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Auto Union Joins Labor, Green Groups on Climate Bill Push
The United Auto Workers is the latest union to join the BlueGreen Alliance, which unites labor and environmental groups pushing for greenhouse gas limits and other policies to create "green" jobs.
The UAW - also known as the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America - claims to have more than 390,000 active members.
"UAW members produce best-in-class cars and trucks, key vehicle components, and top quality heavy-duty trucks, and we know that we can rebuild the American auto industry by building cleaner, more efficient vehicles - and developing the technologies that will get us there," UAW President Bob King said in a statement Monday about joining the BlueGreen Alliance.
"We have enormous opportunities to revitalize this industry, and the American economy, by embracing the clean energy economy of the future," he said.
The BlueGreen Alliance was formally launched in 2006, and grew out of a less formal collaboration between the Sierra Club and the United Steelworkers.
It also includes the Service Employees International Union, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Communications Workers of America and several other unions.
The BlueGreen Alliance is in the midst of a cross-country bus tour aimed at reviving a broad Senate energy and climate-change bill that's currently on ice on Capitol Hill.
10 Comments so far
Show AllThis offers the Green Party an opportunity it should exploit ... an energy which could and should be harnessed into a political movement that, if it enlisted congressional progressives, could forge a third, truly progessive party. As is, the two party system we have, which would have horrified the "founding fathers", is keeping a rotten system in place.
As a member of the NRDC I appreciate the effort to get outside the corridors of corruption and direct their energy and monies to this educational process. The formerly employed, the young people with no jobs, etc don't need convincing. Not everyone yet understands that in these times a green future is the only option we have to return to full employment. So much could be done if we'd just call out those Congressmen and Corporations impeding this effort. We need stronger voices on this or we"ll miss an enormous oppurtunity and perhaps the last chance to save this planet.
uh,oh - i smell a rat. if this group is trying to revitalize the god-awful energy bill that Congress has presented with it's bogus carbon trading scheme, and its puny CO2 "reduction" targets, watch out.
Labor and environmental activists need to get together, all right, but not in greenwashing activities ....
The United Auto Workers has a LOT of catching up to do. It's been in serious cahoots with the corporations for decades. The UAW has always been an effective proponent of business as usual, the economic growth imperative, and all the other rotten facets of laissez-faire capitalism.
For example the UAW cannot protest against the USA's recent illegal/unnecessary highly destructive imperial wars because warfare supports the UAW's singular agenda to maximize its members' paychex. As another example, the UAW cannot support high speed rail and other approaches to minimizing our gluttonous consumption of resources because that too constrains its members paychex.
Where was the UAW when Detroit churned out megatons of massively oversized SUVs and testosterone-trucks this past decade in flagrant defiance of the people's concern for the planet? The UAW was in the friggin factories, collecting the spoils of the plunder!
This singularity of agenda, totally disconnected from the whole, i.e. permaculture-hostile, is very familiar to USans, having the pitiful idea rammed down their throats by elitevil in countless propaganda campaigns.
If you wonder why principles are important, the UAW is a great example of the results of neglect. The UAW cannot be a reliable ally of the far left. It's delusionary to pretend it can be, until it's made the great transition which it has only barely begun.
It's a corporate bill, as are all the ones we are seeing on Congress. They've gotten people to believe it will help and not see it turns control of natural resources over to the corporations.
Well said, rtdrury. Although similar thoughts occurred to me, I didn't want to say it, as I thought there's enough cynicism already. But again, some things need to be pointed out.
peacekeepertwo : The UAW has decided their survival depends on going Green, that is the reason they have changed their tune. All American need to change their Tune, when it comes to blind support of large International Corporations.
I'm not defending all unions but the IBEW members in Cal. were part of an effort to get state regulators to force, through the courts, PGE to spend $2 billion for upgrades to the electrical grid. PGE was simply telling taxpayer's in Cal. to " shove it, we're not spending the money " even though it's the ratepayer's who benefit and pay PGE a guaranteed rate of return on their investment. Another small point was the fact PGE was breaking the law by not doing so. Anyone who thinks this isn't the way it works is out to lunch. Green jobs will be created by the courts as well as by the marketplace and gov't incentives. That hacks are choosing to fight on several fronts to get Corporations to do what they are legally required to do is just the way litigious America works. I'd rather a hack get me a good job than to be unemployed. Just sayin'.
>>linkwray wrote: "... to get Corporations to do what they are legally required to do is just the way litigious America works."
What a sad reality!