The team at the Climate Jobs Institute (CJI) believes that the climate crisis is an imperative to build a more sustainable, resilient, and climate-safe economy, and a tremendous opportunity to ensure that economic prosperity is broadly shared. For us, the key is union labor and leadership. 

CJI started as the ‘Labor Leading on Climate Initiative,’ spearheaded by executive director Dr Lara Skinner for over a dozen years before evolving into CJI in January 2023. The initiative also spurred the creation of Climate Jobs New York and Climate Jobs National Resource Center (CJNRC). As the academic partner to CJNRC, CJI helps seed and support a nationwide network of union-led climate jobs coalitions across 15 states and counting. 

Working with union leaders—many of whom represent workers in the building and construction trades—CJI co-develops state-level recommendations for projects, programs and policies that reduce emissions and increase resiliency at the speed and scale that science demands, all while creating good union jobs. 

Becoming an institute has also enabled CJI to scale its impact and conduct groundbreaking research on the clean energy transition. Last year, CJI published studies on the working conditions of New York and Texas’s clean energy industries. 

CJI is not only interested in making “climate jobs” synonymous with “good union jobs,” but also ensuring these jobs are accessible to disadvantaged communities and groups historically excluded from union careers.

Summer fellows will collaborate with faculty and staff on ongoing applied research projects. 

As a member of the CJI, summer fellows will collaborate with faculty and staff on ongoing applied and academic research projects.

Project topics may include (but aren’t limited to):
● Union organizing in the renewable energy sector
● Climate policies and funding at the state and federal level that support good jobs
● Creating high quality union jobs in building decarbonization
● Clean technologies: costs, emissions, and associated jobs
● Community member barriers to entry into unions
● Mapping NYS clean energy workforce development programs and initiatives
● Producing policy recommendations around workforce development spending
● Project Labor Agreements
● Supporting the buildout of a redesigned CJI website

Project tasks may include (but aren’t limited to):
● Conducting research and literature reviews
● Preparing presentations for convenings
● Proofreading and editing reports and other publications
● Collating data and data validation
● Creating data visualizations for public convenings and publications
● Supporting quality assurance review of sources and management of citations
● Grant writing

Nice to haves (you don’t need to check all the boxes):
● Familiarity with the labor movement and worker organizing
● Familiarity with topics around climate, energy and/or industrial policy
● Ability to work independently and take the initiative to advance projects
● Experience collecting, validating, analyzing, reporting, and summarizing data
● Experience conducting qualitative research and analysis
● Experience reviewing documents for quality assurance
● Python programming for data analysis and web scraping
● Visual graphic skills (eg, Geographic Information Systems, Canva, InDesign, etc)

In addition to learning about climate and labor policy, summer fellows will have the opportunity to enhance their research, writing, editing, and presentation skills, and learn to collaborate as a member of an interdisciplinary research team. Fellows will also learn about effective communication, as we work on questions such as: How can we effectively communicate climate impacts and risks to the labor movement? How do we communicate this information to union members and the general public?
This is a paid, full-time (35 hours per week) research experience and will last approximately eight weeks from June through the end of July.

For fellows working in NYC, they are expected to be in the office when staff are in the office, which is at least two to three times per week. We also have staff members in Ithaca, Iris Packman and Megan Thorsfeldt, who we will assign one to two fellows, and those fellows will ideally work out of the Ithaca office on a hybrid basis