Earth Srike: Intersecting Labour and Environmental Movements

By various - Earth Strike and IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, 2019

The scientific consensus is clear. Climate change is happening. It is happening now and it’s impacts are only going to get worse.

Climate change is not a stand alone issue, it affects and exacerbates all of the existing inequalities and exploitations within our society. In our struggle to fight against climate change we stand shoulder to shoulder with those fighting against racism, sexism and colonialism inherent within global capitalism.

Climate change will not be solved through individual lifestyle changes. Just 100 companies are responsible for 71% of all industrial greenhouse gas emissions. To tackle climate change therefore we must challenge the power of these companies and the governments that support them.

Simply shifting the concentration of wealth to other so-called “sustainable industries” will not change the over- consumptive and self destructive drive of capitalism that has caused climate change and the mass extinction of species. Nor will it remove the ability of those with wealth to buy political power and get away with their planet killing practices.

Whilst increasingly the global economy is becoming an automated and auto-managed machine, labour still has power. The current economic system depends on the participation of a large labour force for both the extraction of natural resources and to perpetuate the unsustainable cycle of global consumption.

History has demonstrated that when a significant amount of the labour force organises for industrial action they can bring the bosses to the negotiating table and extract real gains for the workers. Likewise the environmental movement has demonstrated that community-led organising and direct resistance to natural exploitation can successfully defend ecological and social justice.

By bringing these two movements together, ending our self-destructive participation in the techno-industrial complex and resisting the capitalist economics of infinite growth we can change the current system and prevent global environmental catastrophe.

Earth Strike is therefore uniting the green and red by building for a global general climate strike. The IWW Environmental Committee recognises the huge importance of this initiative and will play it’s part to support it.

Read the report (PDF).

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author.