By Jon Queally - Common Dreams, September 22, 2016

The AFL-CIO, the nation's largest labor federation, generated waves of criticism by standing against the Standing Rock Sioux and supportive allies last week when it endorsed the Dakota Access Pipeline – a project opponents say threatens tribal sovereignty, regional water resources, and sacred burial grounds while also undermining efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate change.

Yet while a public statement by AFL-CIO leader Richard Trumka stirred widespread backlash, what has not been seen by the general public is an internal letter which preceded that statement—a letter which not only reveals a deeper and growing rift within the federation, but one that also helps expose the troubling distance between the needs of workers and priorities of policy-makers on a planet where runaway temperatures are said to be changing everything.

Trumka said the pipeline deserved the AFL-CIO's support because it was "providing over 4,500 high-quality, family supporting jobs" and argued that "attacking individual construction projects is neither effective nor fair to the workers involved."

In turn, many of the tribes and their progressive allies saw the statement as a short-sighted, if predictable, position on behalf of the federation's building trade unions. Norman Solomon, writing on these pages, didn't mince words when he said Trumka's remarks amounted to "union leadership for a dead planet" that could easily be mistaken for the "standard flackery" of the oil and gas industry. On Monday of this week, a coalition of AFL-CIO constituency organizations, made up of groups normally supportive of the federation, bucked Trumka's public stance by declaring their own opposition to the pipeline.

But many of those outside critics of the AFL-CIO didn't know the half of it. That's because none of them have likely seen a much more harshly-worded letter, obtained by Common Dreams, which was circulated internally among the federation's leadership ahead of Trumka's statement.

The five-page letter (pdf), dated September 14th, is addressed to Trumka and copied to all presidents of the AFL-CIO's 56 affiliated unions. It was sent by Sean McGarvey, president of North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU), which represents 14 separate building and construction unions within the federation.

In the letter, McGarvey questions top leadership for not taking a firmer position in defense of the union members working on Dakota Access and calls out other AFL-CIO member unions—specifically the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), the National Nurses United (NNU), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), and the American Postal Workers Union (APWU)—for aligning with "environmental extremists" opposed to the pipeline and participating in a "misinformation campaign" alongside "professional agitators" and members of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe.

By Brendan Orsinger - Medium, September 21, 2016

My grandma Gloria is 92-years old and the single greatest influence in my life. She has inspired me through the way she has led her life. She has strengthened my moral fabric as a human being and shaped what I believe to be right. She has given me the gift of music, and understanding and deep appreciation for justice, solidarity, and unions. Through the stories she’s told with great passion and conviction, she’s the reason I feel so moved and empowered to act.

Among her accomplishments, she:

1. Alone raised three young children after being widowed when my grandfather Arthur died very suddenly.
2. Graduated from law school at the age of 60, and was elected keynote speaker by her classmates.
3. Worked on passage of and was present at the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (and has one of the pens!).

Gloria came to Washington, DC to work for the Congress of Industrial Organizations, or the CIO, where she met my grandfather. After a secretive office romance, they snuck away one Friday afternoon to Alexandria Courthouse in Virginia to exchange their vows. When my grandfather Arthur passed away, it was their colleagues and union members who surrounded her with love and support and made sure she had a job to support her three small children.

In the 1960’s grandma Gloria was a legislative representative for the IUE, or the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America. They exist today as the International Union of Electronic, Electrical, Salaried, Machine and Furniture Workers — Communications Workers of America, or IUE-CWA. She worked with members of Congress and the White House during that time for passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. She was invited to the signings of both pieces of landmark legislation. She believed deeply in equality, and when Dr. Martin Luther King spoke on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on August 28th, 1963 and shared his dream, she was there with my mother.

She later would go on to work for AFSCME (American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees.) Then for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC.

The labor movement runs in my blood through four generations, going back to my great-grandmother, Rose.

Gloria was influenced by her mother Rose, who worked in the garment district in New York. She worked for a dress factory/sweatshop and after seeing a need for improvement of conditions, became a member of the IWW or the Industrial Workers of the World — also affectionally known as the “Wobblies”. Under the IWW, she specifically worked with the International Ladies Garment Union.

Back then, conditions were really bad. There were stories of women with out means for childcare who would be forced to work with their babies beside them, asleep on the dirty floor covered with garment lint. There were no laws or protections for these women, so the doors were locked to force higher productivity. These were the same conditions that led to the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Company factory fire in New York City that killed 145 workers.

It was my great-grandmother Rose who became a leader on then picket lines to demand the right to a reasonable wage and better working conditions. She ensured during strikes that the picket lines were held and never crossed. When the police tried to open the line to let the “scabs” through. Rose was punched by a cop after she warned him, “Don’t you put your hands on my girls!”. It’s unclear if the slap she landed on his cheek prior provoked the officer to violence.

