A Powerful and Unified Force for Building a Clean, Prosperous, and Equitable Economy

• Advocating for policies at the state and federal level;
• Providing education and engaging union members and environmentalists; and
• Communicating the benefits of this shared agenda for working people, their families, and their communities. 

• Clean Economy Union Jobs: Science is unambiguous regarding the urgency of the climate crisis and the need to quickly drive down emissions. Climate change is real, it’s impacting workers and communities now, and we need to take action now to address it. BGA is working to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and other pollutants by deploying all the zero-emission technologies at our disposal. Harnessing these technologies—and working to ensure that the jobs created are good-paying union jobs—will create the opportunity for a middle-class life and a clean environment for all.  

• Infrastructure and Community Resilience: 2021 saw the passage of a historic infrastructure law —the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL)—a $1.2 trillion investment in rebuilding and modernizing our nation’s crumbling infrastructure. The investments and programs included in the law will create good-paying, union jobs across the nation while making some important investments to address climate change. It includes billions in reauthorizations and existing programs and $550 billion in new federal infrastructure funding over five years to repair, rebuild, and modernize the nation’s bridges, transit systems, water infrastructure, and more. More than half of the bill’s funding is for transportation infrastructure—including surface transportation, airports, zero-emissions school buses, electric vehicle charging, ports, public transit, railways, and more—and it also provides significant funding for broadband, the power grid, water infrastructure, resilience, and legacy pollution.   

• Manufacturing and Industrial Policy: The industrial sector represents a large and growing share of emissions with far less progress made to date in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction than in many other sectors. Industrial sector emissions now account for roughly 30% GHG emissions in the United States and have nearly tripled worldwide since 1990. At the same time, these industries are essential to produce the materials and components necessary for clean technology and infrastructure, and to modern life. Manufacturing in the United States has long been the backbone of the middle class, providing good-paying jobs to workers across the country. With smart investments and trade policy, U.S. manufacturing can be the cleanest and most innovative in the world, and that we can create and sustain high-quality jobs making the nation’s future.   

• Equity and Healthy and Safe Communities: BGA was founded on the principle that good jobs and a healthy environment must be intertwined goals—that our economic and environmental problems must be addressed together to truly be solved. BGA strives to ensure that its environmental and economic policy work will lessen economic, racial, and environmental injustice across the United States. By fighting for access to cleaner and healthier building products with our Building Clean program, advocating for the protection of workers and communities from toxic chemicals, and promoting the prioritization of historically marginalized communities in efforts to grow the clean economy, BGA is working to build a clean, healthy, and prosperous economy for all.  

• Fairness for Workers and Communities: The United States is in the middle of a transition to a new, cleaner economy, but an energy transition that is fair for workers and communities will not happen organically. Ensuring that workers and communities are not being left behind should be a central focus of that transition. That will require our work to protect the environment to integrate efforts to ensure a fair and equitable transition and the creation of good-paying, union jobs in impacted communities. BGA supports a range of policies to lift up impacted workers and communities, invest in the economic development and diversification of these regions, and create good-paying, union jobs.  

OUR HISTORY 

• The American Clean Energy and Security (ACES) Act;
• American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA); and
• the Employee Free Choice Act.

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