Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS)

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

The just-released anthology Power Lines: Building a Labor-Climate Justice Movement features an article by Maria Brescia-Weiler, LNS project manager for young worker organizing and Liz Ratzloff, LNS co-executive director, titled “Young Workers Can Bridge the Labor and Climate Movements.” They write:

Young workers have already demonstrated leadership on social and economic justice issues. From school climate strikes to nationwide protests against police brutality to recent union drives among the young workforces of Starbucks and Amazon, these workers are actively engaged in political work. But labor has been slow to capture the energy young workers can bring to the movement. […] If the labor movement doesn’t begin to invest in young workers, there is little chance that we will build the power needed to secure an ecologically sustainable and economically just future. Understanding the perspective of young workers is a crucial first step in bringing these workers into the labor movement.

Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, says of Power Lines:

The climate movement needs the labor movement to win a just transition. Power Lines is an essential how-to manual for organizers looking for the most creative, visionary, and practical strategies to bridge our movements.

And Frances Fox Piven, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, says:

This is a book that could brighten your life and stiffen your spine. These experienced and wise organizers search the world we share for the stories of movement uprisings that could spark something big enough to save us yet.

Power Lines is edited by Jeff Ordower and Lindsay Zafir and published by The New Press.

For more information: https://thenewpress.com/books/power-lines

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

The National Climate Assessment, issued every four years based on the work of scientists and other experts, is generally considered the US’ most authoritative report on how global warming is affecting the country. The recently issued fifth assessment puts environmental justice front and center, emphasizing that low-income families and communities of color have historically borne the brunt of the nation’s environmental harms while benefiting least from environmental regulation.

The report includes a chapter on “social systems and justice,” noting that societal factors, including historic racism, have shaped the climate reality experienced by many low-income families and communities of color today. The report notes as an example:

Areas that were historically redlined—a practice in which lenders avoided providing services to communities, often based on their racial or ethnic makeup—continue to be deprived of equitable access to environmental amenities like urban green spaces that reduce exposure to climate impacts. These neighborhoods can be as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit hotter during a heatwave than nearby wealthier neighborhoods.

Maria Lopez-Nunez, deputy director of the New Jersey-based social justice advocacy group Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark, and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, says the Fifth Assessment is going to go a long way to “helping the climate assessment feel a lot more relevant to the average person.”

For a summary of the National Climate Assessment: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14112023/biden-national-climate-asssessment-environmental-justiice/

For the full text of the National Climate Assessment: https://nca2023.globalchange.gov

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

According to the leading environmental publication Grist, “In 2023, organized labor became core to the climate movement.”

2023 was marked by symbiosis between the labor and climate movements. Workers across industries and geographies loudly declared that a world in which their safety and well-being are disregarded is even more dangerous to them and to others in a time of energy transition and climate crisis. After decades of hesitancy, several major unions recognized an urgent need to organize those who will do the hard work of decarbonizing the nation’s economy.”

The article by Katie Myers, Grist Climate Solutions Fellow, noted that, as public opinion and public policy have shifted in favor of organized labor, “calls for a just transition rattled union halls and corporate offices” as “organized labor enjoyed one of its most active years in recent memory” and “environmental organizations, long uncertain about where unions stood, found new allies.

The article describes numerous examples of union fights for climate protection. The reality of a warming world was a central concern for UPS, Amazon, and airport workers who demanded protection from extreme heat. And the UAW made a just transition a key demand in their strike against the auto Big Three. At the same time, “Environmental organizations became vocally supportive of labor this year, with Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and others supporting the UAW’s calls for a just EV transition.”

The article quotes J. Mijin Cha, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a co-author of the LNS report “Workers and Communities in Transition”: “The UAW strike showed the vision a lot of people have been looking for.”

For the full article: https://grist.org/labor/in-2023-organized-labor-became-core-to-the-climate-movement/

For the LNS report “Workers and Communities in Transition”: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/jtlp-2021/

By Benjamin Fong and Jeremey Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2023

Workers in the Great Depression were beaten down but desperate for change. When a militant new labor federation, the Congress of Industrial Organizations, raised their sense of political possibility, they seized the opportunity and unionized en masse.

The following is an interview conducted for Organize the Unorganized: The Rise of the CIO, a Jacobin podcast series produced in collaboration with the Center for Work and Democracy.

By members of the UAW Solidarity Committee - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

In September 2023, the United Auto Workers union (UAW) went on strike against the Big Three automakers — Ford, GM, and Stellantis. After more than a month of picket lines and bold strike tactics, the union has ratified contracts with the Big Three. Those contracts are historic, enshrining major raises, good union jobs in the transition to electric vehicles, and more. This brief lays out an overview of how the strike started, what the workers won, and key next steps for the UAW and their allies in the movements for environmental, social and racial justice.

Background on the Strike

The UAW’s strike has its roots in the 2008 recession, when the union was forced to make major concessions in exchange for critical financial assistance to the Big Three. In the 15 years since first accepting a two-tiered wage system with slower progression to top pay rates, no cost-of-living adjustment (COLA), and deteriorating retirement benefits, the union has been unsuccessful in walking those concessions back.

As workers continued to suffer under those austerity measures, the Big Three’s profits soared. From 2013 to 2022, the automakers collectively raked in $250 billion of profit and spent $66 billion on shareholder dividends and stock buybacks. In the last four years alone, their CEOs’ pay has shot up by 40%. The automakers have simultaneously undercut worker pay and benefits in the transition to electric vehicles, claiming that a legal loophole exempted them from putting new battery plants under their master agreements with UAW.

