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labor network for sustainability
A Movement-Based Opposition to Trump and MAGA
Social self-defense against the MAGA juggernaut can be the starting point for creating the world we want beyond MAGA.
Oct 09, 2025
As President Donald Trump launches illegal armed attacks against American cities, peaceful civilians, and people in foreign countries that have not attacked the US, it may look like a sign of strength and a harbinger of a future of total domination. But Trump’s turn to such extreme forms of violence is less an expression of growing power than an attempt to distract from the growth of opposition, the loss of public support, and the splits within the ranks of his own supporters. It is a sign not of strength but of weakness.
This report lays out a strategy to take advantage of that weakness to defend society against Trump’s MAGA assaults. That strategy is based on the principle of “social self-defense”—that all the people and institutions harmed by Trump’s autocracy can and must come together to protect society against his assault.
Resisting and eventually eliminating Trump and his MAGA tyranny requires more than his loss of popularity. It requires a concerted opposition that can rally powerful social forces to undermine his means of domination. In our two-party system, the responsibility for opposition lies on the opposition party—the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, with a few outstanding exceptions, the leadership of the Democratic Party has so far failed in its duty to oppose Trump’s burgeoning autocracy.
In response to the intensifying attack on democracy, millions of people in thousands of locations have joined actions to oppose his juggernaut. In the absence of adequate resistance in the electoral arena, an alliance of popular movements is functioning as the primary opposition to Trump’s authoritarian rule.
The emerging movement-based opposition aims to halt and undo the harm that has been done by the Trump regime, but it is not directed toward returning to the world as it existed before Trump.
This “movement-based opposition” has emerged rapidly during the first year of Trump’s presidency. It is represented by the mass nonviolent resistance to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Los Angeles and elsewhere and the 5 million participants in No Kings Day and other national days of action. It is developing significant power as more and more people see and experience the harm the Trump administration and the MAGA Congress are inflicting on individuals, groups, and society as a whole. This movement-based opposition is no longer a marginal force but is now MAGA’s most powerful opponent.
Sometimes called a non-electoral or independent opposition, such a movement-based opposition is a convergence of social movements that performs some of the classic functions of an opposition party without the goal of itself taking power in government. It draws diverse constituencies out of their silos to combine their power, but uses direct action rather than electing candidates as its means to exercise that power. Like a political party, it brings together different constituencies around common interests, exposes the lies of those in power, and wins support for alternatives.
This movement-based opposition can mobilize popular rejection of the MAGA agenda, block Trump’s initiatives, prod Democratic politicians into action, split off Republicans, and help lay the groundwork for “people power” nonviolent uprisings—aka “social strikes”—if they prove to be necessary to overcome authoritarian rule.
Trump’s authoritarian juggernaut is currently entering a more violent, militarized phase. At home, this includes the huge expansion of ICE, the military occupation of American cities, and the political repression using the assassination of Charlie Kirk as a pretext. Abroad, it means the bombing of Iran; the illegal, unprovoked attacks on Venezuelan boats; and ongoing collusion with genocide in Gaza. Who knows what else is in the works.
The opposition is also entering a new phase. This was heralded by the resistance to ICE and military occupation in Los Angeles that included community-based support groups; constant identification, tracking, and filming of ICE agents; mutual aid support for targets of ICE attacks; ongoing opposition from state and city officials; refusal of the Dodgers to let ICE enter their stadium; and refusal of grand juries to indict—out of the 38 felony cases filed by Trump’s US attorney, only seven have resulted in indictments. Opinion polls indicate that such exposure of ICE abuses had led public opinion in California and nationwide to shift against Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.
Chicago, Washington, DC, New York, Memphis, and other cities are readying for similar resistance. An estimated 25,000 demonstrated in DC against the occupation of the city. The National Guard troops sent into Los Angeles and Washington, DC have been widely reported to be antagonistic to their assignments. The majority of Americans are opposed to Trump’s deployment of troops to American cities and feel their own rights and freedoms would be less secure as a result. The opposition to Trump’s plan to occupy Chicago with the National Guard met so much resistance from Chicago citizens and unions, the mayor of the city, and the governor of Illinois that he initially reversed himself and announced that he was not going to send the troops because a railroad executive had advised him, “You're gonna lose Chicago, sir.”
As Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. gutted America’s vaccine programs and other defenses against Covid-19 and other health threats, major medical associations such as the American Academy of Pediatrics denounced the new policies and promulgated their own treatment standards. Top officials in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health agencies publicly resigned in protest—and hundreds of CDC employees, including some in full service uniforms, gathered outside the agency, cheering and clapping for the three officials who had quit. Four states, flouting Trumpian policy, announced a “health alliance” that made its own science-based standards for vaccination. Florida’s plan to eliminate all vaccine mandates was reversed in just two days following a furious backlash from medical experts and political opponents.
There are three mutually reinforcing strategies for the movement-based opposition’s struggle against Trump’s domination: nullifying his initiatives, voting his supporters out of office, and mass “social strikes” that mobilize enough people to make his continued rule impossible.
The emerging movement-based opposition aims to halt and undo the harm that has been done by the Trump regime, but it is not directed toward returning to the world as it existed before Trump. That is clearly not what the people want, and it offers little hope of solving our real problems. The movement-based opposition includes many different groups with different visions of the future. It is based on agreement about the immediate aim, plus agreement to disagree about other things. It should encourage discussion of areas of disagreement while bracketing them when they might interfere with immediately necessary collaboration.
The process of working together and defining common interests itself can help identify new areas of agreement and encourage mutual acceptance of differences. Indeed, Social Self-Defense against the MAGA juggernaut can be the starting point for creating the world we want beyond MAGA. As Abraham Lincoln said of the Civil War, it can become the means for a new birth of freedom.
For a growing database of more than 500 organizations that seek volunteers for many forms of social self-defense, go to https://allofusdirectory.org/
For the full Labor Network for Sustainability Report on which this piece is based go to “A Movement-Based Opposition to Trump and MAGA.”
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Only a Just Transition Can End This Anti-Worker Race to the Bottom
Key demands by the UAW and their allies across civil society can promote both climate protection and a decent future for autoworkers.
Oct 05, 2023
Organized labor and the climate movement—often portrayed as opponents—have made an auspicious start toward cooperation in the autoworkers strike. The UAW, eschewing Trumpian blandishments to attack the transition to electrical vehicles (EVs), have instead endorsed the transition to climate-safe cars and trucks.
One hundred climate organizations, rejecting the blandishments of auto industry allies that low wages in the non-union South will make EVs cheaper and therefore help fight global warming, have instead signed a letter of solidarity with UAW workers and are organizing to support union picket lines. The purpose of this Commentary is to explain the context of this convergence and to indicate the elements of a “just transition” for the auto industry that can provide a joint program for the labor and climate movements.
The Backstory
Mr. Ross Gelbspan talked about his new book, The Heat is On: The High Stakes Battle over Earth’s Threatened Climate. The book is about the science, economics and politics of global warming. Mr. Gelbspan argues that there is evidence that global warming is taking place all over the globe and that energy businesses are trying to hide the damage that fossil fuels have caused to the ozone layer.
Labor and climate issues have been entwined in the US auto industry since long before the public recognition of global warming. The Big Three auto strike is intertwined with the business and political strategy of the auto industry, its response to the climate crisis, the changing role of federal and state governments, and the decay and transformation of the UAW.
An investigative report by E&E News in 2020 found that company scientists warned executives at General Motors and Ford in the 1960s that carbon emissions from their cars and trucks would cause the earth’s climate to warm. In response to this threat, the auto companies secretly gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations denying the reality of global warming. Along with the oil industry and the US National Association of Manufacturers they formed the Global Climate Coalition to oppose any mandatory actions to address global warming; it spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising against international climate agreements and national climate legislation. The auto companies expanded their investments in high-emission trucks and SUVs. They opposed higher standards for fuel economy and carbon emissions. Until 1996 the Big Three did not produce a single commercial electric vehicle – allowing Tesla to corner the market with its EVs. Today emissions from the tailpipes of cars and trucks are the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the United States.
In 2008, rising gas prices and the Great Recession devasted the Big Three’s carefully cultivated market for gas guzzlers. GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy and an $81 billion bailout left the US government as majority owner of GM and the UAW and Fiat as the principal owners of Chrysler.
The US auto industry was reconstructed under President Barak Obama’s economic recovery plan. Auto corporations and the UAW agreed to a large, long-term increase in energy efficiency to cut carbon emissions. The auto corporations agreed to cooperate with emission reduction requirements because their survival depended on the plan’s massive public investment in the auto industry. This involved cooperative planning for retooling the industry, large-scale federal support for developing new technology, and substantial public investment in modernizing the industry on a low-carbon basis. The result was a steady decrease in carbon pollution rates, an increase of jobs for auto workers, and an end to the crisis that threated to nearly eliminate auto production – and an estimated three million jobs — in the United States.
Faced with the collapse of the auto industry and the loss of millions of jobs, the UAW had little choice but to agree to major concessions. Its contracts incorporated a two-tiered wage structure under which those hired through 2007 are now making an average of $33 per hour while those hired after 2007 now make $17 per hour or less. Lower-tier employees receive lower health benefits and don’t get defined benefit pensions or retiree health care. Auto workers lost the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that gave them protection against inflation. Nonetheless they went for years without wage increases. They also lost the “job banks” jobs security program that provided laid-off workers pay and benefits if employment dipped below a pre-defined level.
