Green Workers

By MARK PENN

With E. Kinney Zalesne

Presidents and politicians no longer talk about simply creating jobs -- now they are creating "green jobs." Just in the stimulus bill alone, there are said to be four million new green jobs. It's a great term -- it conjures up neatly dressed employees working under compact fluorescent lights, and factory workers in white and green helmets huddled over solar cells and wind turbines. These aren't boring office jobs or repetitive manufacturing plant jobs -- no, they're socially useful and rewarding jobs. And they'll save the planet, too.
Not so long ago, the buzzword was "new economy" jobs. Then as manufacturing jobs shrank and professional jobs mushroomed, this term became politically incorrect: it implied that America was going to abandon the manufacturing sector in favor of software coders, engineers and other geeks. Never mind that this absurdly assumed that these folks are somehow in a marginal niche. But what about the 1.4 million eBay entrepreneurs who owe their livelihood to the Internet? Or that we still don't produce enough software coders to meet our technology needs? But "green jobs" has a nice ring to it semantically, and the term will probably be around for a while.
Microtrends

Forget about huge, sweeping megaforces. The biggest trends today are micro: small, under-the-radar patterns of behavior which take on real power when propelled by modern communications and an increasingly independent-minded population. In the U.S., one percent of the nation, or three million people, can create new markets for a business, spark a social movement, or produce political change. This column is about identifying these important new niches, and acting on that knowledge.
Some green workers are not going to notice much difference. Employees assembling a hybrid car won't really notice anything different from assembling a purely gasoline fueled car, except they their jobs may be safer thanks to additional government subsidies. Others may in fact live the green dream and find themselves in new environmentally-friendly factories or offices -- or at least helping to make them.
Green is going to be the color of this century's WPA. In the 1930s, federally funded workers built highways and painted murals on government buildings. This time, they're going to fix air leaks in low-income homes and seal up government agencies' heating registers. The stimulus bill as passed will put more than $20 billion into energy investments -- including for some newfangled things like "modernizing the electric grid." But nearly $10 billion is going to go to energy-retrofitting and weatherizing federal buildings, HUD-assisted housing projects, and other low- and modest-income homes. Last year, the U.S. Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program gave about $225 million to local governments and nonprofits to help seal people's drafty windows and plug up insulation in their roofs and walls.
The stimulus bill would increase that funding 20-fold. That means a huge crew of brand-new green workers, suddenly making a livelihood off saving fuel costs, energy consumption and the planet. Added to a couple of million existing green workers, that is a full-blown microtrend, and enough to turn upside down the cliché of the out-of-touch environmentalist -- the guy driving a $120,000 Lexus hybrid just for the cachet and added acceleration. Now environmentalists will be in the mainstream of America and at the forefront of the economic recovery. Joe the Insulator will be replacing Joe the Plumber.
The implications are vast. Just as police officers across America once switched to the Democratic Party because Bill Clinton funded 100,000 cops on the street, now small business owners and other green workers may support all kinds of pro-environment policies just because their livelihood depends on it.
Second, to the extent that pro-environment groups have historically gotten their passion from goading the government to Give a Hoot and Don't Pollute, they are about to become "the man" themselves. It's as if in the 1970s, the leaders of the budding vegetarian movement had been put in charge of USDA. It's not easy to go from moral high ground to government bureaucrat overnight. Will green groups lose their innovative edge -- and the sense of urgency that so inspired their funders -- when they're flush with government cash?
Third, green workers are going to want to share their experiences out there forging the frontier of a strong economy and a strong environment. Right now, the EPA and the Energy Department give out "energy stars" to washing machines, home repair strategies, and businesses that are energy-efficient. Why not give green workers an official designation, too? A lapel pin, or cufflinks for white-collar green jobs, that tells the world they are officially green, and proud of it?
Corporations could have accreditation programs for jobs that are officially labeled as green and let job applicants know how many green jobs they have or have open.
We already have 1.6 million new quasi-government workers, who actually or essentially now work for the government because of federal takeovers and bailouts. Green workers coming down the pike will be also either government workers themselves, or dependent upon government programs for their jobs.
What are the implications of this? When you're abating asbestos all day, you're going to have formidable health risks that are suddenly the federal government's very big problem. When a federally funded weatherizer is traipsing through Mrs. Jones's house to plug up her windows, what is he supposed to do if he sees illegal drugs? And what about the executives of federally subsidized green companies -- will there soon be calls to cap their pay and benefits as well? It seems only fair that green executives should not profit excessively from these government-sponsored programs in a time of crisis. So jobs that used to be done for greenbacks may soon be done just for the green of it.
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