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Meet Troy Galloway from Ebensburg, PA

United Steelworkers help Rust Belt go green

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Meet Troy Galloway from Ebensburg, PA
By Mike Kiernan
United Steelworkers help Rust Belt go green

Meet Troy Galloway, United Steelworker from Ebensburg, Pennsylvania.  Galloway is one of thousands of union workers involved in creating America’s new green economy.

Laid off from a local machine shop in 2000, Galloway has worked the past three years helping build the blades for the modern giant windmills that now dot the landscape of rural western Pennsylvania.  The windmills currently provide two percent of Pennsylvania’s power – a percentage that is certain to increase as alternative energy sources play a larger role in meeting the state’s power needs.

Galloway is featured on many environmental and labor websites these days. He has appeared in an ABC News feature “Rust Belt is Going Green,” as well as in a popular YouTube video and the United Steelworkers magazine, USW@Work.  (Click here to see the video)

“This is a feel good job,” Galloway told a group of labor journalists in September 2009.  “You are helping out the economy, the environment and leaving a better legacy for our children.”

Galloway is the former president of United Steelworkers Local 2635, which represents workers at the Ebensburg plant owned by the Spain-based company Gamesa.   Gamesa is one of the main wind turbine manufacturers worldwide and Spain’s leader in the manufacture, sale and installation of wind turbines.

Gamesa now employs 800 workers in Pennsylvania.  About 235 union employees work in Ebensburg, receiving a base pay of $13.11 that can increase to $25 an hour. Employees receive health care and worker safety at the plant is a priority.

 “Union jobs are the best jobs,” Galloway says.

“Respect for Both Workers and the Planet”
Galloway is part of a national green movement that is bringing together labor and environmental leaders across the United States, as no other national issue has done in the past.

In the past few months, in fact, one major labor leader after another has spoken out in support of good green jobs as an essential part of building a new clean energy economy.

During the G-20 meetings that followed the AFL-CIO’s own annual convention in Pittsburgh in September, the federation’s new president Richard Trumka challenged the heads of state attending those meetings to build a new economic order that protects the dignity of workers and the planet.

"The world cannot afford to continue with a globalization that works only for the very richest and leaves workers and the communities they live in behind," Trumka said at an event featuring former Vice President Al Gore and a broad coalition of environmental and union leaders.

"Together, the labor movement and the environmental movement are a fighting force for change. This is our time—time to let the powers gathered here this week know exactly what we want, and exactly what we won’t stand for. We want a clean energy economy that creates good jobs, and we want a safe and healthy planet," Trumka said.  "We need a new economic order that demands respect for both workers and the planet."

Many international labor leaders have echoed Trumka’s comments. As United Steel Workers International President Leo W. Gerard put it, "We have once and for all smashed the myth that you can't have both good jobs and a clean environment."  

Sustainable Good Green Jobs
Rank and file union members are supporting their leadership. AFL-CIO convention delegates, representing 11.5 million members from 56 national and international labor unions, unanimously approved a resolution in support of green jobs and a clean energy economy.  The Executive Council’s Resolution on “Creating and Retaining Sustainable Good Green Jobs” calls for the following:

• Adequate funding for energy-efficiency efforts and long-term investments in public transit,

• Tightening of domestic content regulations and other incentives to encourage manufacturing in the U.S.,

• Inclusion of strong labor standards for publicly funded construction and manufacturing projects, and

• Continued involvement of the US labor movement with the international labor community involved in UN climate treaty discussions.

On the convention floor, Mark Ayres, President of the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department, spoke in support of the resolution, pointing out to the delegates that in addressing this crisis, unions can also create good, green jobs for their members and future members.

Barbara Byrd, Oregon AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer, noted that good green jobs have become a major part of the Oregon AFL-CIO’s economic development efforts and offered a number of examples, including Oregon Ironworks’ streetcar manufacturing work and the newly enacted Clean Energy Works Program in Portland.

At the AFL-CIO Convention, President Barack Obama and Labor Secretary Nancy Solis echoed this call for a “greener labor movement.” (See Green Labor Journal, "Convention Speakers Endorse Green Jobs," October 30, 2009).

Approximately 16 percent of the $787 billion in Stimulus Plan dollars ─ passed by Congress in February 2009 ─ is earmarked for green energy and infrastructure projects. As these funds impact state and big city economies, new green job opportunities similar to those already enjoyed by Galloway and other steelworkers will ripple through the U.S. economy.

Mike Kiernan is Communications Director, AFL-CIO Working for America Institute. For more information, go to www.workingforamerica.org