While the concessions were presented as a temporary measure to address the crisis in the auto industry, they were not reversed in subsequent contracts, and the degradation of auto work has continued to the present day. Meanwhile, the auto companies have continued to oppose climate protection policies and to promote high-pollution, low-mileage trucks and SUVs. Indeed, as recently as July 2023 the auto industry’s largest lobbying organization came out against the Biden administration’s proposed rule to ensure that two-thirds of new passenger cars sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032.
Subsidizing Change in the Auto Industry – At the Expense of Auto Workers and the Climate?
The politics of climate and jobs was transformed in 2019 by the proposal – initiated by the youth climate Sunrise Movement and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – for a Green New Deal. They called for a ten-year mobilization of every aspect of American society to create 100% clean and renewable energy, guarantee living-wage jobs for anyone who needs one, and a just transition for both workers and frontline communities. The Green New Deal reconfigured American politics with its core proposition: fix joblessness and inequality by putting people to work at good jobs fixing the climate.Joe Biden’s presidential campaign created a committee stocked with Green New Deal advocates like Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. He made their recommendations the centerpiece of his campaign policy. Biden’s Build Back Better plan combined ideas from the Green New Deal with proposals for “industrial policy” – government efforts to shape the economy by supporting specific industries, firms, or economic activities — long advocated by industrial unions and some progressive politicians. Many of these ideas were incorporated into Biden’s three major economic bills, the American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure, and Inflation Reduction Acts, which provide trillions of dollars over the next decade to incentivize domestic production in targeted industries, notably the auto industry. Unlike the government-led reconstruction of the auto industry under Obama, however, today’s federal program is largely limited to providing subsidies to auto companies to expand EV production, rather than actively reshaping the industry. When the House passed its version of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2021, it included another $4,500 tax credit to consumers for EVs built largely with union labor, but Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia succeeded in removing the provision as a condition for allowing the IRA to pass the Senate.
The auto companies have been happy to accept these federal subsidies, but they are also happy to evade their stated purposes. Auto companies have given surface compliance to federal pressure to reduce carbon pollution, but in reality they continue to promote highly profitable but high-carbon SUVs and light trucks and drag their feet on shifting to EVs. And they are using the federal subsidies to move their operations to low-wage, non-union locations in the South and to use joint ventures with foreign auto companies to evade unionization.
Since the early 1990s the South’s share of auto industry employment has grown from 15 to 30 per cent while the Midwest’s proportion has fallen from 60% to 45%. The auto companies are now using the subsidies provided by Biden’s industrial policy to accelerate this migration. In the past two years the big auto companies have announced nearly $90 billion in investment for EV plants, according to the Center for Automotive Research. Their suppliers are investing billions more. Brookings Metro says total private-sector investment in EV manufacturing under Biden has reached nearly $140 billion.
Brookings Metro calculated that the South has attracted 55 percent of the total private investment in electric vehicles and batteries under Biden, twice as much as has gone to the Midwest. Such EV and battery plant investments include Hyundai and Rivian in Georgia, Toyota in North Carolina, Tesla in Texas, BMW in South Carolina, Mercedes-Benz in Alabama, General Motors in Tennessee, and Ford in Tennessee and Kentucky. EV investments in the South are expected to create at least 65,000 jobs.
To further bolster their resistance to worker demands, auto companies are creating their EV battery plants as joint ventures with foreign companies. As such they are not subject to the master agreements that cover the Big Three, so that the UAW must negotiate separate contracts for plants that are already offering wages far below the master agreements.
This “restructuring” seemed to be just fine with the Biden administration. In early June Energy Secretary Jennifer Grandholm told an industry group that the administration was “agnostic” about where companies choose to site their clean-energy investments. Later that same month the Department of Energy approved more than $9 billion in loans to Ford and a Korean company to build EV battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee. This subsidy gave no consideration to wages, working conditions, union rights, or retirement security. The next day UAW president Shawn Fain issued a statement that read in part:
The switch to electric engine jobs, battery production and other EV manufacturing cannot become a race to the bottom. Not only is the federal government not using its power to turn the tide – they’re actively funding the race to the bottom with billions in public money. Why is Joe Biden’s administration facilitating this corporate greed with taxpayer money?
In the past five years, workers who build GM products in Lordstown Ohio, have had their lives turned upside down as they were forced to retire, quit or uproot their families and move all over the United States when GM closed their plants despite massive profits. Their jobs were replaced in GM’s new joint-venture battery facility with jobs that pay half of what workers made at the previous Lordstown plant.
Not only is the White House refusing to right this wrong, they’re giving Ford $9.2 billion to create the same low-road jobs in Kentucky and Tennessee.
The last time the federal government gave the Big Three billions of dollars, the companies did the exact same thing: slash wages, cut jobs, and undermine the industry that for generations created the best jobs for working families in this country. Autoworkers and our families took the hit in 2009 in the name of saving the industry. We were never made whole, and it’s an absolute shame to see another Democratic administration doubling down on a taxpayer-funded corporate giveaway.
Faced with such a rebuff in the prelude to the impending auto strike, and perhaps counting the working class voters in a state critical for the 2024 presidential election, the Biden administration announced in late August that the Energy Department would provide $2 billion in grants and $10 billion in loan guarantees under the Inflation Reduction Act, plus $3.5 billion in grants under the infrastructure law, to help companies convert existing plants to making EVs and batteries. The once-“agnostic” Granholm proclaimed her new religion: “We are going to focus on financing projects that are in long-standing automaking communities, that keep folks already working on the payroll, projects that advance collective bargaining agreements, that create high-paying, long-lasting jobs.”
UAW president Fain praised the decision.
The UAW supports and is ready for the transition to a clean auto industry. But the EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy. Today’s announcement from the Department of Energy echoes the UAW’s call for strong labor standards tied to all taxpayer funding that goes to auto and manufacturing companies. This new policy makes clear to employers that the EV transition must include strong union partnerships with the high pay and safety standards that generations of UAW members have fought for and won.
The Biden administration’s shift – at least momentarily – toward a just transition for auto workers facing the greening of their industry indicates both the political popularity of just transition and a balance of forces propitious for efforts to realize it. Given that context, what measures can labor and climate movements advocate to begin to realize a just transition for auto workers?
A Just Transition for Auto Workers
The UAW, more than a hundred climate and allied organizations, and President Joe Biden have all endorsed a “just transition” to electric vehicles for auto workers. But what would a just transition for auto workers actually mean? Here are some of the measures that workers, environmentalists, and governments could join together to promote.
Union demands
In contrast to past negotiations with the Big Three, the current UAW leadership has presented its basic proposals both to auto workers and to the public. In addition to wage and other economic demands, there are three union proposals in particular that are necessary parts of a just transition.
- Working family protection program: Until 2009 the Big Three had a “job banks” jobs security program. If employment dipped below an agreed level, laid-off workers would receive pay and benefits. The UAW is proposing an updated version, the “Working family protection program,” which would require companies that shut down facilities to pay UAW members to do community-service work. It would give the companies a strong incentive to keep plants open and workers on the job.
- Right to strike over plant closures. The Big Three have closed 65 plants over the last 20 years. Yet workers and communities are often powerless in the face of shutdowns. The right to strike over plant closures will provide a powerful tool to deter them and to provide workers and community members power to negotiate just terms for closures.
- Eliminating tiers. In 2008 when the collapse of the US auto industry threatened to destroy as many as three million jobs, the UAW agreed to major concessions, including separation of workers into “tiers” which provided far lower wages and worse conditions for workers who were newly hired. The companies have used this to divide the workforce and to drive down wages for the growing proportion of lower seniority workers. As long as the tier system persists, the companies will be able to discriminate against a growing proportion of the workforce. Getting rid of tiers is an essential part of a just transition because the companies can use them to drive down conditions for workers making electric vehicles. The Teamsters’ recently ended tiers at UPS.
Federal policy
- Just Transition requirements in federal auto subsidies. Initially funding under the Inflation Reduction Act and other federal programs that subsidize the transition to climate-safe industry did little to see that the jobs created would be good jobs, let alone union jobs. As a result, the auto companies have been taking the subsidies and using them to shut down good-paying union jobs in the Midwest and open new, nonunion jobs with lower pay and dangerous health and safety conditions in southern states with anti-labor “right-to-work” laws.
When the UAW protested, the Biden administration changed course and issued a $15.5 billion package of grants and loans primarily focused on retooling existing factories for the transition to EVs. This package included conditions for grants and loans that, if applied across the board to all EV subsidies, would make a major contribution to a just transition for auto workers.
In the $2 billion Domestic Conversion Grant Program, higher scores will be given to “projects that are likely to retain collective bargaining agreements and/or those that have an existing high-quality, high-wage hourly production workforce, such as applicants that currently pay top quartile wages in their industry.” The program “aims to support a just transition for workers and communities in the transition to electrified transportation,” with particular attention to “communities supporting facilities with longer histories in automotive manufacturing.” Preference will be given to projects that “commit to pay high wages for production workers and maintain collective bargaining agreements.”
The Department of Energy’s recent $10 billion loan initiative under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program for automotive manufacturing conversion projects is targeted for automotive manufacturing conversion projects that “retain high-quality jobs in communities that currently host manufacturing facilities.” Examples of criteria include “retaining high wages and benefits, including workplace rights, or commitments such as keeping the existing facility open until a new facility is complete, in the case of facility replacement projects.”
