New Pipeline Won’t Cure

Otsego County’s Poverty

Editor’s Note: Kate O’Donnell, Ph.D., is a professor of sociology at Hartwick College.  This is reprinted from this week’s Hometown Oneonta & Freeman’s Journal editorial page.

By KATHERINE O’DONNELL

Rural poverty is widespread and persistent in the U.S. Rural labor options, mass centralized industrialization, and urbanization cause rural people, usually the young, to migrate to urban areas for better paying jobs in more diverse labor sectors.

These structural forces have produced outmigration from U.S. rural areas since the 1800s. In our area, the existence of the railroad and subsequent educational and healthcare developments diversified our local economy and created more job opportunity than in more solely agriculture-dependent areas.

Corporate globalization has led to capital mobility. This process has accelerated since the 1970s and is supported through global institutions like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization. The impact is international competition and job displacement. Nationally and locally, wave after wave of U.S. businesses and their workers have lost out.

Rural areas have been hard hit by overseas job displacement. Brown and Schafft (2011) report that in 1997-2003, 1.5 million rural jobs were lost in non-durable manufacturing like apparel, textiles, shoes, wood and food processing. The decline in manufacturing was more rapid in urban areas but manufacturing is centrally important to rural areas. A decline in farm and mining jobs in rural areas accompanied this trend.

Those workers who have been displaced tended to have less education and were concentrated in lower skill jobs. In the U.S., those remaining in rural areas find service sector jobs that have lower pay than those in urban areas. 40 percent of rural workers have jobs in low-pay personal and consumer services. Rural workers are also more likely to be underemployed.

Female-headed households are the poorest. In Otsego County, 27.8 percent of female-headed households live in poverty. The majority of the poor are working but earning poverty wages. By 2005, there was an increase in the urban-rural wage gap. Per the state Community Action Association 2013 Poverty Report, in Otsego County, to be able to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rate, an individual working 40 hours a week, full time, would have to earn $16.17 per hour.

In addition to low wages, lower levels of education  and underemployment, rural communities suffer from irregular cell and electric service and a lack of transportation, broadband, affordable childcare, mental health and addiction treatment services, job training programs, and affordable housing. Oneonta is beginning to address the affordable housing situation.

In his March 10-11 op-ed in this newspaper, Mike Zagata claims that the Constitution Pipeline will fix these situations. How? While pipeline jobs pay well, they are largely temporary construction and tree removal jobs for men and employ a significant number of out of state workers. By the industry’s own estimate, the pipeline will create seven permanent jobs.

In terms of community impact, states like Pennsylvania and North Dakota report that the gas industry labor situation raised competition for housing and increased housing costs – exactly what we do not need. In Pennsylvania in 2007-2013, during the gas-fracking boom, the poverty rate increased from 11.6 to 13.8 percent (Census Bureau, American Community Survey) with rural communities with gas development like Green experiencing rates as high as 18 percent.

Jobs in services, retail, transportation, and construction can be obtained from infrastructural investments and sustainable energy – not only through gas. The upside of sustainable development is that such jobs would be permanent, open to men and women, and not be associated with increased health costs, health problems, environmental damage, property loss to eminent domain, property devaluation, increased insurance costs, and further farm loss.

So, who is pushing this gas agenda? The same people who oppose increasing the minimum wage, affordable healthcare for all, and environmental protection legislation. Politicians and business organizations favored “free” trade agreements like NAFTA which, beginning in 1994, exported U.S. jobs for the cheapest labor in Mexico where workers were earning $2 a day in U.S. factories. Today, that target is Asian workers who earn 17 cents per hour in Bangladesh. Locally, the pro gas group, Citizen’s Voices, a group which Mr. Zagata has addressed, opposes minimum-wage increases.

What price tag do we put on despoiling our water, air, soil and food? What price tag do we place on adverse health effects including increases in cancer, childhood leukemia, lung disease, and heart ailments seen in areas that have fracking, pipelines, and the associated compressor stations?

Like Flint, our children would also be particularly affected by daily environmental contamination. The discussion of negative health and environmental impacts is missing from every discussion of political pipeline cheerleading, on industry and area gas “development” websites, and even in the Otsego County Community Needs Assessment Report of April 2014.

The Renaissance of Upstate New York will not come through gas. As a matter of fact, such a move will thwart the emergent agritourism of our region, which includes small- and medium-size farming, organic products, specialty dairy product development like cheese and yogurt, farm to table enterprises, and craft beverages. In our area, the amazing local hops and beer initiatives, which local legislators and business groups have supported, will be undermined. For example, Handsome Brook, one of Upstate New York’s most successful organic egg and blueberry farms, is located in Franklin, where the Constitution Pipeline is proposed.

The fate of Upstate New York and the nation are interlinked in a sustainable future which includes living wage jobs, affordable and accessible education, healthcare, and childcare.  Locally sourced food, renewable energy sources for household and business use, domestic product manufacturing, agritourism, and upgrading infrastructure including broadband and rail systems will produce jobs in these arenas that will be local and enduring.

Embrace the Renaissance. Gas is a passing fancy. We are looking for leadership, wisdom, and smart stewardship.