WNY Labor Today, October 2, 2010, Saturday

WNY Labor Today

October 2, 2010, Saturday

WNY Labor Today

Union-Led Fall Weatherization Home Engery Conservation Kit Project Targeting As Many As 30 Low-Income Homes Today In Buffalo’s Seneca-Babcock Area, Reps Say “It’s A HECK Of A Way To Kick Energy Habit & Lower Utility Bills”

Union Painters & Steel Workers Part Of Group Of 50 Volunteers Who Are Giving Their Time To Make The Fourth Annual Western New York Apollo Alliance Weatherization Event That Assists Low-Income Homeowners In The City Of Buffalo Another Success

by Tom Campbell

(BUFFALO) - As part of a continuing and unique Green Initiative that’s driven by the Western New York Apollo Alliance, the first wave of an overall 50 low-income homeowners in the City of Buffalo’s Seneca-Babcock Neighborhood will be the recipients today of a major weatherizing effort that prominently features Organized Labor and their members volunteering their time.

The 2010 Home Energy Conservation Kit (HECK) Project involves Union Members from Painters District Council 4 and United Steelworkers District 4, as well as a number of other community and college volunteers, who are working today to make a first wave of as many as 30 homes more energy-efficient. The remaining 20 homes will be completed in April. The Seneca-Babcock effort will help low-income homeowners reduce their energy consumption, help minimize home energy costs and introduce a Green Approach to that community, Alliance Representatives said. Volunteers will weather-strip doors and windows, insulate hot water heaters and pipes, seal cracks, and install compact fluorescent light bulbs, to name but a few efforts. Apollo Alliance members are also offering homeowners tips and information about other ways to save energy, which will simultaneously cut utility bills and pollution.

“Energy costs are rising and this is not a stop-gap measure. We’re hoping everyone sees value in it and that it works to bring about a heightened level to improve energy-efficiency within older homes. It’s our goal to get even more people, including those in Organized Labor, to get involved in this effort,” United Steelworkers District 4 Representative Frank Hotchkiss, who founded the Alliance and now serves as its co-chair, tells WNYLaborToday.com.

In the past, the HECK Project received a good share of its $10,000 program funding to run the effort from Albany, but with New York State’s budget problems drying up that stream, City of Buffalo Councilmen David Franczyk and Richard Fontana, as well as several corporate entities, stepped forward to bridge the gap and ensure the fourth year of the effort would happen.

“(Our funding) got squashed and we lost a majority of it, but Buffalo Councilmen Franczyk and Fontana, as well as a number of individual contributors - including the Honeywell Company and the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, came up with dollars and donations to help us,” Alliance Chair Art Wheaton, who also serves as director of Western New York Labor and Environmental Programs for the Cornell University Industrial & Labor Relations School, tells WNYLaborToday.com. In addition, National Fuel dropped off 150 weatherization kits yesterday (Friday) so they could be used in the Seneca-Babcock effort, Wheaton said.

The Apollo Alliance is unique in the array of organizations it unites around Green Economy projects - Labor Unions, environmental groups, universities, community housing groups and others. As such, the WNY Apollo Alliance helps unites a diverse array of organizations dedicated to growing a Green Economy in Western New York, including those Labor Unions involved in the effort.

Hotchkiss explained the bluegreen alliance was founded in part in 2006 by former USWA District 11 Director Dave Foster. It brought together the USWA and the Sierra Club to form a strategic initiative combing the talents of Organized Labor and environmentalists who partner on three key issues: global warming and clean energy, fair trade and reducing toxins. Since 2006, a number of other groups and organizations have joined the movement, including former Vice President Al Gore's Green Jobs For All.

"The goal is to reduce greenhouse gases and toxic emissions and reindustrialize the United States through 'Green Jobs.' In New York State alone, through such means as solar and geo-thermal, it's been estimated that as many as fifty-thousand jobs could be created, with five-thousand in Erie County, another twenty-five-hundred in Niagara County and three to four spin-off/support jobs for each new manufacturing job created. The good part is this is not something new or something that will be done in the future. This is considered off-the-shelf technology that can be put into place right now," Hotchkiss said.

"The problem is educating our businesspeople and elected officials to the benefits of moving forward on all of this. We all need to save energy because it will result in so many tremendous economic benefits. We've got to get the general public to understand the urgency of all of this and create the political will to get it done. It's come time to hold our politicians' feet to the fire, so to speak, to get real and positive movement that will make this happen," he said.