These programs were welcomed by UAW president Shawn Fain. Their provisions will make it difficult for auto companies to take the money and use it to shut down existing union plants and open new nonunion plants in low-wage regions.
So far, these conditions apply only to a tiny sliver of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the federal government plans to give or induce others to invest in the transition to electric vehicles. They do not currently apply to other grants and loans. And they do not apply to the many times larger subsidies that will be given via tax credits. The Advance Manufacturing Tax Credit, for example, requires minimums for domestic content, payment of prevailing wages, and apprenticeship-based training. But it says nothing about location or workers’ right to union representation or collective bargaining.
A crucial strategy for a just transition for auto workers could be to include labor requirements in all EV subsidies similar to those in the recent package of grants and loans. Their inclusion in already established programs makes a strong case that they are legal and proper policies.
- Community Benefit Plans. The Department of Energy is requiring Community Benefits Plans in all funding opportunity announcements and loan applications under the Bipartisan Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Acts. Its Community Benefits Plans are based on four core policy priorities: investing in America’s workforce; engaging communities and labor; advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility; and implementing Justice 40. A core purpose of the Community Benefit Plans is “engaging communities and labor.” Auto workers and communities can use this as an opportunity for demanding that such plans in fact address the needs of existing auto workers and communities. For example, labor and climate coalitions could demand that there by no layoffs of current workers in facilities that use the grants and loans.The requirement for Community Benefits Plans can and should be extended to all BIA and IRA grants and loans.
- Employee Retention Credits. The 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) provides for an employee retention tax credit designed to encourage employers to keep employees on their payroll despite experiencing an economic hardship related to COVID-19. Some or all of the federal tax credits allocated for the transition to EVs could be redesigned to similarly incentivize auto companies to retain current workers.
State policy
- Just Transition Programs: Legislation recently submitted to the Michigan legislature has proposed a state program for just transition, modeled in part on the just transition legislation now in operation in Colorado. An early version of the Michigan bill establishes a broad-based advisory committee to draft a community and worker economic transition plan. It would establish a wage differential benefit for affected workers, provide education for dislocated workers, and create a grant program to support transitional communities.
- Job Criteria in State Subsidies. A wide array of state programs could incorporate criteria like those indicated above for federal programs. For example, economic development grants could be targeted for investments in existing auto communities to encourage conversion of existing plants and/or building of new plants for EV production.
- State Employee Retention Credits. Discussion is under way in some midwestern state legislatures to enact state employee retention credits along the lines of those in the federal CARES act.
These state programs might be most effective if they were coordinated among the states of the Midwest auto region.
These just transition proposals are not “pie in the sky.” They grow out of existing programs and proposals of the UAW, the climate movement, federal agencies, and state legislators. As President Biden’s unprecedented decision to join the UAW picket line indicates, they come at a time when the government and the auto companies are most vulnerable to pressure to do the right thing. They will not in themselves turn the auto plants into a utopia. But they can play a significant role in halting and even reversing the race to the bottom that is already underway in the auto industry. They can promote both climate protection and a decent future for auto workers. And they can provide a program around which auto workers, climate protectors, and advocates for the public interest can join forces.
Read the original version of this post, along with footnotes, at the Labor Network for Sustainability website here.
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Labor Unions and Green Groups Sue Trump Admin. for 'Failure to Protect Frontline Workers From Covid-19'
"People are dying, and more people are going to die because the Trump administration has totally failed to protect Americans who have been on the job throughout the pandemic keeping our country running."
Oct 08, 2020
Labor unions representing healthcare staff, teachers, transit employees, and millions of other frontline workers joined with environmental groups on Thursday to sue the Trump administration for its failure to protect essential workers from Covid-19 by providing an adequate supply of masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment.
"Nurses will do whatever it takes to care for patients who are fighting this virus, but we need the tools it takes to do our jobs. It's disgraceful that we still can't count on an adequate, reliable supply of PPE."
--Karen Ballentyne, registered nurse
In their lawsuit (pdf), the plaintiffs--theCenter for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Labor Network for Sustainability, AFL-CIO, AFT, SEIU, USW, and additional unions representing aviation, communications, food, and transportation workers--point out that since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the country's essential workers have been disproportionately exposed to and impacted by the devastating disease, which has killed more than 211,000 people in the U.S.
"The federal government is abandoning essential workers and treating them like they're disposable," said Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's energy justice program. "These are teachers and nurses and bus drivers who have made sure our country survives during this crisis."
"We stand in solidarity with them," Su added, "and will do everything possible to prevent this tragic, preventable loss of life."
The plaintiffs argue that essential workers have been hit especially hard by the coronavirus due to the federal government's failure to utilize its power granted by the Defense Production Act (DPA) to ensure the adequate production and distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE), which would help prevent frontline workers from contracting and dying from Covid-19.
"President Donald Trump and his administration have mishandled the Covid-19 crisis from the very beginning," said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). "Their failure to fully utilize the DPA to produce vitally-needed PPE is a prime example of their unwillingness to do what is necessary to keep Americans safe and healthy."
Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) echoed Casey, saying that Trump "should have used the DPA to organize systematic domestic production of all of the supplies we need to address the Covid-19 pandemic and protect frontline workers."
"Failure to act in this worst-case scenario," Levin added, "has resulted in the unnecessary death of tens of thousands of our fellow Americans, pain and anguish for millions, and an economic collapse we will be climbing out of for many months to come."
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., coincides with a coronavirus outbreak in the White House, an uptick in infections in multiple states bringing the U.S. caseload to over 7.5 million, and Trump's undermining of congressional negotiations on a much-needed economic relief and public health package.
The case comes after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf ignored a legal petition demanding the immediate production and distribution of PPE that was submitted in August by the same groups and supported by scores of additional unions and advocacy organizations.
"This country doesn't stand a chance at an effective recovery from this pandemic if our elected leaders don't do everything within their power to protect frontline workers."
--John Samuelson, Transport Workers Union
In the two months since the labor and environmental groups filed their initial petition, the number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. has surged by 50%, or 2.5 million cases. Experts expect the situation to become even more catastrophic this fall and winter with the onset of flu season and with cold weather increasing the amount of time people spend indoors, where the risk of transmission increases.
"People are dying, and more people are going to die because the Trump administration has totally failed to protect Americans who have been on the job throughout the pandemic keeping our country running," said Communications Workers of America (CWA) president Chris Shelton. "Workers are terrified about the possibility of having to face a potential third surge of this Covid-19 virus during flu season without having access to adequate protective equipment."
The plaintiffs argued in a joint statement that the failure of HHS and DHS to respond to the earlier request for emergency action violated federal law. They also explained that the ongoing refusal of the federal government to effectively manage the manufacturing and allocation of PPE has forced states to compete with each other as frontline workers endured, and sometimes died as a result of, shortages of lifesaving supplies.
"Nurses will do whatever it takes to care for patients who are fighting this virus," said Karen Ballentyne, a registered nurse at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in Los Angeles and a member of SEIU Local 121RN. "But we need the tools it takes to do our jobs. It's disgraceful that we still can't count on an adequate, reliable supply of PPE."
Denise Abbott, an emergency room nurse in Buffalo, New York, and a member of CWA Local 1168, said that "it's difficult for healthcare workers to get supplies on a daily basis because employers are conserving what they have, and having to ask or find PPE on our own is a horrible practice."
"Staff still have to reuse masks for the entire day unless they're dirty, damp, or damaged," Abbott added. "PPE must be at the ready and used properly if we're ever going to see an end to this crisis."
The lawsuit asks the court to direct Azar and Wolf to use the DPA to facilitate "the mammoth action necessary to safeguard the millions of essential workers powering the country's survival, in spite of their own devastatingly disproportionate rates of mortality and morbidity."
United Steelworkers International president Tom Conway stressed that "we cannot allow this dangerous shortage of PPE to become the new normal."
"This country doesn't stand a chance at an effective recovery from this pandemic," said John Samuelson, president of the Transport Workers Union, "if our elected leaders don't do everything within their power to protect frontline workers."
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Calling for 'Climate President,' 500+ Groups Demand Next Administration Take Immediate Action
"Swift action to confront the climate emergency has to start the moment the next president enters the Oval Office."
Dec 08, 2019
Over 500 groups on Monday rolled out an an action plan for the next president's first days of office to address the climate emergency and set the nation on a transformative path towards zero emissions and a just transition in their first days in office.
"Swift action to confront the climate emergency has to start the moment the next president enters the Oval Office," said attorney Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute.
The set of 10 actions, which together "form the necessary foundation for the country's true transformation to a safer, healthier, and more equitable world for everyone," are featured on the new Climate President website. The actions--which "touch the lives of every person living in America and those beyond who are harmed by the climate crisis"--can all be taken by the president without Congressional, thus can, and should, happen immediately, the document argues.
The new effort is convened by advocacy groups representing a range of issues, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Climate Justice Alliance, Democracy Collaborative, and Labor Network for Sustainability. Other backers include Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Demos.
The groups' roadmap kicks off with a demand for the next president to declare a national climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act. It includes a demand to direct "relevant federal agencies to reverse all Trump administration executive climate rollbacks and replace with sufficiently strong action."
Asserting authority the National Emergencies Act, Siegel and Center for Biological Diversity energy director Jean Su wrote in a legal analysis supporting the action plan, is necessary in order for the next president to reinstate the crude oil export ban and redirect "military spending towards the construction of clean renewable energy projects and infrastructure."
