Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS)

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, September 30, 2023

On July 6, newly elected Mayor Brandon Johnson’s transition team provided the city plan for a “Chicago Green New Deal.” Mayor Johnson, a longtime Chicago teacher and union organizer, ran a social justice campaign stressing the disproportionate impacts polluting industry and changing climate have on communities of color and low-income neighborhoods. 

The environmental justice subcommittee of the mayor’s transition committee included 25 members from business, civic, social justice, and community-based organizations. Its recommendations focused on a Green New Deal for Chicago, a framework meant to serve “as guiding principles for our efforts to realize a cleaner, healthier, more just, and sustainable city.” Major goals include:

• Ensure effective environmental justice oversight and responsiveness
• Fully resource a new Department of Environment with a focus on environmental justice
• Achieve a Green New Deal for water
• Secure a just transition to an equitable, decarbonized Chicago
• Guarantee utilities are provided in a fair, equitable and affordable manner with an investment emphasis on communities facing the greatest utility burden
• Achieve a Green New Deal for schools 

The environmental justice recommendations also emphasized the need for job opportunities for communities in clean energy transition and other environmental efforts like accelerating lead service line replacement and electrification of buildings.

Jung Yoon, a co-chair of the environmental justice subcommittee and campaign director at Grassroots Collaborative, a coalition of community and labor organizations, said,

The framing is intentionally political and intentionally bold about using a frame of a Green New Deal to address environment and climate justice issues. I think there is a lot of excitement around how Chicago, as the third-largest city, can really pave the way to show what a Green New Deal in action can look like in our city so we can address current environmental and economic and racial disparities in a sustainable future.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, September 30, 2023

On August 14 Montana district court Judge Kathy Seeley declared Montana’s fossil fuel-promoting laws unconstitutional and enjoined their implementation. In a 103-page order, Judge Seeley said that by prohibiting government agencies from considering climate impacts when deciding whether or not to permit energy projects, Montana is contributing to the climate crisis and stopping the state from addressing that crisis. She found that every additional ton of greenhouse gas pollution warms the planet, and that harms to the plaintiffs “will grow increasingly severe and irreversible without science-based actions to address climate change”.

The case was brought by 16 plaintiffs aged five to 22, who argued that the state’s pro-fossil fuel policies violated provisions in the state constitution that guarantee a “clean and healthful environment.” While young people have been suing for a decade in state and federal courts for recognition of a constitutional right to a stable climate, this case marks the first time in US history that a court has ruled on the merits of the case that a government violated young people’s constitutional rights by promoting fossil fuels. Michael Gerrard of the Columbia University Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, said, “I think this is the strongest decision on climate change ever issued by any court.”

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, September 30, 2023

The federal government is launching a series of Rapid Response Teams (RRT) to help communities impacted by recent or impending closing of fossil fuel facilities.

RRTs are intended to work with energy communities who have experienced a recent or approaching fossil fuel facility closure to address worker and community needs using existing federal resources. RRT members work with community members to identify economic transformation and revitalization goals, figure out ways to pursue those goals, and make the connections between programs across the federal family and up and down levels of government. RRTs aim to understand the needs of communities and work to make sure barriers to meeting those needs are smoothed over.

The RRT program was initiated by the Interagency Working Group on Coal and Power Plant Communities and Economic Revitalization. There are four existing RRTs in Wyoming, the Four Corners, the Illinois Basin and Eastern Kentucky. “Each region has a unique set of challenges the RRTs aim to address, including workforce training, economic diversification, reclamation of legacy energy assets, broadband access, infrastructure improvements and more.” So far RRT locations have been chosen by identifying the regions with the highest loss of coal assets and with inadequate financial and local community resources to address those losses. 

If your community or region is interested in being considered for an RRT, contact contact@energycommunities.gov.

