FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Contact:
Adam Malchoff, 585-233-2676 (PUSH Buffalo)
Clarke Gocker, 716-604-6938, 716-884-0356 (PUSH Buffalo)
Andreas Kriefall, 518-331-3190 (Hunger Action Network)

Local Contractors and Community Leaders demand wage and hiring standards for GJGNY
With NYSERDA threatening to abandon statewide standards, group calls on next Governor to
enforce statewide standards

Buffalo, NY, Oct. 29 -- Community groups from across New York State, joined by labor, business
and environmental organizations, held press conferences on Friday in Albany, New York, Buffalo and
several other cities denouncing NYSERDA roadblocks in bringing 14,000 “Green Jobs/Green NY” jobs
to communities of color and low-income neighborhoods. A local network of contractors and community
members gathered outside 10 Winter Street in Buffalo’s west side to participate.
The group called on the next Governor to provide strong support for efforts by the Legislature and
community groups to avoid squandering GJGNY funds.
In 2009, Governor Paterson signed into law “Green Jobs Green NY,” an innovative program to
create 14,000 good jobs, weatherize 1 million homes in five years, and save NY home owners $1 billion
each year on utility costs. However, the state’s energy agency (NYSERDA) has continually balked at
fulfilling the law’s mandate to bring jobs and energy benefits to distressed communities and historically-
excluded workers.
Strong action by stakeholders, including community and labor groups, and the NYS Assembly
which designed the law, has repeatedly pulled the program back on track – but NYSERDA’s ongoing
efforts to avoid the law’s focus on economic opportunity for poor neighborhoods have also delayed the
delivery of much-needed jobs and energy savings to New Yorkers, especially communities of color and
women.
Local member of a minority contractor’s association, Jabril Shareef, weighed in on the standards
that would deliver green jobs to these communities. “Green Jobs/Green NY provides an real opportunity
to get community members and local workers involved in improving their own neighborhoods. It will
also put new laborers in the energy efficiency market that formally were excluded. But we need
established job standards in order to secure local hiring and community member access to the program.”
“We need to provide equal working opportunities for the home performance industry. Without
program-wide job standards, small local contractors from the community won’t be able to compete with
larger outside contractors.” said Troy Gilchrist, a fellow contractor.
This is a common fear of independent contractors seeking to benefit from GJGNY; that a program
targeting their businesses may now be stripped of the very standards created to secure their involvement.
Earlier this month, NYSERDA signaled an eleventh-hour intent to ignore broad-based
stakeholder agreements on basic standards for wages, job quality and hiring of people of color and other
historically excluded workers. Instead, NYSERDA indicated plans to accommodate business demands
for permission to pay substandard wages, and to continue hiring practices that have tended to shut out
people of color, women and residents of low-income communities from good jobs in this growing field.
Communities also challenge NYSERDA for threatening to establish “energy efficiency red-
lining” through a skewed Green Jobs/Green NY program – deepening the race-linked economic gap by
driving energy benefits to higher-income, mostly white suburban New York homeowners.
“We need the next Governor the make sure GJGNY has program wide standards so we can get to
work” said Jabril Shareef.
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