The "Good Jobs Green Jobs" conference, which drew 2,000-3,000 delegates from environmental groups, the Steelworkers, the Communications Workers, the Laborers, the Teamsters and the IBEW – among others – came as lawmakers debated the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, otherwise known as the stimulus bill.

That $900-billion-plus measure includes a heavy "green jobs" component, the first payment on the Democratic Obama administration\'s plan to revitalize U.S. manufacturing while moving the nation away from oil dependence, lessening energy consumption and combating global warming. Some Senate Republicans say creation of those jobs would take too long. They want to strip the green jobs from the stimulus bill.

The AFL-CIO pitched in on the green jobs front by unveiling a plan for a new green jobs curriculum at the National Labor College/George Meany Center. It will start the plan off with $1 million in seed money.

"There are countless reasons we must come together for environmental and economic justice," said federation Building Trades Department President Mark Ayers, whose members would be uniquely poised to take advantage of the new curriculum, which is being developed for a rollout next year. "But the best one is this," Ayers added, holding up a picture of his grandchildren – and saying it would help everyone\'s children.

"Conversation about green jobs has been focused on the quantity of those jobs," Ayers said, alluding to the hundreds of thousands of green jobs the stimulus bill would create, and the estimated 2 million jobs in two years that a $100 billion investment in creating green infrastructure and retrofitting buildings would produce, according to Steelworkers President Leo Gerard.

But the point of the labor college\'s curriculum, and of much of the discussion at the conference, was to create quality green jobs, Ayers added.

"Building trades unions have 1,100 training centers, and the transition to a green economy creates a unique dilemma – and a unique opportunity to create secure jobs for Americans from all walks of life," he said.

But will those jobs be high-paying jobs, union jobs, both, or neither? A report released at the conference by the Good Jobs First think tank casts doubt.

In one example, it listed 20 present or projected wind and solar power energy-creation factories in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, North Dakota, Oregon, New Mexico and Colorado. Combined, they would employ 11,530 people, had $3.145 billion in investment – and $495.37 million in state and local subsidies, ranging from tax forgiveness to actual construction of the factory at Little Rock, Ark., expense.

But the report also said cities hosting four plants had no local job quality wage standards, while at least two others defied such requirements. And other than the two Gemasa solar wind turbine plants in Pennsylvania, which employ 807 Steelworkers combined, few of the green job plants are unionized. Speakers could not say how few.

In one disturbing case, Good Jobs First said the United Solar Ovonic plant in Battle Creek, Mich., refused to pay the required prevailing hourly wage there of $16. When city officials complained, the firm threatened to take its $260 million 350-job plant elsewhere. The city gave in and the workers get $14.34 hourly on average – "70% of what it would take to reach a basic budget for a family of four," Good Jobs First said.

In another, TPI Composites took over a closed Maytag factory in Newton, Iowa -- Maytag used NAFTA to move to Mexico – to make wind blades. Maytag workers got $19 hourly. TPI got a $2 million state subsidy after agreeing to pay workers $13.47 hourly. "The company sought additional public funds in 2008 from the Iowa Economic Development Board, which agreed to waive pay requirements that would have raised wages closer to Maytag rates," the Good Jobs First report added.

And it cited two "green" firms for typical – and illegal – tactics against union organizing.

"The devil is in the details" of the green jobs initiative "and Satan is walking the halls of Congress lobbying against us," said Good Jobs First co-director Phil Mattera. He identified Satan as "Caterpillar, GE and Wal-Mart, who are the companies who invest in other countries," not the U.S.

"So how do we create these green jobs as good jobs? Don\'t depend on the free market or employer benevolence," Mattera added. "There are two ways: Organizing the workers into unions and making (green) employers subject by governments" that give them subsidies "to job quality requirements." They would include living wage rules, health insurance coverage and company neutrality in organizing campaigns, he added.

"We want an economic policy that increases people\'s incomes, and that\'s no joke," said AFL-CIO Industrial Unions Council Director Bob Baugh, point man on green jobs. "This country has not had a strategy about manufacturing and investment in our economy."

Mark Gruenberg writes for Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.