Autoworkers, frustrated after years of these widening disparities, elected UAW President Shawn Fain on a promise to take a harder line in future contract negotiations. So when the Big Three refused to meet UAW’s demands for their new contracts, the union struck the Big 3 automakers all at once for the first time in their history.

By staff - Clean Up Kingspan, January 22, 2024

Over two dozen environmental and community organizations – including Greenpeace, 350.org, Food and Water Watch, and the California Green New Deal Coalition – have issued a public letter calling on SCS Global Services to investigate the completeness and accuracy of claims made by insulation manufacturer Kingspan in an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for its star product, QuadCore insulated metal panels. SCS Global provided the third-party verification for the QuadCore EPD in 2022, but it has since acknowledged that it was not required to and did not perform a site audit to verify the information Kingspan submitted. 

Kingspan is a $15 billion global manufacturer of building products which presents itself as “Planet Passionate.” California-based SCS Global Services is one of the leading players offering environmental labeling and certification services including Fair Trade and Carbon Neutral Certifications.

In their open letter, the green groups note that the EPD omits mention of certain labor- and waste-intensive manufacturing processes that were at the center of an OSHA complaint filed by Kingspan workers in September 2023. This apparent omission is raising concerns that the increased demand for products with EPDs and the lack of site audits by third-party verifiers may be presenting an opportunity for greenwashing. 

By Bob Buzzcanco, Scott Parkin, and Jeremey Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 14, 2023

In the latest Green and Red Podcast, Bob and Scott talk with author, labor historian and activist Jeremy Brecher who’s been engaged at the intersection of labor, the environment, and the climate for decades. Over 50 years ago, Jeremy authored “Strike,” a labor history classic. And then more recently he’s worked at the intersection of the labor and climate movements. We talk with Jeremy about strikes, unions, and union leadership since he first published “Strike;” the recent “Hot Labor Summer” of 2023; the labor-climate movements and much more.

Jeremy Brecher is a writer, historian, and activist who is the author of more than a dozen books on labor and social movements. His works include the labor history classic “Strike” and “Against Doom: A Climate Insurgency Manual.” Jeremy is also a Senior Advisor for the Labor Network for Sustainability.

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 3, 2024

The appeal of the Green New Deal lies in its drawing together the varied needs of diverse constituencies into a common program that realizes them all. Here’s how that works at the sub-national level.

By Todd E. Vachon - American Federation of Teachers, January 2024

On Sunday, October 28, 2012, teachers across the Northeast were glued to their television sets to watch the latest weather forecast about the approaching hurricane. Schools would be closed Monday. Emergencies were declared, line crews were summoned, shelters were prepared, and command centers were opened. New York City made the unprecedented decision to stop all subway service.

As feared, Superstorm Sandy arrived with a vengeance the next evening, knocking out power for eight million people across 17 states, destroying countless homes, rendering the NYC subway system nonoperational, and closing all 1,750 of the city’s schools for a week. Dozens of damaged schools remained shuttered even longer, forcing students to share buildings with other schools, sometimes in distant boroughs of the city. Over 100 deaths were attributed to the storm, including at least one teacher. As with previous extreme storms such as Hurricane Katrina that hit the Gulf Coast in 2005 or later storms like Hurricane Maria that ravaged Puerto Rico in 2017, it was the working class and poor—the frontline communities—who were hit first and worst.

Nine years later, New York and New Jersey were devastated again by Hurricane Ida while still continuing to shore up infrastructure ruined by Sandy. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration places the total cost of Superstorm Sandy at over $70 billion—possibly the costliest to ever hit the region, making it the most economically devastating event to hit New York City since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

While individual weather events like Sandy cannot be directly attributed to climate change, their likelihood, frequency, and intensity are all increased by climate change. As the Earth warms, storms that used to happen once a century are now happening more frequently, and the impacts on students, teachers, and communities are devastating. This article explores some of the causes of the climate crisis, including its relationship to social and economic inequality, and what educators can do—and many already are doing—through their unions to promote climate justice and equity in their schools and communities. Perhaps your local union will be the next to take bold climate action and become a part of the solution by helping to forge your own local Green New Deal and joining the national effort.

By Katie Myers - Grist, December 20, 2023

2023 was marked by symbiosis between the labor and climate movements. Workers across industries and geographies loudly declared that a world in which their safety and well-being are disregarded is even more dangerous to them and to others in a time of energy transition and climate crisis. After decades of hesitancy, several major unions recognized an urgent need to organize those who will do the hard work of decarbonizing the nation’s economy. It doesn’t hurt that public sympathy, and policy, has grown friendlier toward them. As a result, calls for a just transition rattled union halls and corporate offices as organized labor enjoyed one of its most active years in recent memory and environmental organizations, long uncertain about where unions stood, found new allies.

“The choices and solutions are not really gonna work unless labor is involved with them,” said Dana Kuhnline, director of Reimagine Appalachia. It works with union leaders and environmental grassroots groups to bring good jobs to coalfield communities that need them. “I think that’s a lesson climate activists really have to take to heart.”

The reality of a warming world was a central concern for UPS, Amazon, and airport workers who demanded, and in many cases won, concessions protecting them from extreme heat. But the biggest gains were made by the 150,000 members of the reinvigorated United Auto Workers, or UAW, who made a just transition a key demand in one of the most high-profile strikes of the year. Though the union’s primary demands concerned wages and sick days, no small amount of negotiating focused on the looming transition to electric vehicles. Workers wanted to ensure the factories that will make that happen for Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis will be union shops, with wages and benefits equal to those provided at traditional auto factories. Forty years of internal organizing brought UAW to a place where it was willing and able to address energy transition, whereas in previous years, its leaders had gotten fidgety at the idea.