A RESOLUTION endorsing community principles for green jobs, requesting that the Interdepartmental Team on Workforce Entry and Employment Pathways incorporate strategies to advance green careers for people of color and other marginalized or under-represented groups, supporting sustainable entrepreneurship and economic cooperative models.
And item 35 Resolution 31712 Endorsing Community Principles for Green Jobs, requesting that the interdepartmental team on workforce entry and Employment Pathways incorporate strategies to advance green careers for people of color and other marginalized or under represented groups supporting sustainable entrepreneurship and economic cooperative models. Committee recommends that the resolution be adopted. Council Member O'Brien Thank you. I'm going to start by thanking the folks who stuck around through Agenda 35 and have been working on this for over a year. It's great to be here today. I am saddened that Councilmember Herbold is not here because she did a lot of work on bringing this legislation and deserves a lot of the credit, too. But I will do my best to speak on her behalf, in my behalf. I want to highlight well, first, let me just say that that is critically important, that we make sure that careers are available in the environmental field or in green careers for everyone in our community. And we currently have a system that doesn't allow that to happen. A couple of data points I want to read that came to me in the process of this legislation. There's a study out of University of Michigan that talked about something called the Green Ceiling, and it's a ceiling that keeps certain people from entering the environmental field or when they do enter green jobs, they're not they're not able to progress. One data point shows that people of color hold no more than 16% of positions in environmental organizations, agencies and foundations, and that once hired in environmental organizations, ethnic minorities are concentrated in the lower ranks, with less than 12% of the leadership positions held by people of color. What this does is it paints a picture of an ecosystem, if you will, a job system where we have very disproportional outcomes and we have white people able to access jobs and achieve higher ranks at a much higher rate than people of color can. And people in our community have done a lot of work around this and highlighted this is a priority and brought to our attention some of the challenges we have we heard about in comment today and in committee. Oftentimes to get jobs in these careers, you need to have experience. And how do you get experience when you don't have a job? What happens oftentimes is people who are able, financially capable of taking a free job, an unpaid internship, can work for free to build up their resume so they have access. But of course, there's a lot of people that don't have the financial support to take unpaid internships. They need to support themselves. And so what this resolution does is it calls upon the city to do a number of things to address these concerns. And hopefully, with the result being that we can make sure that everyone in our community has access to these green careers. The first thing it does, it asks the city to create a green job definition consistent with community principles outlined in the resolution. And I think it's powerful. So I want to read it here. A green job is one that preserves or enhances environmental health, as well as the economic and social well-being of people in communities, centers, communities most negatively impacted by climate change, and pays a living wage while providing career pathways. The resolution also calls upon an inter-departmental team to create an inventory of internships, apprenticeships and entry level jobs offered by the city of Seattle that meet the definition described above. Also, ask the city for examples of opportunities to create more local green jobs from our existing environmental investments. We make investments throughout the city, and those jobs and those investments should leverage the exact types of jobs we're hoping to create with pathways. Finally, this resolution expresses support for supporting sustainable entrepreneurship and encourages economic cooperative models of creating jobs not just at the city of Seattle, but partners in businesses throughout the city and throughout the region . This was one of the highlights in the equity environment agenda that community members presented to us last fall and last spring, I should say, in the Council, and adopted the principles of those that agenda in August. This is a great step forward. It reflects a lot of really hard work on behalf of community members who who really want access to these green jobs. And we will all benefit when we create that access. There's still a lot of work to do, but it's a great step forward. Thank you. Councilmember Brian May for the comments. Councilmember Johnson. I just want to highlight one of the things that we spent a lot of time talking about last year on the campaign trail, and that's the and equity in terms of life expectancy in this city. It was really powerful to see that called out in the resolution today where a neighborhood that I represent, Lowell Hurst, an individual that grows up in that neighborhood, has a life expectancy of 30. Teen years, 13 years longer than someone who lives in South Park or Georgetown. I think that that is a credible statistic and reinforces, I think, the need for us to make sure that we're very equitably distributing resources throughout the city in terms of infrastructure and in terms of the continued support for the work that we are doing as a community to create more green jobs, green stormwater infrastructure and more investments to make it easier for folks to get around and live in our city. Thank you, Councilmember Johnson. I'd like to just say that, number one, the word pathways is very powerful, because when you think about a pathway, they just don't occur generically. There's usually an absence of a pathway in order for a pathway to. To get constructive takes. It's a fight takes it takes work, takes energy. And so this work that both the community has done really come and go with coming up with some really smart policy solutions in an area where there is action and whether that action is environmental sustainability or not relying on fossil fuels or even STEM education , wherever there's opportunity, you are fighting for a pathway which becomes very, very powerful. So it's absolutely my honor to support this legislation and thanks for presenting it. Councilmember O'Brien. Any further comments? Those in favor of adopting the resolution vote i. I. Those oppose vote no. The motion carries the resolutions adopted and the chair will gladly signage. Okay. We got through all 35 agenda items. Is there any further business to come before the council? I'm looking my colleague on my left. Yes, thank you. I would like to be excused on December 5th. And we're going to second that. Okay. This moves in second to the councilmember backstab excuse from December 5th. All those in favor say I. I oppose. The ayes have it. Any further business from any other my colleagues? Well, that will stand adjourned. Everyone, have a great day.