Declaring a climate emergency, the analysis adds, would also "set the appropriate tone of urgency for climate action."
The other nine steps for the nation's next leader to take within their first 10 days of office are, as noted in the document:
- Keep fossil fuels in the ground.
- Stop fossil fuel exports and infrastructure approval.
- Shift financial flows from fossil fuels to climate solutions.
- Use the Clean Air Act to set a science- based national pollution cap for greenhouse pollutants.
- Power the electricity sector with 100% clean and renew-able energy by 2030 and promote energy democracy.
- Launch a just transition to protect our communities, workers, and economy.
- Advance Climate Justice: Direct federal agencies to assess and mitigate environmental harms to disproportionately impacted Indigenous Peoples, People and Communities of Color, and low-wealth communities.
- Make polluters pay: Investigate and prosecute fossil fuel polluters for the damages they have caused. Commit to veto all legislation that grants legal immunity for polluters, undermines existing environmental laws, or advances false solutions.
- Rejoin the Paris Agreement and lead with science-based commitments that ensure that the United States, as the world's largest cumulative historical emitter, contributes its fair share and advances climate justice.
As part of this overall undertaking, groups say,
the next president must prioritize support for communities that historically have been harmed first and most by the extractive economy, including communities of color, Indigenous communities, and low-wealth communities. The next President must also take special care to ensure that the rights of Indigenous Peoples are upheld, which includes following the Indigenous Principles of Just Transition.
Moreover, climate policies must drive job growth and spur a new green economy that is designed and built by communities and workers and that provides union jobs with family-sustaining wages. These policies must ensure that workers in the energy sector and related industries, whose jobs will be fundamentally transformed, are not abandoned.
"We're also putting the next Congress on notice to get serious about dismantling this crisis, or the people will circumvent you with all available means."
--Anthony Rogers-Wright, Climate Justice Alliance
According to Anthony Rogers-Wright, policy coordinator for Climate Justice Alliance, "This set of executive actions puts the fossil fuel, and other iniquitous industries that treat our communities like sacrifice zones, on notice, while offering a suite of actions the next president can promulgate on day one to address systemic and institutionalized injustices. At the same time, we're also putting the next Congress on notice to get serious about dismantling this crisis, or the people will circumvent you with all available means."
In addition to executing the 10 steps, the Climate President action plan urges the next president to further tackle the crisis by working with Congress as well as state and local governments on appropriate plans. Those efforts must include working to pass the Green New Deal.
While the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to environmental protections, previous administrations also hold blame for failing to sufficiently act on the climate, said Sriram Madhusoodanan, climate campaign director of Corporate Accountability.
"The United States government has long acted to advance the interests of corporations over people, and under Trump the government has lowered the bar even further," he said. "The U.S. continues to act at the behest of big polluters like the fossil fuel industry by ignoring science, blocking climate policy, and putting big polluter profit over the needs and demands of people."
"The next administration," added Madhusoodanan, "must start a new chapter in U.S. history, kick polluters out of climate policy-making, make them pay for the damage they've knowingly caused, and take every action possible to advance urgently needed, internationally just climate action."
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8 Unions Have a Plan for Climate Action--But It Doesn't Mention Fighting the Fossil Fuel Industry
While the report’s focus on public investment, good jobs and justice shares much in common with the federal Green New Deal resolution introduced in February, it also stands in tension with environmentalists who demand the U.S. work to transition more quickly away from oil, coal and natural gas.
Aug 27, 2019
On June 24, the BlueGreen Alliance--a national coalition which includes eight large labor unions and six influential environmental groups--released an eight-page document laying out its vision to curb climate change and reduce inequality. The report, dubbed Solidarity for Climate Action, marks a significant development in the world of environmental politics. It argues the needs of working people must be front-and-center as the U.S. responds to climate change, and rejects the "false choice" between economic security and a healthy planet.
While the report's focus on public investment, good jobs and justice shares much in common with the federal Green New Deal resolution introduced in February, it also stands in tension with environmentalists who demand the U.S. work to transition more quickly away from oil, coal and natural gas. "We'd really like them to be stronger and more concise about what it means to move away from fossil fuels and transition to renewables," said Jose Bravo, executive director of the Just Transition Alliance and speaking on behalf of the Climate Justice Alliance. Members of the BlueGreen Alliance say the ultimate goal should be to decarbonize the economy--to reduce CO2 emissions, but not necessarily end the fossil fuel industry itself, with its tens of thousands of high-paying jobs. Other climate groups say that won't be enough, and humanity cannot afford to preserve industries that have caused so much environmental harm. This difference in vision will stand as one of the most fundamental political questions facing progressives in the next decade.
The report spells out a series of principles, including limiting warming to 1.5degC, expanding union jobs, modernizing infrastructure, bolstering environmental protections and rebuilding the nation's manufacturing sector with green technologies. It also elevates the issue of equity, calling to "inject justice into our nation's economy by ensuring that economic and environmental benefits of climate change solutions support the hardest hit workers and communities." The BlueGreen Alliance emphasizes the disproportionate impact low-income workers and communities of color will face, and says those affected by the energy transition must receive "a just and viable transition" to new, high-quality union jobs.
To make its platform a reality, the BlueGreen Alliance endorses a host of specific policies and timetables, like reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, while being "solidly on a path" to that goal by 2030. Among other things, the report calls for measures like restoring forests and wildlands, cracking down on employee misclassification, making it easier to unionize one's workplace, winning universal access to high-speed Internet, and "massive" economic investing in deindustrialized areas, "including remediating any immediate loss of tax base or public services for communities."
Labor groups in the coalition include the United Steelworkers, the Utility Workers Union of America, the Service Employees International Union, the American Federation of Teachers, the Communications Workers of America, the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, the Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers, and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail, and Transportation Workers. The environmental organizations include the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the National Wildlife Federation, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Environmental Defense Action Fund, and the League of Conservation Voters.
Following the 2016 election, the coalition organized listening sessions with workers in communities that voted for Donald Trump, like in Macomb County, Michigan, and the Iron Range in Wisconsin. After those discussions, leaders started investing in broader polling, message-testing and focus groups. While opponents of regulating greenhouse gas emissions relish exploiting tensions between environmentalists and labor unions, Mike Williams, the deputy director of the BlueGreen Alliance, said it became clear from the research "that working people do quite care about climate change, but they also believe they should not be forced to make a choice between that and having a good job."
"We went through a lot of iterations and a lot of conversations," said Sara Chieffo, the vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters. "There was real unanimity that we were solving the twin crises of inequality and climate change."
Jeremy Brecher, the co-founder of the Labor Network for Sustainability, which supports organized labor in tackling climate change, tells In These Times that he sees the Solidarity for Climate Action report as "quite a significant stepping out" for the BlueGreen Alliance. "The BGA was basically [created in 2006] to advocate for the growth and quality of jobs in the clean economy," he said. "It did not take positions on targets and timetables for carbon reduction, clean coal and the KXL pipeline. It was a green jobs organization, which is important in terms of understanding where the BGA was coming from." Brecher says the BlueGreen Alliance's new statement "about the pace of greenhouse gas emission reductions and the absolute centrality and necessity of it is an extremely positive development."
Evan Weber, the political director and co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, agrees. "I think the platform represents a really historic step forward for a number of the nation's largest and most influential labor unions," he said. "It leaves some questions about what needs to be done, and we'd like to see more ambition, but it is really meaningful that these groups and unions have come to the table and shown that they're willing to move forward and not stay in the ways of the past."
The Green New Deal resolution was introduced in Congress as the BlueGreen Alliance hashed out its own proposal. The leaders of some labor unions in the BlueGreen Alliance that represent workers in the fossil fuel industry--including the Steelworkers and the Utility Workers--have publicly voiced criticism of the Green New Deal, blasting it for a lack of specifics. The federal resolution "certainly took over a big portion of the national climate conversation, and a few of our partners were supportive, but there is also skepticism from the labor side," said Williams. "As we were working we said we need to focus on our own process to see where we can forge alignment."
Some hope the BlueGreen platform can serve as a policy blueprint for moving forward on the Green New Deal. SEIU, which represents 2 million workers, is both a BlueGreen coalition member and the first international union to back the federal Green New Deal resolution. "SEIU members know that we must take bold, immediate action on climate change, including holding corporations accountable for rampant pollution and ensuring good union jobs as we transition to a clean energy economy," president Mary Kay Henry told In These Times. "That's why we are proud to support both the Green New Deal, our North Star for what needs to be accomplished on climate change, and the BlueGreen Alliance's platform, a roadmap for how we can get there."
The League of Conservation Voters also endorsed the Green New Deal resolution back in February, and Chieffo told In These Times that her group sees the Solidarity for Climate Action report as "a really essential addition" to the conversation. "We are proud to endorse the Green New Deal and I think it's incredibly valuable to have these eight powerful unions at the table laying out a proactive vision for how we tackle climate change."
In These Times reached out to the original co-sponsors of the Green New Deal, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Ed Markey of (D-Mass.), for comment on the BlueGreen Alliance's report.
Anika Legrand-Wittich, a spokesperson for Ocasio-Cortez, said while she was unable to reach the Congresswoman for specific comment, she "confirmed with our staff that we have indeed worked with BlueGreen Alliance and share many of their goals."
Giselle Barry, a spokesperson for Sen. Markey, pointed to a supportive tweet the senator posted following the report's release. It signal boosted the BlueGreen Alliance platform, and reads, "Transforming our economy and combatting climate change will create millions of jobs, but it won't be possible without our workers and their families. Great to see our allies in organized labor continuing to make climate action a top priority."
