Teamsters Want Better, Greener Jobs

 

Teamsters General President Jim Hoffa spoke to a crowd of 2,500 who attended the Good Jobs, Green Jobs National Conference in Washington on February 4th and said he intends to step up with labor and environmental allies to create more green jobs in the United States and to make certain those green jobs are also good jobs.

Hoffa told the crowd:

“We must define the rules of the new green economy. We want job creation that won’t harm workers or our planet.  It’s about taking care of the environment, our economy and the workers in America who depend on both, not one or the other. Green and blue in fact do go together. We have been forced to make a false choice in the past – good jobs or clean environment. But today is a new day.”

Hoffa was part of a keynote panel that included Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, and Jared Bernstein, chief economist and economic policy adviser to Vice President Biden. The Teamsters Union is a major sponsor of the national conference and has a prominent role in workshops and panels.

“We have an opportunity to fix some of the damage from the past eight years,” Hoffa said. “We were told, no pollution meant no jobs. The pundits said that if we wanted clean air, the economy would suffer and jobs would be sent overseas. Well look what happened. We let the big corporations pollute and the jobs went overseas anyway. We didn’t enforce environmental regulations and the economy still went in the toilet. The middle class got destroyed and the environment is on the brink of disaster. Now is the time for change.”