GreenPOWER trains workers for new energy economy

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.workdayminnesota.org/index.php?news_6_4650

By Michael Moore
14 October 2010

BLAINE - Minnesota is the site of an innovative, new training program designed to equip workers with the power – with the GreenPOWER – to succeed in a new-energy economy. The program, expected to train 2,000 workers by December 2011, celebrated its first class of graduates Oct. 1 in Blaine.

The GreenPOWER training program, launched by the Blue Green Alliance in January, is free of charge and open to both employed and unemployed workers. It is tailored to workers looking to succeed in energy-efficient retrofitting, the renewable-energy industry or green manufacturing.

Brant Ingalsbe, director of the program, said early response – from unions, from businesses and from agencies that serve dislocated workers – has been encouraging, with more than 200 enrollees since trainings began in July.

“We often hear about a ‘green fad’ in the media, but these businesses and these unions see this as not a fad, but as reality,” Ingalsbe said. “Businesses are saying, ‘We want our workforce to be educated in (energy efficiency), and I see how this knowledge is going to save me money or make me money.’”

The Blue Green Alliance, a nationwide labor-environmental partnership seeking to grow jobs in the green-energy economy, won a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor to implement GreenPOWER in three regions of Minnesota: the Iron Range, Metro and Southwest Minnesota.

A 48-hour course that spans six days of training, GreenPOWER features dynamic trainers from four unions – the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Service Employees International Union, the Sheet Metal Workers and the United Steelworkers – as well as the Blue Green Alliance Foundation and the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system.

FULL story at link.