A new green (jobs) giant?

by: Erica Brody

Thu Mar 11, 2010 at 15:45:02 PM EST

While the naysayers are denying that climate change exists (despite the abundant scientific evidence), the renewable energy market has been swelling in some regions. For Colorado, where solar companies alone employ 2,500 people, renewables are generating job growth, not just energy, as well as attracting new businesses.

In response to the successes of new green technologies in the state and public pressure for job creation, the Colorado House this week passed a bill that would increase Colorado’s renewable energy standard (RES) to 30% by 2020.

There's new energy in town, and it's powering a boom that will make Colorado a leader in recovering from this financial downturn. This clean, renewable energy will grow Colorado's economy and lead to a brighter future.

There are key sections of [the bill] that will ensure that these RES jobs come with good wages, benefits and steady employment for Coloradans….

Requiring a third of our power to come from renewable sources is a great example of doing well by doing good. We will cut our carbon footprint, stabilize or even lower our energy costs, and remove pollutants from our air. We get all this while building opportunity for growing  businesses and creating good jobs. That's a darned good deal.

Great news about jobs! Also, terrible news!

by: Philip Bump

Fri Feb 05, 2010 at 11:31:58 AM EST

As you may have heard, the government released numbers indicating that the unemployment rate dropped to 9.7% in January. Hooray!

You may also have heard that the country lost 20,000 more jobs. Um, boo?

Your natural reaction (as was mine) might be: how does that happen? How do we lose jobs, but still have reduced unemployment? It's not that swine flu, is it?

Nope. As explained in this great blog post at NPR, the data come from two different surveys: one of employers (which gave us the 9.7% figure) and another of households (which showed the drop).  The differences between these two surveys are more fully fleshed out by a piece at FoxNews.com, which explains that while the Bureau of Labor Statistics' employers poll covers more people, the survey of households is statistically significant, covering over 100,000 homes.

The truth, of course, lies somewhere beyond these approximations. December's employment figures, for example, were recently revised  downward from an estimated 85,000 jobs lost to a whopping 150,000.

In other words, take a look at the numbers released today - but be prepared to revisit them in a month or two.

Getting Canned

by: Daniel Millstone

Mon May 19, 2008 at 08:55:39 AM EDT

A great terror faced by employees every day is getting fired. In these tough times, employees are being cleared away like fallen leaves. Those of us who work without the protection of a union (almost all of us) are subject to a (in my opinion, pernicious) legal doctrine: employment-at-will which says —more or less – that the boss can fire any of us for a good reason, a bad reason or no reason at all. (In theory, there are limits: age for discrimination, for example, is forbidden; but boy is it hard to prove!)
 
In my experience, the boss’s freedom to fire workers at whim is the most cherished of prerogatives (But see Ellen Dannin’s post arguing that bosses would be better off without it ). Although the ACLU is against it, the employment at will doctrine is alive and well especially here in New York.

New York State’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, recently reaffirmed the doctrine in the case of some financial service workers who said they’d been promised they wouldn’t be fired as a result of a merger; they relied on the promise; they were all fired. Tough noogie, said NY’s high court in Smalley vs.Drufus Co. Such false promises do not give employees a right to not be fired.

In only three employment setting are employees protected from arbitrary firing: a union (where terminations may occur only for “just cause,”) the civil service  (where permanent employees have the right to contest terminations through a hearing process and in court) and in educational settings (where tenured teachers may not be termination without a showing of significant misconduct).
 
Arbitration, the late great Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas said, was the common law of the shop. Most of us, however, work in essentially lawless settings. Isn’t it long past time to make bosses play fair? In a season in which NYS unions can expect an especially favorable hearing from the State Senate, abolition of the employment at will doctrine in NY would be a great advance. If bosses were required to treat their employees fairly, union organizing campaigns would be greatly facilitated. Will unions focus on this issue? How about the rest of us?

Copied and posted here from my regular blog spot The Daily Gotham