WASHINGTON, DC — Today, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) spoke at a virtual Labor Energy Partnership (LEP) workshop about Ohio’s opportunity to play a leading role in clean energy manufacturing, and the need for good paying, union jobs as the country shifts towards a low-carbon economy.

Brown believes the best way to invest in Ohio’s future is to use creative, high-tech solutions to reduce emissions and develop next-generation energy technology with the jobs and industries that are in Ohio.

“We know our state has some of the best manufacturing talent in the country. We have the history, we have the workers, we have the passion and the innovation – we have the factories and the space, ready to be retooled or repurposed or retrofitted,” said Brown. “We just need the investment.”

The LEP is a project of the AFL-CIO and the Energy Futures Initiative. It promotes decarbonization while maintaining the union jobs in industries that produce carbon, like manufacturing. The LEP sees the Ohio River Valley as a potential hub for carbon capture and use due in part to the region’s skilled work force. Brown was joined at the workshop by Ernest J. Moniz, CEO and founder of the Energy Futures Initiative.

“At the Labor Energy Partnership, we recognize the importance of regional solutions—climate solutions will not look the same in every part of the country. The Ohio River Valley has incredible potential for becoming a leading hydrogen and CCUS hub, creating thousands of good-paying, union jobs,” said Moniz.

Brown stressed investment from legislation, like the American Jobs Plan, would enhance human and physical infrastructure to improve the quality of life and provide living wages for hardworking Ohioans. Along with this historic investment, Brown also stressed the need for companies to work collaboratively with unions in a 21st century economy, so that productivity, innovation, and workers’ standard of living increase in tandem.

The American Jobs Plan contains several critical investments that would benefit Ohioans and their communities. The proposal would:

Revitalize manufacturing, secure U.S. supply chains, invest in R&D, and train Americans for the jobs of the future, by:

  • Ensuring that the best, diverse minds in America are put to work creating the innovations of the future while creating hundreds of thousands of quality jobs today
  • Using strong “Buy America” requirements to ensure American workers build and make things in every part of the U.S., and they’re trained for well-paying, middle-class jobs
  • Expanding the manufacture of clean energy technology and electric vehicles to create jobs and fight climate change

Create good-quality jobs that pay prevailing wages in safe and healthy workplaces while ensuring workers have a free and fair choice to organize, join a union, and bargain collectively with their employers, by:

  • Ensuring that American taxpayers’ dollars benefit working families and their communities, and not multinational corporations or foreign governments
  • Requiring that goods and materials are made in America and shipped on U.S.-flag, U.S.-crewed vessels
  • Ensuring that Americans who have endured systemic discrimination and exclusion for generations finally have a fair shot at obtaining good paying jobs and being part of a union

Fix highways, rebuild bridges, and upgrade ports, airports and transit systems, by:

  • Modernizing 20,000 miles of highways, roads, and main-streets
  • Repairing the worst 10,000 smaller bridges, providing critical linkages to communities
  • Dedicating funds to support ambitious projects that have tangible benefits to the regional or national economy
  • Replacing thousands of buses and rail cars, repairing hundreds of stations, upgrading airports, and expanding transit and rail into new communities
  • Creating good manufacturing jobs by producing electric buses to replace 50,000 outdated public transit buses, and at least 20% of the nation’s school bus fleet

Deliver clean drinking water, a renewed electric grid, and high-speed broadband to all Americans, by:

  • Eliminating lead pipes and service lines in our drinking water systems, improving the health of our country’s children and communities of color
  • Putting hundreds of thousands of people to work laying thousands of miles of transmission lines and capping hundreds of thousands of orphan oil and gas wells and abandoned mines
  • Bringing affordable, reliable, high-speed broadband to every American, including the more than 35 percent of rural Americans who lack access to broadband at minimally acceptable speeds

Build, preserve, and retrofit more than two million homes and commercial buildings, modernize our nation’s schools and child care facilities, and upgrade veterans’ hospitals and federal buildings, by:

  • Building, rehabilitating, and retrofitting affordable, accessible, energy efficient, and resilient housing, commercial buildings, schools, and child care facilities all over the country, while also vastly improving our nation’s federal facilities, especially those that serve veterans

Solidify the infrastructure of our care economy by creating jobs and raising wages and benefits for essential home care workers, the majority of whom are women of color, by:

  • Making substantial investments in the infrastructure of our care economy by investing in our caregiving economy workers
  • Ensuring home and community-based care options for older adults and individuals with disabilities

 

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