New Consensus, a think tank working to develop policies for the Green New Deal, said in an email "We don't have any comment on the BGA report at this time."
Fossil fuels
Despite its generally positive reception, the Solidarity for Climate Action has not gone without critique -- and some environmental groups and labor leaders have raised issues and questions about the platform.
"I don't think it goes far enough in terms of moving us definitively off fossil fuels at the speed that is required," said Weber of the Sunrise Movement.
Brecher, of the Labor Network for Sustainability, said while overall the report marks a "very big step forward" for unions, he thinks its language "can use a little tightening up" to prevent groups from having too much "wiggle room." He specifically pointed to language that America should be "on a pathway" to reducing its emissions, and suggests that be more specific. "It is overall quite close to the Green New Deal resolution, which also has a little wiggle room," he said. (For example, most action items in the Green New Deal come with the caveat of "as much as is technologically feasible.")
Julian Brave NoiseCat, the director of Green New Deal strategy at Data for Progress, a progressive think tank, said his organization's vision for climate action shares a lot of overlap with the BlueGreen Alliance platform. But he noted BlueGreen Alliance's does not include a 100% clean energy commitment, nor explicit provisions to phase-out fossil fuels, and it does not include a 10-year mobilization, in line with the Green New Deal. He also said he wonders whether the BlueGreen Alliance would support a federal jobs guarantee, or some other federal work provision.
Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth, a climate group, said while it's significant to see the labor movement taking proactive steps on the environment, as well as seeing the report's emphasis on justice and equity, he protested its lack of mention of fossil fuels, natural gas, oil or coal. "How do you have solidarity for climate action when you're not proactively calling out the very fuel sources that we have to eliminate from the U.S. economy?" he asked. "It says a lot of great things about how we want the economy structured, but in many ways it papers over where some of the greatest disagreement is between parts of the labor movement and the environmental community."
Pica also acknowledged that the Green New Deal resolution did not make any mention of fossil fuels. "We were critical of that, too," he said.
Mike Williams, of the BlueGreen Alliance, said while he understands that critique, he also thinks "it's a bit much" to expect this platform to call for banning fossil fuels. "Our goal is to get climate pollution out of our economy by a certain time to avoid as much warming as possible, so we established our platform with the methods we think will help get us to those goals," he said. "The banning of fossil fuels -- that's pretty controversial to expect of the people who represent the human beings who work in that sector. This is tens of thousands of people who work in these industries, and for a union to step out and say we're going to end your job and the promise of a new job is a wink and a nod and a handshake. Well America has never before followed through on any proper transition, save for maybe the New Deal for white dudes."
From Williams' perspective, demanding unions call for ending their own jobs, before any sort of real alternative agreement is in place, is simply unrealistic. "It's so mind boggling to think that people who represent folks who work in those industries would jump so far out ahead of where their membership is, and without any real forthright and immediately implementable solution," he said.
Pica, of Friends of the Earth, also critiqued the BlueGreen Alliance for making no gesture toward campaigns to keep fossil fuels in the ground. "It's been the divestment fights, trying to get universities and cities to divest their money from fossil fuel companies, that has been the fuel of the climate movement over the last decade," he said.
Williams said the absence of certain "buzzwords" doesn't diminish from what the document accomplishes. "We're on the same side, and I truly respect [the environmental critics] and I hear them, but this is about building a broader movement that can get bigger solutions across the line," he said.
Carbon-capture technology
Perhaps the most polarizing policy endorsed by the Solidarity for Climate Action report is that of carbon-capture technology, a method backed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and supported by most of the labor movement. But among environmentalists it's more divisive, as some argue it will prolong dependence on fossil fuels, be too costly, and make it harder to reduce emissions overall.
"The fact that it's included in the BGA report I think is very unfortunate and something that realistically has no chance of making a significant contribution to climate protection," Brecher said. "Some of the other environmental groups are more squishy."
Pica called carbon-capture "an expensive detour to nowhere" that's a "nonstarter and at worse feeds kind of feeds false hope." In January more than 600 environmental groups sent a letter to Congress saying they will--among other things--"vigorously oppose" federal climate legislation that promotes "corporate schemes" like carbon-capture and storage. Brecher and Pica's groups were among the signatories. While the Green New Deal resolution is ambiguous on carbon-capture, last week Sen. Bernie Sanders released his presidential climate plan, which includes opposition to the technology.
Phil Smith, a spokesperson for the United Mine Workers of America, a labor union not represented in the BlueGreen Alliance, tells In These Times that there are aspects of the report his union agrees with, "especially with respect to carbon-capture technology." But he critiqued it as not specific enough when it comes to defining what a "just transition" means. The platform calls for "guaranteed pensions and a bridge of wage support, healthcare and retirement security" until an impacted worker finds a new job or retires.
"Coal miners want to know what the hell you mean when you say you want a 'just transition,'" Smith says. "Training to drive a truck is not a just transition. Training a miner to earn half of what they're making now is not a just transition. ... Our concern is once laws get passed to phase out carbon dioxide in 10 years, if we're going to have a 'just transition' then we needed to be working on that 15 years ago. It's just meaningless words on paper right now, and we keep seeing it over and over."
Moving forward, members of the BlueGreen Alliance plan to promote the policies outlined in their new platform through legislative advocacy and local community organizing. In late July, the coalition sent a letter to the chairman of the House Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change, Rep. Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.), and its ranking member, John Shimkus (R-Ill.), encouraging them to consider the Solidarity for Climate Action platform as they proceed in Congress.
"I think the next phase of work is educating elected officials on what's in the platform," said Chieffo. "And then really rolling up our sleeves to craft the legislation and hopefully future executive branch options needed to deliver it."
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The Green New Deal Can Work - Here's How
18 concrete ways to make the urgently needed climate mobilization a reality
Feb 24, 2019
The following is based on a new discussion paper 18 Strategies for a Green New Deal: How to Make the Climate Mobilization Work (pdf)from the Labor Network for Sustainability.
The Green New Deal resolution recently submitted by Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) proposes a broad vision to transform America. It calls for a mobilization to create a climate-safe America and thereby "create millions of good, high-wage jobs, virtually eliminate poverty, provide unprecedented levels of prosperity and economic securing for all U.S. persons, and counteract systemic injustices." Here's a strategy for how it can succeed.
Mobilize government
Global warming has rightly been called history's "greatest market failure." Correcting it cannot be left to the market. The GND will need bold economic planning, industrial policies, and public investment to guide and facilitate the process. It will need full-employment macroeconomic policies that prevent unemployment, assure prosperity, and encourage full use of economic resources during the transition. And it will need public mobilization and redirection of human and material resources that are required for the transition. Therefore the GND requires government institutions specifically designed to implement the transition to climate protection.
Establish government agencies to oversee the transition. Mobilization for the GND is an emergency that, like mobilization for World War II, requires powerful governmental agencies dedicated to the purpose that can plan and implement the transition to a climate-safe economy. The Green New Deal agencies, established by act of Congress, will raise capital; implement labor force strategies; organize funding for infrastructure such as transmission lines, railways, and pipelines; fund research and development; set and monitor energy efficiency standards for buildings, appliances, and equipment; train and retrain workers and professionals; set industrial location policies; and coordinate the multifaceted activities of federal agencies, state and municipal governments, corporations, and civil society organizations.Government initiative is necessary to cut through inertia, bottlenecks, and bureaucratic red tape.
Use government to plan the transition. Climate protection requires the capacity to make long-range plans that affect many aspects of life. Planning climate protection is in some ways similar to planning the nation's transportation system. It requires making decisions, such as whether to build highways or railways, that will shape the life of the country for decades to come. It requires the technical capacity to design and engineer such complex systems. It requires taking into account a wide range of economic, environmental, and social factors--and maximizing beneficial side effects while minimizing undesirable ones.
Use regulatory powers to freeze, phase-out, and replace all fossil fuel infrastructure. In 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt banned the production of passenger cars to allow the reorganization of industry for war production. The goals of the GND require a similar, though more gradual, managed decline in fossil fuel production and use and its replacement by fossil-free energy. Such a transition should be enforced by the regulatory powers of government. State Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) provide an example. A national RPS should require replacement of fossil fuel energy by renewable energy at the annual rate necessary to meet GND goals. Similar standards should be developed for conversion of transportation, buildings, industry, and all other GHG-producing sectors.
Establish Green New Deal agencies for reorganizing economic sectors. A fossil-free economy will require transformation not just of individual workplaces and companies, nor just of the economy as a whole, but of specific industries and economic sectors. Industry-wide planning is necessary to capture synergies and economies of scale, establish level playing fields, and ensure that different parts of an emerging climate protection system work together--large-scale, long-term coordinations that cannot be provided by the market. Here, public climate policies, industry-wide collective bargaining, and cooperation among businesses in the same industry need to go hand in hand.
A prime example of such cooperation was the reconstruction of the U.S. auto industry under President Obama's economic recovery plan. Auto corporations and the UAW agreed to a large, long-term increase in energy efficiency to cut carbon emissions. This involved cooperative planning for retooling the industry, large-scale federal support for developing new technology, and substantial public investment in modernizing the industry on a low-carbon basis. The result was a steady decrease in carbon pollution rates, an increase of jobs for auto workers, and an end to the crisis that threatened to nearly eliminate auto production in the United States.