There are so many stories like this I have heard from my grandmother about her “Mommy Rose”, but there are two in particular that stuck with me last Friday afternoon and Monday morning in the rain when I stood outside the headquarters of the AFL-CIO yelling and singing until I had lost my voice and my megaphone died — and even then, with no voice I sat outside in the rain and whistled union songs my grandmother taught me.

By Mark Hand - CounterPunch, September 20, 2016

The AFL-CIO is coming under attack from trade unions and their supporters angry about the organization’s support of the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline through Native American land in North Dakota.

Demonstrators stood outside the AFL-CIO’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 19 calling on the union federation to renounce its support for the oil pipeline project. AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka, in a Sept. 15 statement, called on Native Americans and the federal government not to “hold union members’ livelihoods and their families’ financial security hostage to endless delay” and asked the Obama administration to let construction on the pipeline continue.

“This is unacceptable behavior for the AFL-CIO, which has a rich history of supporting the right causes — civil rights, voting rights,” Brendan Orsinger, an activist and organizer, said in an interview at the demonstration. “My grandmother worked with unions to harness that people power and put pressure on Congress to help pass the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act of 1964 and 1965. My great-grandmother worked on the picket lines.”

The president of the Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA) came out with an even stronger statement against Native Americans opposed to the construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. “LIUNA is a champion of the right to peacefully demonstrate, however, extremists have escalated the demonstrations well beyond lawful civil disobedience,” Terry O’Sullivan, general president of LIUNA, said in a statement. O’Sullivan said he found it frustrating that Native Americans “have disregarded the evidence and the review process to vilify a project.”

Other labor unions have expressed solidarity with Native Americans in their fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline, proposed by Dallas-based Energy Transfer Partners. The Amalgamated Transit Union condemned “the ongoing violent attacks on the Standing Rock Sioux and others who oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline” and noted “these attacks by a private security company bring back horrific memories of the notorious Pinkertons, who used clubs, dogs and bullets to break up peaceful worker protests.” The Communications Workers of America issued a statement in support of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe ” as they fight to protect their community, their land and their water supply.”

“The AFL-CIO has a proud history of working with oppressed people to gain their rights and worker rights and they need to stake a strong stand on indigenous rights,” Orsinger said. “They have a seal on their headquarters of a black hand and a white hand shaking. It bothers me that they are betraying their history and their moral high ground.”

Activists are hoping to apply enough pressure on the AFL-CIO so the federation finds it politically infeasible to support projects such as Dakota Access. “As many jobs as they may get from this pipeline construction, it is dwarfed by the amount of jobs they will lose elsewhere from the public turning against them,” Orsigner said.

The Dakota Access Pipeline project is a proposed 1,172-mile, 30-inch diameter pipeline designed to connect the Bakken production area in North Dakota to Patoka, Illinois. The pipeline would transport approximately 470,000 barrels of oil per day with a capacity as high as 570,000 barrels per day or more, which could represent approximately half of Bakken current daily crude oil production.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Sept. 16 ordered Energy Transfer Partners to stop construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline for 20 miles on both sides of the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, a dammed section of the Missouri River near the tribe’s reservation, while the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe’s appeal of its denied motion to do so is considered.

By Norman Soloman - CounterPunch, September 19, 2016

At a meeting with the deputy political director of the AFL-CIO during my campaign for Congress, she looked across her desk and told me that I could get major union support by coming out in favor of the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

That was five years ago. Since then, the nation’s biggest labor federation has continued to serve the fossil fuel industry. Call it union leadership for a dead planet.

Last week, the AFL-CIO put out a statement from its president, Richard Trumka, under the headline “Dakota Access Pipeline Provides High-Quality Jobs.” The rhetoric was standard flackery for energy conglomerates, declaring “it is fundamentally unfair to hold union members’ livelihoods and their families’ financial security hostage to endless delay.”

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe is steadfast against the Dakota Access pipeline: “We will not rest until our lands, people, waters, and sacred sites are permanently protected from this destructive pipeline.”

In sharp contrast to the AFL-CIO’s top echelon, some unions really want to restrain climate change and are now vocally opposing the Dakota pipeline.

Communications Workers of America has expressed solidarity with members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe “as they fight to protect their community, their land and their water supply.”

At National Nurses United, Co-President Jean Ross cites “an obligation to step up climate action to protect public health and the future for the generations to follow us.”

Ross said: “We commend the leaders and members of the Standing Rock Sioux, the many First Nation allies who have joined them, and the environmentalists and other supporters who have participated in the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline.”

NNU points out that “the proposed 1,172-mile pipeline would carry nearly a half million barrels of dirty crude oil every day across four states.” Ross says that such projects “pose a continual threat to public health from the extraction process through the transport to the refinery.”

