called green-collar jobs in
existence today, and that will be in existence tomorrow, are
of these turquoise and lime varieties. Surprisingly, despite
all the buzz and hype about new green-collar jobs,
relatively few will come to us de novo or totally
brand new with no obvious extension of well-known skilled
blue-collar or professional white-collar occupations.
Before workers can apply the skills acquired from
traditional white-collar and blue-collar occupations
productively in green industries, they first need a new base
of knowledge. The breadth and depth of that knowledge will
no doubt depend on the career choices one makes.
Obviously, for example, electrical engineers will likely
need more abstract scientific knowledge about energy
efficiency and pollution than millwrights, while
retrofitters of old buildings will need more applied
scientific skills in controlling energy efficiency and
pollution than operations managers will need.
Community colleges and universities are moving briskly now
to cobble together curricula to help prepare and credential
students and workers for these green-related jobs by
providing the requisite bases of abstract and applied
knowledge.
According to the National Association of Manufactures, 90
percent of surveyed manufacturers indicated a
moderate-to-severe shortage of qualified skilled
manufacturing and production employees such as machinists
and engineering technicians. The point is that, since green
jobs are largely extensions of existing blue-collar and
white-collar jobs, those green occupations that are
extensions of existing blue and white-collar occupations
with an insufficient supply of workers will also be
telegraphed and amplified as occupations with too few
green-collar workers.
Just a few of the hundreds of white-collar occupations that
play prominent roles in the green sector (and the associated
2007 hourly manufacturing wages in Ohio) are operations
managers ($41.30 hourly); construction managers ($39.21) and
electrical engineers ($38.21). A few of the hundreds of
turquoise-collar occupations—some skilled, others not—that
have prominent roles to play in the green sector include
millwrights ($35.45), machinists ($16.39), roofers ($16.3),
and production helpers ($10.92).
Like other large industrial states of the Midwest, Ohio has
been seeking to pivot from a traditional manufacturing base
to a new high-tech, high-value-added production base. Since
2000, the state has lost well over a quarter million
manufacturing jobs. Nearly one in five jobs in Ohio was in
manufacturing in 1996, but a decade later that share had
dropped to 14 percent.
It is evident that metropolitan Toledo and the rest of
northwest Ohio, indeed like the rest of the state, need new
sources of living-wage jobs for its residents. Lime, green,
and turquoise-collar jobs won’t necessarily be sufficient to
replace all those blue-collar and white-collar workers
downsized due to automation and globalization, but the
generation of such jobs will be a huge start and will
obviously contribute to a more sustainable future.
Ohio has the potential to be a significant producer of the
technologies the world needs in order to carry out our
immediate greening activities at the local, level such as
retrofitting older buildings, blowing insulation, and
installing and maintaining solar panels. These are jobs that
cannot be off-shored.
The production technologies necessary to make these greening
technologies have to be designed, engineered and
manufactured somewhere in the world, and with Ohio’s premium
manufacturing infrastructure and experience, the state can
be a key player in this arena.
There are three major ways workers worldwide will
benefit from the greening economy. First, everyone and every
ecosystem will benefit from a more sustainable world.
Second, workers in local areas throughout the world will
benefit from employment opportunities associated with
retrofitting buildings and developing other forms of energy
efficiency. Again, those jobs can’t be outsourced.
Even countries such as Bangladesh and Zambia will benefit,
among other ways, by producing and installing new solar
stoves and thereby eliminating biomass open-fire-based
energy generation for food preparation, heat, and light.
Some three-quarters of Sub-Saharans are without electricity
as are one-half of South Asians. Swapping these home energy
sources will employ millions of local workers.
Unlike the first two ways in which workers will benefit from
a greening economy, the third way will be more constricted
to a limited number of jurisdictions scattered throughout
the world that are in position to pioneer and innovate a
green economy quickly.
Toledoans, with additional help from institutions such as
the Ohio Department of Development and The University of
Toledo, can position our region to accelerate innovation and
commercialization of green production technologies.
Fellow citizens should start today investigating the
turquoise or lime-type jobs they want and envision for
themselves in the near future and start preparing for such
jobs. Currently the development of a green economy is a gut
issue in our society, and the movement toward this ideal is
not only unstoppable by starting to accelerate. That is, the
greening pace is quickening, moving from a quick gait to a
slow gallop and on to hopefully a gazelle-like speed.
From the US House of Representatives’ passage last month of
the American Clean Energy and Security Act that is designed
to limit climate change and build a clean energy economy
(that President Obama appears eager to sign into law), to
the
richest most industrialized nations’ agreement this month,
for the first time, that they should collectively cut carbon
emissions by 80 percent by 2050,
the new way of doing business will soon be upon us.
Therefore, we want citizens of our communities to be
prepared for employment in jobs or positions that will help
private and public sector institutions to operate in the new
emerald world.
So, the bottom line is that terms “lime-collar” and
“turquoise-collar” jobs may not enter the official or
popular labor lexicon, but many of the existing blue-collar
and white-collar occupations will be extended into an
emerging green sector.
That said, let’s all agree not to come up with the moniker
“brown-collar” jobs. Brown is what we get from mixing
pink-collar jobs in the green sector.
Rubin Patterson, Ph.D., is professor of Sociology and the
interim director of Africana Studies at The University of
Toledo. He sent this article to The Truth from South Africa
where he is on a research trip. Patterson may be contacted
at
rpatter@UTNet.UToledo.edu
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