hawaii jobs
Green hospitality - Hawaii - creation of environmental workforce comprised of laid-off travel industry employees - Brief Article
Elisa Freeling When Hawaiian tourism plummeted after September 11, many of the islands' workers were abruptly laid off. In what Oahu Group chair Howard Wiig calls a "potent and unusual alliance," the Hawaii Chapter and a local hotel employees' union teamed up to fashion a "green deal for Hawaii's economic recovery." The coalition proposed to create jobs and improve the environment with an updated version of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps. Last November their proposal convinced the entire state legislature and the governor to create an emergency environmental workforce of some 450 laid-off hotel workers. They're being retrained to clean up mosquito breeding grounds, which will help fight dengue fever, and to eradicate harmful invasive species like miconia, a plant that, according to Wiig, has "destroyed two-thirds of Tahiti's native rainforest and is now trying to make inroads here." The workforce contracts last for only three to six months, but "this is basic resource management that the state has been neglecting to fund for decades," says chapter director Jeff Mikulina. "Hopefully our legislators will recognize this and keep the program alive."
COPYRIGHT 2002 Sierra Magazine
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group
