About nine months ago I wrote an op ed piece for the Hamilton Spectator pointing out the great potential of Hamilton’s north end industrial lands to site windmill manufacturing and assembly. It looks like that potential may soon be tapped.
Hamilton is setting the pace in the race to reduce green house gases.
Today October 17th the Hamilton Climate Change Charter was introduced. I have been helping on the Climate Change Working Group that prepared the charter. So of course I signed it.
On Thursday August 11, Hamilton City Council declared “its continuing support for the development of the Green Economy as a set of effective economic development strategies that achieve complimentary environmental and energy benefits while creating jobs and healthy communities.”
This was part of a resolution presented by Blue Green Canada. It recognized the under-reported but significant achievements of the city in encouraging good green job creation through brownfield restoration, support for LEED construction, and targeting green manufacturers to locate in Hamilton.
As a green jobs activist I am often asked if working to raise workers’ level of understanding of the green economy and green jobs is worth the effort.
The answer: Yes.
The other day, I was in the Steelworkers Centre in Hamilton when a worker who volunteers there came in with a small town newspaper he had picked up when camping. He had marked several stories about the “hazards” of wind turbines and the “wasteful” Green Energy Act. He then proceeded to debunk them.
Good news: Green industries are out-hiring traditional industries in Ontario.
In a survey completed by a Hamilton labour market analyst, 30 percent, or 40 of the 131 manufacturing companies that indicated they intended to hire new workers were in Green industries. That’s pretty substantial.
And it gets even better. The green employers tended to be hiring in the hundreds while most of the not-so-green companies were hiring in the tens. The point is, not only are a sizeable percentage of the firms green, but an even higher percentage of the jobs are green.
Over the past few months I have been working in Niagara and have seen the growth of the green economy in the wine country. In communities that have been impacted by waves of job loss in almost every aspect of manufacturing, regional governments are working hard to attract green technology manufacturers and the jobs they bring with them.
I’ve been taking our message on the road over the last month, representing Blue Green Canada at a number of job fairs across southern Ontario.
In Ohsweken, Welland and St. Catharines, about a thousand job seekers stopped by our table to talk with me and my volunteers – laid off steel and auto workers – about the green economy and the prospects for good green jobs.
The announcement to close the Siemens turbine plant last May came as a shock to the 550 workers who had successfully produced sophisticated utility gas turbines for many years.
Blue Green Canada is an alliance between the United Steelworkers (USW) and Environmental Defence to advocate for working people and the environment in key areas of global trade, the use of toxic chemicals in commercial activity, the creation of green manufacturing jobs, and in the development of strategies to address climate change. We welcome your thoughts - info@bluegreencanada.ca
With the generous support of 