Similar sectoral programs are necessary for electricity, transportation, agriculture, forestry, manufacturing, waste management, finance, and many other industries.
Use the tools of macroeconomic policy. The New Deal used the tools of what came to be known as macroeconomic or Keynesian economic policy to steer the economy as a whole. To fight unemployment and support New Deal programs it used fiscal policy, such as budget deficits, and monetary policy, such as low interest rates. While neoliberalism has condemned Keynesian macroeconomic policies designed to provide full employment, the abandonment of such steering led to the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression and an ongoing aftermath of income polarization and impoverishment for working people. The GND should apply macroeconomic policies that ensure full employment to reduce the fear that climate protection may threaten prosperity, and also to give working people a greater stake in the transition.
Use the powers of government to rectify past and present injustices. Jobs protecting the climate will be made available to those individuals and groups who have been denied equal access to good jobs. Job recruitment should include strong racial, gender, age, and locational affirmative action to counter our current employment inequalities. Programs will require standards for local hiring and minority business enterprises. Programs need to provide job ladders within and across employers lest those who currently face only dead-end jobs continue to face only dead-end jobs in the climate protection economy.
GND projects will remedy the concentration of pollution in marginalized and low-income communities and counter the deprivation of transportation, education, health, and other facilities in poor neighborhoods.
Protect low-income energy consumers. Current fossil fuel energy costs are themselves a prime source of poverty and economic inequality. The GND should ensure that the energy bills of low-income families are affordable - generally defined as 6 percent of gross household income. The combination of investments in solar energy, efficiency, and weatherization will reduce the amount of assistance needed; in many cases, the bills will be below six percent of income, eliminating the need for assistance. All new public and publicly subsidized low-income housing should be net-zero with solar panels onsite and/or offsite.
Empower community-led initiatives. Today, a large swath of community-based, local, and regional programs are already engaged in promoting the transition to a climate-safe economy and society. Even in a government-led transition, they can on their own initiative implement community-based renewable energy production such as rooftop solar collectors, energy use reduction measures such as residential weatherization, financial mobilization through community investment funds, and new patterns of consumption such as shared bicycles. Perhaps most important, they can provide both popular participation in the transition to climate protection and a means to hold the institutions of transition accountable.
Democratize democracy. The Green New Deal agencies need to meet the highest level of transparency and be subject to internal inspectors-general and the Government Accountability Office and specialized equivalents. An oversight agency independent of the executive branch should supervise the agencies and report to Congress and the public on their progress, identify problems and failures, and initiate course corrections.
The GND should establish standards for democratically-determined climate action plans at every level similar to the environmental impact statements legally mandated by many environmental laws. The GND should encourage local community groups, coalitions, and governments to develop and implement their own climate action plans at the community level and require such plans for all projects it funds.
Mobilize labor
A Green New Deal mobilization will require millions of workers. During World War II, the War Labor Board actively recruited workers to regions and industries where they were most needed and government took the leading role in the rapid expansion of education, training, child care, and housing for the new workforce. Today, a labor reserve of more than 20 million people who are unemployed, underemployed, or outside the labor force could be available to go to work protecting the climate. The GND will need to match these workers to the employment sectors where they are needed and match the jobs to the needs of the workers.
Leave no worker behind. While climate protection will produce far more jobs than it eliminates, it may also threaten the jobs of some workers in fossil fuel producing and using industries. It is unjust that any worker should suffer through no fault of their own because of a policy that is necessary to protect society. A Green New Deal must create alternative jobs and/or livelihoods or face mass unemployment--and a resulting rebellion against climate protection.
Generally, jobs should be made available in the locations where workers are or want to be using their existing skills and providing comparable wages and conditions. Employers must retrain and find jobs for those affected; give them priority for new jobs; provide economic benefits that allow not only a decent livelihood but a start on a new life; ensure decent retirement benefits for those who choose it; and invest in local communities to provide them a future beyond fossil fuels. All impacted workers and communities should be included in a deliberative process and have a voice in shaping transition plans.
Protecting threatened workers and communities dependent on fossil fuel jobs needs to start beforedevastating economic disruption begins. The Green New Deal will establish community and worker protection funds to collect money in advance to replace taxes and fees paid by fossil fuel facilities and to invest in good jobs in affected communities. It will target investments in fossil fuel energy communities designed to create jobs before or at the pace that fossil fuel jobs are declining.
Guarantee jobs for all. To counter the insecurity of working class life in general and the specific fear that climate protection may lead to job loss, climate protection policies need to incorporate the principle of a job for everyone who wants one. Where other policies have not led to full employment, government should serve as the employer of last resort for all who want to work, putting them to work on climate protection and other socially needed activities. The federal jobs guarantee (JG) envisions a federal program somewhat like the New Deal's Works Progress Administration (WPA) that would provide funds for non-profit organizations, local governments, and other agencies serving the public to employ anyone who wants a job at a wage roughly comparable to the demands of the Fight for $15 campaign.
The JG will not exclude any individual or group of people who want to work. It will make whatever special provisions are necessary to employ veterans, at-risk youth, ex-convicts, people with disabilities, and other people with special needs and/or barriers to employment. The jobs provided by this program will pay an estimated $15 per hour plus benefits, including health insurance. Because it guarantees that every person who wishes to work can find a public-option job with a wage twice the current federal minimum wage plus benefits, the JG will establish a standard that must be met by all employers in the private, public, or nonprofit sectors, ensuring that no working person will live in poverty. It will provide education, training, and apprenticeship opportunities.
Ensure worker rights and good union jobs. The Green New Deal needs to include pay and benefit standards that provide a decent life and future for working families. It needs to support "high road" employers, prevailing wage provisions like those required by the Davis-Bacon Act, and project labor agreements negotiated between unions and employers to ensure that climate protection jobs elevate rather than depress wages and working conditions.
The Green New Deal - like the original New Deal - must establish a new framework that protects workers' fundamental Constitutional and human rights. Reinforcing the rights of workers to express themselves freely, organize, bargain collectively, and engage in concerted action on the jobshould be an explicit part of GND, as it was for war industries during mobilization for World War II.
Mobilize money and material resources
When people hear about the Green New Deal they are likely to wonder, "where will the money come from?" They understandably fear that the costs will be enormous and that they will have to bear that burden through higher taxes. But this ignores the fact that a fossil free economy will be much cheaper than the current fossil fuel model. It also fails to take into account the opportunity for correcting our extreme inequality by taxing the rich to help pay for climate protection. It disregards the trillions of dollars that American banks, corporations, and investors have lying unused in their bank accounts - much of it from government giveaways they have received as "economic stimulus." And it ignores the enormous resources of the fossil fuel industry that should be used to pay for the damage they have done to the earth and every one of its people. The GND will use the financial benefits of fossil-free energy, the trillions of dollars given away to corporations and the wealthy in tax breaks and subsidies, and the wealth of the fossil fuel industry itself to ensure that ordinary Americans are far better off as a result of the transition to climate safety.
Capture the benefits of the transition to fossil free energy. Fossil-free energy is now cost-efficient--it is cheaper and provides more benefits than burning fossil fuels. In the long run climate protection will pay for itself.
Large investments currently go to maintaining, replacing, and expanding fossil fuel infrastructure. The GND will redirect that investment stream to building a fossil free economy, replacing lost energy jobs, and other GND programs. Likewise all the money that would have been spent on coal, oil, and gas can go into the pockets of consumers and help pay for the GND.
Make the polluters pay. The fossil fuel industry can and should bear much of the burden for the damage it does to humanity and the planet through taxes, fees, permit costs, and other charges which can be used to pay for the GND. Tax policy can help discourage carbon emissions while reversing our growing income inequality. Progressive taxation, particularly on carbon-wasting luxury goods like private jets, can counteract negative effects on income equality. Another potential source for funding the transition to climate safety can be legal damages and fines collected from corporations for environmentally harmful practices. The GND should include litigation and legislation to hold fossil fuel producers and emitters responsible for their colossal damage to the atmosphere--and the colossal cost of remediating it.
Cut wasteful and unnecessary spending. The United States now spends as much on the military as the next seven highest spenders combined. The use of this money, aside from pure waste, has been for a series of wars, many of them illegal under national and international law, none of which has been successful, all of which have caused incalculable human and material harm, and none of which has contributed to the security of the American people. Many of them have been motivated by the pursuit of fossil fuels and all have contributed to global warming. Confronting climate change will reduce conflict and promote global peace and security. Transfer of funds from the military budget to the GND would enhance the security of individuals and our country.
Mobilize investment. Public borrowing through bond sales can provide substantial and inexpensive funds due to the ability of the Federal Reserve to buy public infrastructure bonds at low rates. Public purpose banks, credit unions, and investment and loan funds can provide more decentralized financial resources, especially for smaller-scale and community-based projects. If need be, the Federal Reservecan simply buy infrastructure bonds, just as it did with Treasury securities in 1940 to finance the war effort.
The GND will establish a program of climate bonds for the public like the war bonds of World War II. These should be a good investment for individuals, particularly as an alternative to today's gutted pension plans and unattractive retirement investments. If we are to subsidize energy investment, the benefits should go first and foremost not to the 1% but to ordinary citizens who can use them to increase their economic security and retirement savings.
Support and fund a Global Green New Deal. Realizing the goals of the GND requires global cooperation. Governments must work together to create a global framework that supports climate-friendly jobs and development--what has been called a "Global Green New Deal." That requires the world to abandon neoliberalism and adopt a new strategy that puts the world's human resources to work meeting the world's desperate need for economic transformation that radically reduces GHG emissions.