For more: https://energycommunities.gov/technical-assistance/rapid-response-teams/

By Sydney Ghazarian, Nima Shirazi, and Adam Johnson - Citations Needed, September 22, 2023

By Nick Wurst, Ashley McCollum, Yvette Arellano, Paul Lindsay, Helen Yost, Thomas Hanna, Magda Orlander, and Bakari Height - Labor Network for Sustainability, September 20, 2023

By Ted Franklin - Labor Rise, September 18, 2023

Labor Rise members helped organize a contingent of rank-and-file union members to join hundreds of other demonstrations in the End Fossil Fuels march and rally in Sacramento, California, on Sunday, September 17, 2023. We marched under the banner of Labor Network for Sustainability, a national organization building Labor/Climate movement solidarity. The Sacramento action was one of many in the United States during the international week of action to end fossil fuels. In New York City, where the United Nations gathered for meetings on climate, 75,000 people marched.

In Sacramento, where hundreds gathered, Labor Rise member Martha Hawthorne spoke on behalf of Labor Network for Sustainability:

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, September 5, 2023

Follow this link for a transcript of this podcast.

By Staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, August 30, 2023

UPS Workers Win Heat Protections Faced with a threatened strike – including “practice picket lines” — by its 340,000 union employees, UPS has agreed to a contract that provides major gains in wages and working conditions for its Teamsters’ members. The contract includes elimination of a “two-tier” wage rate; significant wage increases, especially for the lowest paid workers; and combining part-time jobs to provide new full-time jobs.

Sometimes lethal heat conditions have been a central issue for UPS workers. UPS has promised to equip all new package cars with air-conditioning and to install fans on older package cars. Section 14 of the contract states: 

All vans, pushbacks, fuel trucks, package cars, shifting units, and 24-foot box vans after January 2024 shall be equipped with A/C. Single fans will be installed in all package cars within 30 days of ratification and a second fan will be installed no later than June 1, 2024. Air-conditioned package cars will first be allocated to Zone 1 which is the hottest area of the country. All model year 2023 and beyond package cars and vans will be delivered with factory-installed heat shields and air induction vents for the package compartment. Within 18 months of ratification, all package cars will be retrofitted with heat shields and air induction vents. A Package Car Heat Committee will be established within 10 days of ratification for the purpose of studying methods of venting and insulating the package compartment. A decision must be made by October, 2024 or the issue will be submitted to the grievance procedure. The company will replace at least 28,000 package cars and vans during the life of the contract. 

The contract was overwhelmingly ratified by UPS union members on August 22.

By Maria Brescia-Weiler - Labor Network for Sustainability, August 30, 2023

On September 17 thousands of people will march in New York City calling on President Biden to make good on his promises to deliver a just transition for workers and our communities, to provide solutions to the economic and climate injustices we face, and to end fossil fuels. Five hundred organizations have endorsed the march. For more information on the March including list of endorsers visit https://www.endfossilfuels.us

The Labor Network for Sustainability is coordinating a labor hub for the march, because it is essential that working class environmentalism is at the forefront of any true transition to a more sustainable economy. We welcome workers and union members who will be in New York on September 17th to come march with us! Sign up here.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, August 30, 2023

Hundreds of workers at Amazon’s main headquarters in Seattle held a walkout May 31 to protest the company’s backtracking on its commitments to climate protection.

A statement by Amazon Employees for Climate Justice condemned the company’s recent admission that it had dropped its commitment to its “Shipment Zero” policy, which pledged in 2019 to reduce carbon emissions to net zero on 50% of its shipments by 2030.

A worker quoted in the statement said, “I’m appalled that senior leadership quietly abandoned one of the key goals in the climate pledge. It’s yet another sign that leadership still doesn’t put climate impact at the center of their decision-making. That’s why I walked out.”

Amazon Employees for Climate Justice accused Amazon of undercounting its carbon footprint, disproportionately locating pollution-heavy operations in communities of color, and working to undercut clean energy legislation.

The demonstration also protested Amazon’s mandatory return-to-office policies.