Class Struggle Environmentalism, Degrowth, and Ecosocialism

By x344543 - IWW Eco Union Caucus, May 27, 2023

Calling for "DeGrowth" without conditions or even "Ecosocialist DeGrowth" is far too vague and could potentially alienate the working class (and no version of socialism, let alone ecosocialism, can be achieved without support of the working class.

Consider the report that the UC Labor Just Released: Fossil fuel layoff - The economic and employment effects of a refinery closure on workers in the Bay Area. This report de­tails the experience of union refinery workers who have lost their jobs at the Martinez

On October 30, 2020, the Marathon oil refinery in Contra Costa County, California, was perma­nently shut down and 345 unionized workers laid off. The Marathon refinery’s closure sheds light on the employment and economic impacts of climate change policies and a shrinking fossil fuel industry on fossil fuel workers in the region and more broadly.

In the aftermath of the refinery shutdown, workers were relatively successful in gaining post-layoff employment but at the cost of lower wages and worse working conditions. At the time of the survey, 74% of former Marathon workers (excluding retirees) had found new jobs. Nearly one in five (19%) were not employed but actively searching for work; 4% were not employed but not look­ing for a job; and the remaining 2% were temporarily laid off from their current job. Using standard labor statistics measures, the post-layoff unemployment rate among Marathon workers was 22.5% and the employment rate was 77.5%. If workers who have stopped actively searching for work were included, the post-layoff unemployment rate was higher at 26%.

Former Marathon workers find themselves in jobs that pay $12 per hour less than their Mar­athon jobs, a 24% cut in pay. The median hourly wage at Marathon was $50, compared to a post-layoff median of $38. A striking level of wage inequality defines the post-layoff wages of former re­finery workers. At Marathon, hourly pay ranged between $30 to $68. The current range extends as low as $14 per hour to a high of $69. Workers reported benefits packages comparable to their pre-layoff Marathon benefits.

Workers found jobs in a range of sectors. The single most common sector of re-employ­ment was oil and gas, where 28% of former Marathon workers found post-layoff jobs but at wages 26% lower than at Marathon. These lower rates of pay stem from loss of seniority and non-union employment.

Overall, workers reported worse working conditions at their post-layoff jobs, even in higher wage jobs. Workers described hazardous worksites, heavy workloads, work speed-up, increased job responsibilities, and few opportunities for advancement. Above all, workers cited poor safety prac­tices and increased worksite hazards as the most significant and alarming characteristics of degraded working conditions.

Some caveats:

• While this report frames the closure as a result of energy transition in its press releases and in the media, they admit that the refinery really closed due to COVID, although the employer is opportunistically retool­ing the refinery for "renewable biodiesel" (a greenwashing scam, mostly);
• Job losses and retooling happens all the time under capitalism.

This is NOT an example of "DeGrowth" andy more than it is an example of "Decarbonization" or "Energy Transi­tion", because fossil fuel profits are experiencing record and/or near record highs (for a variety of reasons)

However wrongheaded it might seem to refer to this as an example of "DeGrowth", Decarbonization", or "Energy Transition", the workers will likely perceive this as the case, and develop (or deepen) hostile stances to­wards such things.

A favorite suggestion of many (though not all) DeGrowthers is that we will soon be living in a "post-jobs" future (and that workers should simply demand shorter workweeks). Shorter work weeks with no loss in pay or ben­efits would certainly be welcomed by most workers, but achieving that would require a mass workers movement, because the capitalist class will not willingly agree to such things.

A more likely outcome is automation (including the use of AI, such as ChatGPT, an issue in the WGA strike cur­rently underway in Hollywood), however that won't mean a loss of jobs so much as a casualization and deskilling of jobs. In fact, there are more (generally speaking) jobs in existence now than ever before, but so many of them have been deskilled and workers have been reduced to rote tasks and button pushing, i.e. Taylorism run amok.

It needn't be this way.

First of all, let's address a fundamental problem that most DeGrowth advocates don't usually address, at least not directly:

The vast majority of "consumption" (of materials, fossil fuels, minerals, and the like) as well as emissions are due to waste and inefficiency generated by capitalism, including:

• Global supply chains (instead of shipping products halfway across the globe, they can mainly be produced locally);
• Built in Obsolescence (instead of cheap throw-away products, we could build things to last that can be re­built and repaired);
• Militarism (an obvious problem);
• Advertising (more than just inserts; this includes lighting up cities at night just to show off products);
• Artificially created needs;
• Individualization and Atomization (instead of emphasizing auto centrism and rampant car ownership, we could emphasize smart urban design and public transit).

