Perry’s platform the same one seen across the GOP, is brilliantly simple. It’s two solutions in one: reducing dependence on foreign oil and creating jobs for American workers. Translated into policy, this means the removal of ‘job-killing’ restrictions set by the EPA on traditional (read: polluting) American energy industries, and an end to subsidized investment in alternative energy and newly emerging ‘green jobs.’
Despite vocal and longstanding opposition to fossil fuel industries by mainstream environmental groups, this kind of approach is seeing an upsurge in support, especially from around American labor. With unemployment rates still hovering at 9%, it’s not surprising to see environmentalism take a back seat to the promise of 1.2 million American jobs in the next 10 years. America needs work, and the GOP says that they can deliver.
One problem, Perry. When it comes to labor, this plan is actually contradictory, and here’s why:
1. Ending investment in green energy will create less jobs, not more. Perry and the rest of the GOP have their numbers wrong, way wrong. This may be because the 1.2 million figure comes from the American Petroleum Institute http://www.api.org/ (the same API that represents 400 of the country’s biggest oil corporations, and that funded Rick Perry events back in August). According to Sean Sweeney, activist and American labor organizer, the number of actual jobs that will be created by these industries in coming years is a fraction of Perry’s number, somewhere around 250,000. And while big oil and coal will go on not making dents in unemployment, lost investment will mean an end to potential growth in American green jobs.
2. Jobs in fossil fuel energy are bad for workers’ health and communities. In the clamor for jobs, it’s easy to forget that all jobs are not created equal. Many of the GOP-supported projects, like hydraulic fracking and the 1700-mile Alberta-Texas oil Pipeline, rank as some of the most unpleasant and hazardous jobs in the country, posing extreme threats to worker safety and nearly guaranteed health problems for workers and surrounding communities.
3. Deregulation means more control for big coal and oil, which means less for workers. Like the majority of American workers, high unemployment means competition among workers. This means plenty of room for employers to lower wages and carrying on busting the already dwindling energy sector unions. Under the GOP, the combination of deregulation and economic dependence will only allow for more control for energy monopolies like Koch industries.
It’s hard to say if Perry’s plan will hold it’s sway through the course or the campaign. In the meantime, let’s hope that labor wakes up to see what’s really in it for them.
