Good Green Jobs and Paid Placekeeping
Image Source: Cook, Howard Norton. Steel Industry. 1936, U.S. Post Office And Courthouse: Cook Mural – Pittsburgh PA, USPS, newdealartregistry.org
To support OLIN’s participation in the Green New Deal Superstudio, we developed this project out of our wish to understand current realities and possible futures for green jobs. We undertook this work in three phases: research, speculation and tool-development. In our first phase, we uncovered a national legacy of structures developed or refashioned to perpetuate racial inequality by devaluing labor. We learned about essential work sectors that currently manage land, construct, and maintain the built environment, and found the average worker in most of these sectors is unable to earn wages that afford housing. It became clear to us that as green work sectors grow, the value of green work demands interruptions to the status quo. Our research prompted us to ask ourselves questions like:
How do we respond to climate crisis when the established disaster response systems perpetuate racial inequality?
How do we assert the value of civic placekeeping when vagrancy laws make it illegal to spend time in urban space?
How do we envision regenerative land management work for sectors excluded from labor protections & undermined by the seasonal worker visa program?
To grow good green jobs in sectors that are currently devalued, we identified avenues for intervention within conventional and emergent project structures. To close our project, we developed tools to allow designers to join communities, clients and government agencies to create good green jobs that resist the devaluation of work at any site or scale. We invite you to explore our working toolkit here, review resources from our research efforts, and to speculate with us about future possibilities for good green jobs.