Even if we address these challenges, some degrowth may indeed be necessary, but such things should be decided democratically, following the Marxist, from each according to their abilities, and to each according to their needs (it works both ways!)

Impossible you say? Unlikely you think?

The working class has attempted such things before. I draw your attention to The Lucas Plan:

The Lucas Plan is a visionary proposal crafted by a rank-and-file group of unionized workers (known as "Lucas Aer­ospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee") at the UK based Lucas Aerospace Company who were facing down­sizing due to "redundancy" (i.e. capitalist cost cutting in service of profit seeking) in 1976.

The workers believed that they could repurpose the company's spare manufacturing capacity and machines to produce socially useful products, such as advanced braking systems, hybrid-electric engines, medical equipment, and even renewable energy generating equipment (such as early generation solar electric panels) instead of weapons of mass destruction or luxury cars for the rich (Lucas produced motors for Rolls Royce, among other companies).

The combine was a rank-and-file organization, led by rank-and-file workers, focused at the point-of-produc­tion, that worked outside of the official union structure, which was seen by many of the rank-and-file as too timid or intransigent, and far too closely connected with the employers. Rather than seeking electoral solutions, running candidates for the union leadership, or even socialist party building, the Combine centered militant, rank-and-file organizing as their primary means to achieve their goals. However, the combine, while syndicalist in practice, didn't enforce ideological purity, as it was composed of workers from a polyglot of differing left and labor tendencies, in­cluding socialist, communist, liberal, and anarchist. In other words, it practiced the industrial unionism the IWW advocates. It didn't rule out electoralism, left parties, or running candidates for union leadership, but such work was seen as peripheral to the main shopfloor struggle.

Furthermore, the general consensus of the combine was pro-environmental. The overall analysis of the combine included environmental outlooks, noting how (colonialist, white-led) civilization had already significantly damaged the Earth by the mid 1970s, and the proposed repurposing included a good faith effort to produce envi­ronmentally and socially beneficial alternatives (although, since this plan was devised long before the dangers of cli­mate change and loss of biodiversity had become daily realities, they still saw a role of ocean-floor mining and oil extraction, though they intended to produce equipment to make the process as non-destructive as possible, which, in 1976, was fairly leading edge).

It's no exaggeration to say that the Lucas Plan is an example of green syndicalism in practice.

The effort ultimately failed, primarily due to resistance from the bosses, bureaucratic inertia from the union officialdom, lack of support from the Labour Party (and outright opposition from the Conservative Party), and con­temporary objective conditions which, in 1976, meant to ascendancy of neoliberalism and deregulation, which would accelerate greatly under Thatcher two years later. The fact that the Combine had an insular focus and was making a new road by walking into mostly unexplored territory didn't make the job any easier.

Now, as climate crisis deepens, as left-green and/or climate and environmental justice organizing continues to grow and deepen while neoliberalism is in sharp decline, and many workers and unions are growing increasingly favorable to green unionism, conditions for something like an updated version of the Lucas Plan (or many Lucas Plans) are growing increasingly favorable. As a result, interest in the Lucas Plan itself, long consigned to obscurity, has grown significantly in recent years.

Indeed, we're seeing many examples of Lucas Plan type proposals (some more radical and transformative than oth­ers, some less so).

Some examples include:

• The California Climate Jobs Plan (otherwise known as "The Pollin Report"), which was endorsed by at least two dozen unions.
• The aforementioned is one of many such "reports" for various US states, including: Colorado, Maine, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Washington, West Virginia, which are published by the Political Economy Re­search Institute (PERI), but are based on input from union workers.
• The Climate Jobs Network (which also includes many union workers and officials) have proposed plans for the states of Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, New York, Rhode Island, and Texas.
• Trade Unions for Energy Democracy has published numerous reports on "a public energy pathway", from all over the world, including South Africa and much of the rest of the Global South, which would reverse the process of privatization of utilities and instead proposes to operate them in the public interest, which will facilitate the energy transition we need.
• A coalition of UK unions and environmental groups recently published a report (called "Our Power") de­scribing what a just transition would look like for North Sea oil workers.
• Even Railroad Workers United campaign for public ownership of the North American railways represents such a plan, because not only does it seek to improve workers' conditions, it will eliminate capitalist waste and facilitate greening the railways (which, by the way, would facilitate "degrowth", because greener railroads run for need, not profit, checks several of the boxes I previously mentioned).

All of this might seem farfetched, but with the growing labor militancy we are seeing (and has anyone been paying attention to the growing strike wave that has been happening all over Europe?) the conditions for a militant, revolu­tionary green union, class struggle ecology movement have never been more favorable since the days of the Lucas Plan.

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.