As for the AFL-CIO’s support for the pipeline, NNU’s director of environmental health and social justice was blunt. “We’re deeply disappointed in our labor federation siding with those that would endanger and harm the land, the water, the lives of the people along the pipeline path and the health of the planet itself in the name of profits,” Fernando Losada said.

He added that the Dakota pipeline is part of “a drive to extract fossil fuel that is untenable for the future of the planet.”

The nurses union is part of the AFL-CIO, but dominant forces within the federation are committed to corporate energy priorities. Losada said that “some elements in the AFL-CIO” have caused a stance that “is a narrow position in the alleged interests of their members for some short-term jobs.”

Compare that narrow position to a recent statement from Communications Workers of America: “The labor movement is rooted in the simple and powerful idea of solidarity with all struggles for dignity, justice and respect. CWA will continue to fight against the interests of the 1% and corporate greed and firmly stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe against the environmental and cultural degradation of their community.”

A venerable labor song has a question for the leaders of the AFL-CIO: Which side are you on?

When it comes to planetary survival, the answer from the top of the AFL-CIO hierarchy remains: We’re on the wrong side.

By Ann Montague - Socialist Action, September 18, 2016

Sept. 9 saw thousands of incarcerated men and women go on strike to take a stand against civil and environmental injustice in their respective prisons. The multi-state strike was organized both inside and outside of the prisons.

Some unions have begun addressing the twin issues of racial justice and economic justice with all their members. These discussions have moved from mere individual solutions to the need to end “institutional racism.” There is no clearer example of institutional racism than the prison system.

Michelle Alexander, in her book “The New Jim Crow,” wrote, “I came to see that mass incarceration in the United States had emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and well-disguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner strikingly similar to Jim Crow. No other country in the world imprisons so many of its racial or ethnic minorities as the U.S.” Since the beginning of the so-called drug war in 1982, the U.S. penal population exploded from 300,000 to more than two million in less than 30 years.

The National Prison Strike calls attention to the 13th Amendment of the Constitution—generally believed to have ended slavery in 1865. But there was a loophole, which says, “except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” It was a common practice in 1865 for plantation owners to lease Black convicts out of the prisons to work their fields, and today prisons are a multi-billion-dollar industry.

Inmates in federal and state prisons run recycling plants, fight fires in California and Georgia, and run call centers for state agencies. They make uniforms for McDonalds, prepare artisanal cheeses for Whole Foods, run call centers for AT&T. Think of a major corporation, and they are getting free labor from prisoners. That is why the National Prisoner Strike was a “Call To End Slavery In America.”

Anabella Rosemberg interviewed by Danny Chivers - New Internationalist, August 2016

Image: a coalition of union members oppose coal exports at an Oakland City Council meeting in July 2016; photograph by Brooke Anderson.

The climate discussion in the union movement has not been easy. We have so many more immediate struggles, from austerity crises to trade unionists being murdered. But about 10 years ago, in the ITUC Congress, we started bringing unions from the Global South to engage on climate with unions from industrialized countries. Those Southern unions described how everything they were fighting for – social protection, health, education – was being undermined by the terrible public costs of climate disasters. This put the discussion on climate in a different perspective. It wasn’t about the union movement ‘going green’, it was a basic issue of international solidarity.

Meanwhile, many root causes of climate change – greed from an unregulated corporate sector, politicians responding to lobbyists rather than citizens, energy privatization – are strongly linked to other social-inequality issues that we are struggling against. So it made sense to bring this issue into our agenda.

A third, more pragmatic reason: this is a discussion about the transformation of key industries such as energy and forestry. If we aren’t part of that discussion, we cannot expect the needs of workers to be taken into account. There’s a slogan: ‘If you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.’

From Copenhagen to Paris: the union movement raises its voice

The Copenhagen climate talks in 2009 saw the mass international involvement of unions on climate issues for the first time. So – unlike for much of the climate movement, for whom Copenhagen was a low point – for us, those talks marked a beginning. We had a very typical union response: sometimes you lose, sometimes you win, but you keep fighting.

We went to the 2015 Paris climate talks with three key things that we wanted in the deal. One was ambition, because the impact on the majority of workers on the planet is going to be huge if we go beyond two degrees [Celsius of global warming]. The second priority was finance, with the industrialized nations providing funds for energy transition, adaptation and the cost of climate damage in the South. The third was seeing a ‘just transition’ commitment in the Paris agreement.

The Paris deal is clearly insufficient. Politicians have committed to 1.5 degrees but not to any concrete measures to make it happen. On climate finance, the Paris agreement does not contain any figures or targets. On just transition, at least there is recognition, for the first time, of the connection between environmental justice and the need to secure workers’ livelihoods, although only in the preamble, not the main text.

Breaking free from ‘jobs versus climate’

In general, the union movement acknowledges the urgency of the climate issue and salutes the courage of the activists who took part in the May 2016 ‘Break Free’ direct actions at fossil-fuel sites. However, there are also sensitivities. Many of the workers at the sites that were targeted don’t have a choice but to work in that sector; the alternatives aren’t yet there.

