In a converted warehouse in the poorest zip code in Philadelphia, students are learning to work on older homes, improve the heating and cooling, and at the same time make them more climate-friendly.
Clean energy infrastructure is desperately needed, but capitalists don’t want to pay labor a fair wage.
The stories I hear from tradespeople in clean energy work is that entry level positions are paying less, and the bonuses they were seeing when they started are drying up. Many are looking to move away from clean-energy specific labor and into electrical or construction where unions are better established.
Improperly installed solar panels short out and fail early, carelessly sealed roof mountings leak and damage the dwelling, and most importantly, pressured novice workers make often fatal mistakes while working with electricity or at significant heights. To those with the experience of prison labor as a baseline, the risks and rewards of this kind of labor may be attractive. But most tradespeople know these jobs exist, and choose not to take them.
Instead of support for labor, you see state, provincial, and national incentives to recruit new workers into these fields, as well as articles like this one touting the potential of employment in the clean energy economy. But noticeably absent from the article is any mention of labor organization or workers protections for the people doing this work. If the state was serious about building this infrastructure, they would make these fields union jobs. That’s the only way to get quality renewable energy infrastructure built at scale.
That’s an inherent problem in any capitalist economy; competitive pressures mean that the owners are always trying to push down wages as much as possible. Without unionization (and few of the clean energy companies are unionized) there’s very little to resist it.
I wonder if the relevant units of government creating standards for these jobs would help.
Plumbers and electricians have to be licensed in many areas. I’m sure building codes require building permits.
Wheels of government take time to turn, but requiring installation companies use licensed installers, and handling the licensing and vetting in the same way electricians and plumbers are handled is a good place to start. Definitely always loopholes in the construction business, but a formalized and licensed profession is a way to improve pay.
Instead of support for labor, you see state, provincial, and national incentives to recruit new workers into these fields, as well as articles like this one touting the potential of employment in the clean energy economy.
Yes we the peasants should pay corpos money to hire other peasants…
Clean energy infrastructure is desperately needed, but capitalists don’t want to pay labor a fair wage.
The stories I hear from tradespeople in clean energy work is that entry level positions are paying less, and the bonuses they were seeing when they started are drying up. Many are looking to move away from clean-energy specific labor and into electrical or construction where unions are better established.
Improperly installed solar panels short out and fail early, carelessly sealed roof mountings leak and damage the dwelling, and most importantly, pressured novice workers make often fatal mistakes while working with electricity or at significant heights. To those with the experience of prison labor as a baseline, the risks and rewards of this kind of labor may be attractive. But most tradespeople know these jobs exist, and choose not to take them.
Instead of support for labor, you see state, provincial, and national incentives to recruit new workers into these fields, as well as articles like this one touting the potential of employment in the clean energy economy. But noticeably absent from the article is any mention of labor organization or workers protections for the people doing this work. If the state was serious about building this infrastructure, they would make these fields union jobs. That’s the only way to get quality renewable energy infrastructure built at scale.
That’s an inherent problem in any capitalist economy; competitive pressures mean that the owners are always trying to push down wages as much as possible. Without unionization (and few of the clean energy companies are unionized) there’s very little to resist it.
I wonder if the relevant units of government creating standards for these jobs would help.
Plumbers and electricians have to be licensed in many areas. I’m sure building codes require building permits.
Wheels of government take time to turn, but requiring installation companies use licensed installers, and handling the licensing and vetting in the same way electricians and plumbers are handled is a good place to start. Definitely always loopholes in the construction business, but a formalized and licensed profession is a way to improve pay.
Yes we the peasants should pay corpos money to hire other peasants…