Presidential candidates look to Green Collar Jobs to save economy
3:44 p.m. Monday, April 14, 2008
In Western Pennsylvania, skeletons of once-thriving steel towns are everywhere. Troy Galloway worked in the mills for 15 years.
"I started there as a young man and I thought I would retire from there," Galloway said.
But Galloway lost his job in 2000. Three years his later, his wife Tina’s manufacturing job went to Mexico. They have four children.
"There just was not enough money coming in to take care of everything," Tina Galloway said.
After years of struggle they found a lifeline. Gamesa, a Spanish wind turbine company opened two plants in Pennsylvania, bringing more than 1200 jobs. Today, Troy crafts the blades for wind turbines.
It's called a "Green Collar Job" and it is basically a blue collar job that is good for the environment.
They offer competitive wages, benefits and, most importantly, staying power.
These wind turbines are 400 feet high. Too costly to ship to the US. And that has the presidential candidates taking notice
“We’ll create millions of new jobs,” Presidential hopeful Barak Obama said.
Obama and Hillary Clinton claim they can add about 5 million "green collar" jobs to the economy. But that may be too optimistic.
Economists say green collar jobs alone are unlikely to bring the area back to its glory days.
"Many millions of jobs have been lost in manufacturing. I'm a little skeptical that green technology is going to create that many jobs to replace that magnitude of jobs," Georgetown Public Policy Institute economist Harry Holzer said.
The jobs may not lift the countrys sagging economy. But in Western Pennsylvania, they are changing are changing lives and the landscape of the Rust Belt forever.
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