Cesar Diaz is the Legislative Director for the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California.
The only thing Californians need more than to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure is to create good union jobs. There’s one initiative on the ballot that will make it much harder to do either one. Prop 53 would harm the ability of state and local governments to build infrastructure projects and respond to emergency situations such as the drought, an earthquake or other natural disasters.
Sempra Energy’s plan to offshore green energy production to Mexico would result in as many as 15,000 lost U.S. jobs and nearly $300 million in lost local, state and federal tax revenue. 90% of the direct job losses would occur in Imperial County, which had the highest unemployment rate in the nation as of April 2011 at 27.9%
The study, “Should Green Jobs Be Outsourced: A Case Study of Lost Jobs and Lost Opportunities,” was authored by Dr. Peter Philips, Professor of Economics at the University of Utah.