A global climate protection investment fund is necessary on a scale that mobilizes all under-utilized human and material resources worldwide. Rather than fighting each other for climate-protecting jobs, workers in different countries will benefit from national policies and international agreements that encourage countries to cooperate in sharing green technologies and expanding production for climate protection. Legally binding international agreements must phase out and ban the use of fossil fuels worldwide. Both climate protection and economic cooperation ultimately require demilitarization and policies of global common security.
Globalization, neoliberalism, and free-trade agreements have pitted the workers of the world against each other in a fight for climate-protecting jobs. A GND will not pit workers against workers and discourage the growth of climate-protecting industries and jobs abroad. It will oppose both escalating trade wars and the free trade utopia of neoliberalism. Instead, it will pursue mutually managed trade that encourages all countries to develop their climate protection industries and technologies as rapidly as possible, while allowing the benefits to be shared in a way that protects workers in both developing countries and developed countries--not to mention the planet as a whole.
Conclusion
The original New Deal of the 1930s was not a single program or piece of legislation - it was a whole era of turmoil in which contesting forces tried to meet a devastating crisis and shape the future of American society. The New Deal was part of a process of social change that included experimentation at a state, regional, and local level; organization among labor, unemployed, rural, urban, elderly, and other grassroots constituencies; and lively debate on future alternatives that went far beyond the policies actually implemented.
In practice the GND will similarly involve competing ideas and programs pushed - in alliance and opposition - by a wide range of constituencies and organizations that support the broad concept but disagree about details. Like the original New Deal, the GND is trying to do something that has never been done before; we will have to learn from experience and experiment and correct the mistakes we will inevitably make along the way. But with these strategies we can make a start in the right direction.
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The US Can Go Fossil Free -- Here's How
The world must go fossil free - and fast. But the proposals for reducing greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions that the US and other countries are proposing for next month's climate summit in Paris will still allow nearly twice as much global warming as scientists -- and even those very governments -- say is compatible with civilization as we know it.
Americans have often been told that meeting scientific climate targets is impossible without threatening jobs and costing a fortune. But a new report shows that the opposite is true.
Nov 24, 2015
The world must go fossil free - and fast. But the proposals for reducing greenhouse gas [GHG] emissions that the US and other countries are proposing for next month's climate summit in Paris will still allow nearly twice as much global warming as scientists -- and even those very governments -- say is compatible with civilization as we know it.
Americans have often been told that meeting scientific climate targets is impossible without threatening jobs and costing a fortune. But a new report shows that the opposite is true.
The Clean Energy Future: Protecting the Climate, Creating Jobs and Saving Money by the respected economist Frank Ackerman and his colleagues at Synapse Energy Economics, shows that the US could dramatically cut greenhouse gas emission and move towards 100% renewable energy by 2050 -- while adding half-a-million jobs and saving Americans billions of dollars on their electrical, heating, and transportation costs.
The report comes from what some might consider strange bedfellows - a labor organization and an environmental group. But the sponsors of the report, the Labor Network for Sustainability and 350.org, are joining hands to encourage an economic pathway that will meet America's obligation to protect the climate in a jobs- and consumer-friendly way.
The Clean Energy Future lays out an aggressive strategy for energy efficiency and renewable energy that will:
- Transform the electric system, cutting coal-fired power in half by 2030 and eliminating it by 2050; building no new nuclear plants; and reducing the use of natural gas far below business-as-usual levels.
- Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, in the sectors analyzed (which account for three-quarters of US GHG emissions).
- Save money - the cost of electricity, heating, and transportation under this plan is $78 billion less than current projections from now through 2050.
- Create new jobs - more than 500,000 per year over business as usual projections through 2050, mostly in the relatively high-paid manufacturing and construction sectors.
Why is this possible? The "Clean Energy Future" does not depend on any new technical breakthroughs to realize these gains, only a continuation of current trends in energy efficiency and renewable energy costs - but the cost of renewables is falling so fast that they are already cheaper than fossil fuel energy in some places and soon will be in most. And reducing our energy use through energy efficiency is already far cheaper than burning more fossil fuels. "The Clean Energy Future" shows in detail how we can use these new energy realities to meet our climate goals.
Climate protection strategy can be designed to provide the maximum number of good, secure, permanent jobs with education, training, and advancement that provide maximum possible improvement in our job shortage. Because some jobs will be lost in fossil-fuel related industries, we need a vigorous program to provide new, high-quality jobs and/or dignified retirement for workers in those industries. Climate protection programs should include job pathways and strong affirmative action provisions for those groups that have been excluded from good jobs in the past.
The Clean Energy Future plan provides a floor, not a ceiling, for what can be accomplished. It shows how we can meet climate goals with no net cost, and that doing so will create more jobs. But we can, and indeed should, do more. By accelerating implementation of the plan and expanding efforts to other sectors we can approach zero net GHG emissions before 2050. That will take more up-front investment - but it will also create more jobs.
The Clean Energy Future will help bring together environmental and labor advocates around their common interest in putting Americans to work saving the earth's climate. Climate protection has caused significant friction between labor unions and environmentalists around whether to create jobs or address climate change. The report demonstrates that this is a false choice. For unions and other jobs advocates, climate protection is also a great jobs program. We can create many more jobs by protecting the environment than by expanding the fossil fuel infrastructure.
The Clean Energy Future represents a pathway away from climate destruction that is also far better for workers and consumers than our current pathway based on fossil fuels. Should we let greed and inertia prevent us from taking it?
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Clean Energy Strategy Must Map Way to Climate Goal
Sep 11, 2015
Climate is back on the agenda. The Environmental Protection Agency issued its Clean Power Plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation by nearly one-third by 2030. Pope Francis' galvanizing encyclical put climate change on the world's moral agenda. And now Islamic scholars from 20 countries are demanding substantive commitments from the Paris climate negotiations opening Nov. 30.
Meanwhile, global temperatures made July the warmest month ever recorded, and 2015 is on track to be the hottest year. How can Connecticut do its part to help protect ourselves and the world from devastating global warming? One way is to reconsider the state's climate protection strategy.
The core of climate protection is to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy and to increase the efficiency with which we use our energy. Despite recently ramping up our rooftop solar and energy efficiency programs, the state's current energy strategy continues to increase our dependence on fossil fuels, especially natural gas.
Renewable energy sources like wind and solar are becoming cheaper at an extraordinary rate. Clean, local energy resources like shared solar, combined heat and power, geo-targeted energy efficiency and energy storage are increasingly ready to replace traditional, large-scale and top-down production and distribution on the power grid. A new Connecticut strategy will consider the benefits of these clean energy alternatives when evaluating potential investments in regional electricity and gas transmission infrastructure that would lock us into risky dependence on large-scale energy imports for decades to come.
Connecticut just rebooted its climate protection program. On Earth Day, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy appointed a new Governor's Council on Climate Change. He reaffirmed the goal laid out in the Global Warming Solutions Act: an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions from 2001 levels by 2050. He charged the council to design a plan to meet that 2050 goal and to mobilize our people and institutions to make it happen.
It is easy to talk the climate protection talk while leaving the heavy lifting to future decades. The council will set interim targets to put us on track to meet the 2050 goal. Best would be annual benchmarks with a steady year-on-year rate of reduction that does not force the next generation to make the most significant cuts.
The EPA's new Clean Power Plan offers an opportunity to jump-start our new climate strategy. The Clean Energy Incentive Program will support early investments in renewable energy projects and energy efficiency in low-income communities. That's exactly the directional shift we need for our energy policy.
Meeting our greenhouse gas emission reduction targets will require heavy lifting, but it can also provide important benefits for the people of our state. Phasing out polluting fossil fuel facilities will contribute to improved public health, especially in the low-income communities most vulnerable to such pollution.
A new energy strategy will also provide good, stable jobs in a growing climate protection sector: manufacturing jobs, jobs for those who have been marginalized in the current labor market and jobs for skilled union workers in the construction trades. The governor's council should prioritize creating Connecticut jobs, providing a just transition for any displaced workers and ensuring sustained, orderly development to prevent the boom-and-bust cycles that are devastating for workers and vendors.
The greatest climate protection plan will be pointless if it is not backed by a broad public determination to implement it. Since working families and low-income urban communities face the greatest potential impacts from climate change, the council should ensure the voices of environmental justice communities and labor are fully represented in climate policy deliberations.
Winning the struggle against climate change will require that all of us hold each other and our institutions accountable for setting and achieving ambitious aims. As Gov. Malloy concluded in his remarks to the new council, "we should not waste the opportunity to lead. ... let's get the job done."
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The EPA's Clean Power Plan: How Unions and Allies Can Protect Affected Workers
Aug 07, 2015
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has just issued the final text of the Clean Power Plan (CPP), a regulation whose purpose is to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) that climate scientists say are causing global warming. EPA and independent studies indicate that the CPP will create far more jobs than it eliminates. However, some jobs will be lost as a result of the plan, almost entirely concentrated in coal mining and electrical utilities. Affected workers and their communities should not have to bear the burden of environmental protection that benefits all. Public policy can and should provide a "just transition" that protects their wellbeing.
The EPA has released a "regulatory impact analysis" of job and other effects of the CPP. Dr. Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) conducted a further analysis to evaluate and extend the EPA findings and has produced the recently-released study "A Comprehensive Analysis of the Employment Impacts of the EPA's Clean Power Plan."
