Linda Nguyen-Perez, a research/policy analyst at the Los Angeles Alliance for a New Economy (LAANE), works to promote America's manufacturing jobs and create career pathways for historically disadvantaged women and men, and Michelle Knapik is the director of the Surdna Foundation’s Sustainable Environments Program. This is a cross-post from The Huffington Post.

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (aka L.A. Metro) needed new, clean buses. If L.A. Metro had simply followed current buying protocol, its single focus would have been on finding a company to deliver the lowest-cost buses. In all likelihood, this would have resulted in jobs going overseas (but for some final assembly jobs on U.S. soil).

Electrical workers from Washington, D.C.'s IBEW Local 26 are building some cutting-edge green energy on the rooftops of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md. Made possible by the 2009 stimulus funds, highly skilled electrical workers are building four solar arrays with all "Made in America" materials to power the NIST complex with one on the ground, two on the roof and one parking structure. Watch our new Innovators website feature, "Stimulus Money Brings Solar Jobs," to learn more.

Share the video on Facebook. 

Check out the AFL-CIO's new Innovators website feature, "Union Architects, Engineers Inspiring the Next Gen to Go Green."

When you’re 6 or 7 years old, the start of a new school year is a big deal. But for students at PS 264 in Brooklyn, N.Y., it’s even more special this year because they are walking into a newly built “green” school. And as a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified building, that means encountering the unexpected.

Like lights that go on automatically when you’re the first one to enter a classroom.

And a gym that’s on the top floor of the building.

Our friends at Union Plus want you to know that with Labor Day approaching, you can celebrate the benefits of your union membership with several money saving programs and, at the same time, support your union brothers and sisters who provide the services or make the goods.  

You can save money on wireless service and smartphones with AT&T, the only national unionized wireless provider. Go to UnionPlus.org/ATT and save 15 percent on select data and phone plans. In addition, when you use your Union Plus Credit Card to buy a smartphone from AT&T, you'll get a rebate up to $100.

Emergency medical service professionals, Ikea workers and green energy geothermal technicians are among the latest workers to choose AFL-CIO unions.

More than 150 paramedics, emergency medical technicians, nurses, fleet techs and vehicle supply techs at Rural/Metro of Northern California voted overwhelmingly last week to join AFSCME Local 491/United EMS Workers. They join the more than 400 Rural/Metro EMS professionals in Santa Clara County and the Medic Ambulance EMS workers in Solano County, who earlier this year voted to join AFSCME.

The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) will provide $90 million towards rehabilitating and preserving affordability at two 30-year-old the Boston apartment complexes that serve primarily people with disabilities, low-income and senior residents. The project is part of HIT’s National Construction Jobs Initiative and the AFL-CIO’s Green Jobs Initiative. The project is expected to create about 150 union construction jobs for local workers.

The AFL-CIO Housing Investment Trust (HIT) is investing $10 million toward a $14 million project to rehabilitate the Mayfield Manor Apartments in Canton, Ohio, as part of HIT’s national Construction Jobs Initiative and the AFL-CIO’s Green Jobs Initiative. The project will keep 144 units affordable for current residents at the senior citizen facility for 20 years and is expected to create 100 union construction jobs in an area hard-hit by the economic slowdown. Rehabilitation work on the six-story building will be done with 100 percent union labor.

The Ironworkers’ training and apprenticeship programs ensure workers across the nation have the skills they need for 21st century green energy projects. The union and its labor-management component, IMPACT (the Ironworker Management Progressive Action Cooperative Trust), have developed a new program on wind turbine construction and safety that provides workers with the job skills needed for the growing wind energy industry.

Click here to read more about this state-of-the-art training in our special AFL-CIO union innovators series.   

Plumbers and Steamfitters (UA) Local 184 and West Kentucky Community and Technical College (WKCTC) earned national recognition for partnering to provide a unique "going green" training program for the union's apprentices and journeymen. The Paducah, Ky., union and school plan to follow up with a two-year college degree program for Local 184 members.

Van Jones, a former Obama White House adviser on green jobs and an award-winning human rights activist, maps out how to turn Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s and the American Dream into reality in his new book Rebuild the Dream. The book is due out April 4, the anniversary of King’s assassination in Memphis in 1968, but you can click here to pre-order.