GE's dirty green jobs

Common Dreams - In 2005 General Electric launched their "EcoMagination" campaign, a marketing effort built around selling products that help solve environmental problems and create green jobs.

So what are GE's new green jobs of the future going to look like? According to one group of GE "green" workers who have filed a racial discrimination lawsuit in Alabama (complaint below), GE's vision for a green future looks more like a nightmare.

The case was brought by sixty-two employees of Lacy Enterprises, a company that leases workers to a subsidiary of GE to clean out baghouses at coal-fired power plants and manufacturing facilities. Mandated by the EPA under the Clean Air Act, baghouses are designed to reduce emissions of hazardous air pollutants with cloth or synthetic filters or "bags" that capture toxic particulates such as lime, coal black, lead, arsenic and mercury. On the front lines of emerging green economy, GE's work team traveled around the country cleaning and replacing the filters at coal and cement plants, steel mills and elsewhere.

According to deposition transcripts and interviews from the case the African American work crews were treated with abuse that represents an affront to human rights and dignity. On a regular basis they were called "boys", "monkeys", "lazy niggers" by their GE supervisor, according to transcripts. They were forced to work up to 12 hours a day, often with only one half-hour break for lunch, and denied bathroom and rest breaks. Read more.