Jobs Lost, Jobs Gained
Between now and 2020, the CPP will require large investments in renewable energy and energy efficiency. It will also reduce jobs in power plants and mining. The new "direct" jobs created by 2020 will outnumber the jobs lost by 96,000 jobs.
Despite the overall job gains, the CPP will also cause job losses for two groups of workers.
Coal mining jobs:
- 12,600 fewer in 2020
- 15,300 fewer in 2025
- 17,300 in 2030
Electric power generation, transmission, and distribution jobs
- 11,633 fewer in 2020
- 20,425 fewer in 2025
- 24,300 fewer in 2030
The jobs lost as a result of the CPP are relatively well-paid and are held disproportionately by unionized older white male workers with relatively little formal education. Industries losing jobs are 16.7% unionized whereas those gaining jobs are 9.7% unionized. The biggest job loses will be concentrated in a few states, most of them relatively low-income.
Jobs for coal miners have been decreasing for decades and will no doubt continue to decrease with or without the CPP. The Obama administration's 2015 budget proposed a "Power+ Plan" to provide new investments for economic transition in central Appalachia. It includes:
- $1 billion over five years to restore lands and waters degraded by decades-old mining and support related sustainable development projects.
- $56 million to invest in job training for laid-off miners and to support economic development efforts in Central Appalachian mining communities. This figure includes an additional $20 million in job training for miners and power plant workers; an increase of $25 million for the Appalachian Regional Commission's annual budget, to be directed at "communities most impacted by coal economic transition"; $6 million more to the Department of Commerce for "place-based regional innovation efforts," including grants to economically distressed communities; and $5 million more for the EPA's brownfields program to help communities deal with the closure of coal-fired power plants.
- $3.9 billion over 10 years to shore up health and retirement benefits for many retired miners.
The Power+ Plan can serve as a starting point for a comprehensive plan to counter the negative job effects of the CPP. A possible model would be the highly successful process that helped local communities adjust to the disruption and job shifting that resulted from the closing of military bases under the Base Realignment and Closing Commission (BRAC). Those communities were provided a wide range of Federal assistance, including planning and economic adjustment assistance, environmental cleanup, Community Development Block Grants, and Community Service Grants.
Workers dislocated by base closings also received extensive support. The Department of Defense itself provided advance notification of a reduction in force; pre-separation counseling; a hiring preference system with federal agencies to re-employ qualified displaced DOD employees; financial incentives to encourage early retirement of those eligible. Workers affected by base closings were also eligible for help under National Emergency Grants, "Rapid Response" programs, comprehensive assessments and development of individual employment plans, and job training.
Communities and individuals adversely affected by the CPP could be similarly targeted for assistance from such existing programs as the Department of Labor's Rapid Response Services and the National Emergency Grants of the DOL's Employment and Training Administration, as well as funding for economic development and industrial efficiency and modernization from the Departments of Energy and Commerce.
Because the needed resources are scattered among many different government agencies, the first step might be to establish an interagency task force composed of US agency officials overseeing issues of employment, energy, and the environment. Their first task could be to create a transition package for coal miners, utility workers, and other affected workers that would provide robust financial and training support and preferential access to the new jobs created by environmental protection policies. That could be combined with vigorous support for economic planning and investment in the communities affected by the CPP, focusing on the development of new clean energy industries.
The struggle in the states
According to the New York Times, "If the regulation survives the lobbyists and lawyers intact, the battles will move to state capitals as businesses, environmentalists and lawmakers joust in 50 separate arenas over the scope of the resulting rules." The arenas of those battles will include state legislatures, governors' offices, and utility regulators. Unions and their allies have both an interest in and an opportunity to participate in shaping state CPPs.
Unions can encourage state plans that provide the maximum number of good jobs. That is likely to mean plans with a high level of clean energy investments. Clean energy investments require more labor than equivalent fossil fuel investments - they are more labor intensive. They also use a higher proportion of labor within the US - they have a higher domestic content. Each "direct job" creating clean energy will produce .7 "indirect jobs" for suppliers and .4 "induced jobs" that result from the wages workers spend. Energy efficiency investments produce the most jobs of all. Indeed, increases in energy efficiency investments account for more than half the CPP's direct job gains for 2020 and all the gains for 2025 and 2030. The also account for a large proportion of the indirect job increases. Unions have an interest in promoting state CPPs that emphasize clean energy and particularly energy efficiency investments.
Unions can push for state CPPs that provide a "just transition" for coal and utility industry workers and their communities. This can include state programs and legal and regulatory requirements on electric utility companies.
Unions can encourage CPPs that promote environmental justice for working class and poor communities. Coal-fired power plants are heavily concentrated in less affluent communities, so downsizing or closing them will immediately improve those community's health and environment. But because such communities are often politically weak or disfranchised, there is always a risk that CPPs will emphasize programs that leave them as or even more vulnerable to health and environmental threats.
Finally, unions can support CPPs that protect their members, their communities, and their posterity by ensuring genuine, effective, and rapid cuts in GHG emissions to protect the global climate. Climate change is a here-and-now threat to workers as to all of us. CCPs that effectively protect the climate are a protection for workers and their unions against unimaginable catastrophe.
Unions can pursue CPPs that reflect jobs, just transition, environmental justice, and climate protection objectives by building alliances among environmentalists, labor, and environmental justice advocates. Such plans are likely to emphasize renewable energy, energy efficiency, manufacturing, and conservation. With strong alliances built around effective unifying plans, unions can be a powerful force in shaping state CPPs.
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In Stand for People and Planet Over Profit, Green Groups Back Oil Worker Strike
Oil refinery workers on the 'front lines' of protecting communities from fossil fuel hazards stage biggest industry work stoppage in 30 years
Feb 03, 2015
In what may seem like an unlikely alliance, environmental groups are throwing their full support behind oil industry workers who on Sunday announced a widespread work stoppage over complaints that Big Oil companies "value production and profit over health and safety."
The strike, which marks the largest national strike of oil workers since 1980, was called by the United Steelworkers Union (USW) after negotiations with Royal Dutch Shell, which is leading the industry-wide bargaining effort, broke down.
"The oil companies do not want to work with us to improve the workplace and safety at oil refineries and facilities," said USW International vice president of administration Tom Conway in a statement announcing the strike. Conway said the problem is that oil companies "are too greedy to make a positive change in the workplace and they continue to value production and profit over health and safety, workers and the community."
Workers from nine refineries across the U.S. have committed to the stoppage and, so far, the strike has caused one refinery to suspend its operations--the Tesoro Martinez Refinery in Martinez, California. The strike has been called at five Texas-based refineries, two California sites, and one each in Kentucky and Washington state.
"Oil refinery workers are in the front line of protecting our communities against the environmental hazards of the oil industry."
--Joe Uehlein, Labor Network for Sustainability
Meanwhile, calls for solidarity have grown, particularly from the environmental community, which argues that workers who stand between the planet and the potential devastation posed by the fossil fuel industry ought to be valued and protected.
"So often as we fight Big Oil it can be hard to remember that the impacts of the industry and the fight for safer communities extend both inside and outside the fence lines," wrote David Turnbull, campaigns director of Oil Change International, in a statement of solidarity on Monday.
"This is a high-risk industry from cradle-to-grave and we are fortunate to have highly skilled professionals that do their best to prevent the worst," Turnbull added.
"Oil refinery workers are in the front line of protecting our communities against the environmental hazards of the oil industry. Their skill and experience is critical for preventing devastating explosions, spills, and releases," said Joe Uehlein, executive director of the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS).
This week, LNS issued an open call to environmentalists, climate activists, and other allies of organized labor to support the oil worker strike, saying that the laborers are fighting for "conditions that are safe and healthy for workers and communities" and that they deserve the support of activists and "everyone concerned about the rights and well-being of working people."
Steelworkers International vice president Gary Beevers, who heads the union's National Oil Bargaining Program, said that the stoppage is in part to protect workers and communities from the "dangerous conditions the industry continues to ignore."
"It's a pattern we've seen again and again--oil executives prioritizing their own profits over the well-being of everyone else."
--Michael Brune, Sierra Club
Beevers continued: "This work stoppage is about onerous overtime; unsafe staffing levels; dangerous conditions the industry continues to ignore; the daily occurrences of fires, emissions, leaks and explosions that threaten local communities without the industry doing much about it; the industry's refusal to make opportunities for workers in the trade crafts; the flagrant contracting out that impacts health and safety on the job; and the erosion of our workplace, where qualified and experienced union workers are replaced by contractors when they leave or retire."
"Oil companies have created conditions that endanger not only the safety and health of their own employees, but that of nearby communities," said Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune. "It's a pattern we've seen again and again--oil executives prioritizing their own profits over the well-being of everyone else."
Advocates note that many of the issues being fought for are symptoms of an energy industry bent on exploiting volatile and polluting fossil fuels at the risk of public health and planet.
"We look forward to the day when energy industry workers are able to focus on safer, just, and more stable jobs in a clean energy economy and aren't tied to the profiteering whims of big oil," said Turnbull.
According to Uehlein, the plight of workers--including those employed by the oil and gas industry--should not be separate from the broader goals of those who campaign for social, economic, and climate justice. In turn, he argues, organized labor must recognize its shared interest with those vying for a healthier planet. "As we work to protect the earth from climate change," he said, "it is particularly important that we advocate for the needs of workers in fossil fuel industries whose wellbeing must not be sacrificed to the necessity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions."
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