Paying decent wages should be part of `sustainability'.

Byline: GUEST VIEWPOINT By Bob Bussel For The Register-Guard

The city of Eugene is to be lauded for its interest in employing a `green' approach to its building and renovation projects.

Green building is a part of an economic development strategy known as `sustainable development,' which embodies practices that create economic prosperity, environmental regeneration and social equity - sometimes called the `triple bottom line.' A commitment to equity encompasses the workers whose labor translates designs into buildings and products, and should include consideration of labor conditions, wages and benefits.

This emphasis on equity has important implications. Bringing in equity reinforces awareness that, as the Multnomah County Board of Commissioners noted in adopting `Sustainable County Principles' in February 2004, `environmental quality, economic health and social well-being' are interconnected, with `action in one of the areas impacting all other areas.' Paying family-sustaining wages and ensuring that working conditions support workers' and communities' health and well-being are becoming part of the sustainability movement's vocabulary and social commitments.

Examples of these kinds of commitments are surfacing throughout the country in budding `blue-green' alliances between environmental, labor and community groups.

The Apollo Alliance, which brings together labor and environmental organizations around initiatives to promote clean, renewable energy, explicitly favors increasing `family-sustaining jobs.'

The Labor Community Advocacy Network, a New York-based group involved in post-9/11 reconstruction, asserts that as these jobs are created, `public policy should be oriented to make sure they are good jobs' that pay wages sufficient to support families and produce a multiplier effect.

Public entities, too, are inserting wage standards into their governing principles and operating practices. In addition to supporting green building standards, clean energy and energy efficiency, California's public employee pension funds have expressed their commitment to invest in living-wage jobs. The Sustainable County Principles for Multnomah County have linked community health to living-wage jobs, while the Massachusetts Office of Commonwealth Development's Statement of Sustainable Development Principles indicates it will `give priority to investments that will deliver living-wage jobs.'

Clearly, both public entities and private sector alliances are making great strides by establishing the principle that good wages should be a central element of sustainable development's strategy for success.

Sustainable practices such as green building may cost more upfront, but can increase the bottom line over the long term. This is true not just for energy and maintenance costs. By paying better wages, we increase purchasing power and reap the benefits of expanding the tax base.

Making the concepts of labor standards and social equity an integral part of sustainability and green building initiatives also serves a broader social purpose: promoting "high road" strategies for economic and community development. In a 2004 article, Christopher Jencks, a professor of social policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, eloquently summarized:

`Some [employers] take the `low road' and squeeze their front-line workers, driving down wages and working them harder. Others take the `high road,' adapting new technologies that keep their operations competitive, upgrading workers' skills and reorganizing the way work gets done. Which road a firm chooses depends on the social context in which managers operate. They are more likely to take the high road if they are connected to institutions, public and private, that promote such alternatives ... . Perhaps most important of all, managers are more likely to choose the high road when the national culture treats driving down wages as discreditable behavior.'

If advocates of sustainable development and green building in Eugene take the high road and insist that family-sustaining wages and equitable treatment are essential to their social vision and commitment, they can not only broaden their base of support but also powerfully shape cultural attitudes about the need for economical, ecological and equitable forms of building and development. And by overlaying green with deep shades of blue, they can help to create a political alliance whose ideas and interests will surely merit serious public discussion and consideration.

Bob Bussel is associate professor of history and director of the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon.