About CLU

Priorities for 2010

In 2010 Community Labor United and the Green Justice Coalition will bring good “green” jobs and community energy savings to Massachusetts.

·                     On March 16 we will release a report on “High Road / Low Road” jobs in the growing home energy efficiency field.

·                     Throughout the spring we will help launch community-based pilot projects across Massachusetts.

·                     In the fall we will make sure the pilot s’ “best practices” get incorporated into the utility companies’ statewide energy efficiency projects.

·                     Throughout the year we will work for equity – good job standards, up-front financing for families that can’t lay out money for weatherization, funding to fix up old houses so they can be weatherized, and much more.

Our unique approach to energy efficiency will speed Massachusetts’s greenhouse gas reductions and extend them to communities of color across the state. Our unique model combines the power of community organizations that are known and trusted in their neighborhoods, labor unions, and environmental groups. Community-based organizations will canvass their neighborhoods, signing up hundreds of residents for home energy retrofits. Up-front financing will let residents do “deep” retrofits they could not otherwise afford. With hundreds of homes “bundled” into one contract, high-road contractors will be able to hire community retrofits, provide quality training and wages with family-supporting benefits. And a new state “equity committee” will make sure that low-income communities and communities of color get retrofits and good jobs.

Check out:

• News and Events for national feature stories on our breakthrough model.
• Green Justice Campaign for an in-depth description.

About CLU

CLU combines the joint power of community-based organizations and labor unions to advance the interests of low and middle-income working families in Massachusetts. Our strategic campaigns promote quality jobs, secure healthcare, affordable housing, and climate justice.

We accomplish our mission through coalition building, research and policy development, public education and grassroots mobilization that move policies forward.

Our campaigns bring together low and moderate-income people already organized through existing community organizations and unions, who come together based on interest in the issues involved. We develop new organizing opportunities for community organizations and labor, and increase civic engagement. We also educate the wider public through our research studies, whose findings we disseminate aggressively. Essentially we are a new “think and act tank” coming from poor and working people’s perspectives.

CLU is fortunate to be able to build upon the existing strength of a number of different organizations in Massachusetts. These groups are effectively organizing and winning important improvements and changes for their constituencies. We believe the sum of this different, individual work can, over time, add up to even more than its individual parts. Together, we can change the economic dialogue and economic reality in our region.

Community Labor United is an incorporated 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. The Green Justice Coalition is an affiliate of the national Apollo Alliance.