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Green-collar jobs
The workplace is turning more eco-friendly, creating new occupations
Have some coffee? Yes!
After 34 years working in Toledo Ohio’s automotive industry, John Morris was laid off, and left to fend for himself in a bleak job market. ‘Being that I was in automotive, it just was not then out there.’ But to his surprise, his skills on the assembly line actually came in handy, landing him a job as a safety engineer at Xunlight, a start-up company that makes solar energy panels. ‘I'm a green-collar worker now. It was very exciting for me, to be able to start on the ground floor of a new type of development.’
Our modules are light-weight and flexible...
The company’s president and CEO Xunming Deng believes Toledo is a good place to grow his company, in part because of the availability of skilled factory workers like John Morris. ‘There are some venture capitalists that say that we gotta move to California to grow a successful startup. But there are other venture capitalists, they come over and say, they said Xunming, this is the wonderful place because you have all these highly trained workers available to help out, they are just right there!’
Before Xunlight, Toledo was already home to First Solar, the nation’s largest solar panel maker. But it’s not just Toledo, green-collar jobs are sprouting up across the country. And with the proper incentives, analysts say the industry could generate 3,000,000 new jobs over the next two decades. ‘It could leak overseas, unless the United States, I think it's particularly the Federal level, is really aggressive about providing Federal supports.’ George Sterzinger with a renewable energy policy project fears the US could miss out on this emerging market. "One of the things that people have to realize is that it is a potential, it’s only a potential…" Toledo’s mayor Carty Finkbiener has seen the potential, he singles out solar energy as one of the lone bright spots in Ohio, a state that has lost close to a quarter of its manufacturing jobs in the last decade. "We regain some of the lost quality of life, some of the lost jobs, the economic vigor."
For John Morris, the future is going green. "It's a business that I hope, I don't have to worry about tomorrow will I be out of the job and there’s a good future for us." But advocates for green-collar jobs says Congress is the key, despite the success stories, tax credits for alternative energies were not renewed in 2007. Analysts say those tax credits are facing an uphill battle this year. Jim Acosta, CNN, New York.
Notes:
Come in handy: Used casually when someone comments that something unexpected could prove useful.
