In a recent editorial (“Lights out for workers at last U.S. bulb plant,” Sept. 10), the Sun Journal rightfully pointed out that too many green jobs are being shipped overseas.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. A growing number of U.S. employers are taking a different approach, and it’s paying off — for the companies, their workers and the planet.

Take Massachusetts-based Litecontrol, for example, which produces energy-efficient lighting systems for office buildings, schools, hospitals and libraries. The employee-owned company delivers on the promise of sustainability — for the product and services it creates, and the family-supporting jobs it provides to its union employees.

Litecontrol is not just surviving in this economy, but thriving. The reasons are simple. The high-level skills that union members bring to the job are vital to the new economy, and green businesses of all kinds credit their employees’ technical expertise as key to their innovation and success. In turn, workers in unions can bargain for fair pay, good benefits, and respect on the job — injecting much-needed consumer spending into our struggling economy.

If we commit to building the clean energy economy here at home, we can actually “in-source” manufacturing jobs back to the United States. And that’s just what we need to create a win-win-win economy in which businesses prosper, our planet flourishes, and working people share in the prosperity they help create.

Kimberly Freeman Brown, Executive Director

American Rights at Work, Washington, D.C.