Companies and workers are not the same; they don’t have the same interests. If we treat them as if they are, then we are pushing them together and strengthening the companies’ position.

Actions like Break Free have a theoretical commitment to the idea of just transition, but there has not yet been real engagement with workers or unions on most of the occupied sites. No-one came and asked, ‘What do you, the fossil-fuel workers, want as an alternative for you and your communities?’ But that’s a matter of tactics; it’s normal for these kinds of actions, and it does not mean it will not happen later.

Unified in climate action

We are not expecting a massive global mobilization from unions on climate, but we’re seeing local unions taking action, for example in Canada, as part of the climate justice movement, or in Argentina against fracking. In the Philippines, after Typhoon Haiyan, we saw a huge mobilization by trade unions around climate justice and they have participated in actions, including Break Free. In Tunisia, unions are part of the movement asking for environmental justice issues to be enshrined in the constitution.

This doesn’t mean that the whole labour movement is in consensus – there are other unions, generally those that depend on short-term jobs such as construction, which may support fracking or mining if no alternative job proposals are put forward.

Because of the lack of preparation by governments for the transition to clean energy, I think we will see, sadly, an increase in conflict between environmentalists and unions. Not because our objectives are not aligned, but because there is a huge political gap in the commitment made by governments to workers, and, instead of addressing that, they are letting us fight with each other.

A good way to build dialogue is to find common ground on other issues. For example, Greenpeace US is working on electoral reform with unions, NGOs, faith groups and many others. In Europe and Latin America, unions are working with environmental groups to challenge free-trade deals. These kinds of campaigns create a space to build trust, and make it easier then to discuss difficult topics like the climate transition because you are talking to partners, not adversaries.

The landscape is moving, and on climate justice we need to be on the right side of history. In the end, it’s a question of our credibility into the future. Some unions aren’t yet on the right side for understandable reasons, such as fear, or the lack of preparation by governments, or terrible labour rights situations that prevent them from engaging. For others, it’s just self-interest. It’s basically a lack of wisdom and a lack of awareness of where our societies are going.

My hope is that the general trend in the labour movement is going strongly in the right direction. There are a lot of contradictions and difficulties – internal and external – that come with that. But I think the trend is there.

By Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons - It's Going Down, September 11, 2016

Activists from across Florida, including GJEP’s own GE Trees campaigner Ruddy Turnstone (who is operating the megaphone in the video below), attended a demonstration Sept. 9, focused on calling attention to the modern-day slavery conditions, rampant abuse and toxic conditions that occur in prisons around the country. The address of FCC Coleman is 846 NE 54th Terrace, in Wildwood, located half-way between Orlando and Tampa.

The event occurred as part of a nationwide strike on Sept. 9, the anniversary of the Attica prison uprising in New York, was initially announced earlier this year by prisoners in various states, including Alabama, Ohio, Virginia, Texas. It is still unknown how many prisons had people participating in the strike, but over 50 events and demonstrations were planned outside prisons in dozens of cities and rural towns across the U.S.

Riots, work refusal and administrative lockdowns of entire facilities in Florida have already been reported. Other state and federal facilities have reported similar situations around the country.

The Coleman prison complex houses over 7,000 prisoners and is home to the largest prison factory in the entire country, primarily producing material goods such as furniture for government agencies nationwide.

Federal Prison Industries, also known as UNICOR, has over $34 million in contract obligation coming out of Bureau of Prison (BOP) facilities in Florida. This is three times higher than any other state in the country.

These workers are subjected to slave conditions based on the 13th Amendment of the US Constitution, which exempts prisoners of protection from slavery.

Over the past 10 years, UNICOR facilities have repeatedly been cited for unsafe working conditions and environmental hazards across the nation.

Additionally, FCC Coleman is surrounded by an industrial waste land of rock mines and their water storage pits, which have been known tocontaminate regional water supplies in other areas of the state. Tainted water is a common problem in prisons around the country as well.

“Prisons all over the country are coupled with environmentally hazardous land uses that threaten the health of prisoners and local ecosystems,” said Panagioti Tsolkas, an organizer with the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons. “There is no way to justify forcing people to live in these conditions.”

The event at Coleman is being organized by the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons and the Gainesville branch of the IWW labor union.

The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons aims to develop ties between the environmental movement and the movement against mass incarceration.

The IWW is the only labor union in the country which actively accepts prisoners as members.

By staff - Ideas and Action, September 14, 2016

The Workers Solidarity Alliance would like to express our solidarity with the indigenous-led struggle against the ecologically destructive Dakota Access Pipeline during the Global Weeks of Solidarity (Sept 3rd – 17th).  Further, we condemn the repression of the resistance in the strongest possible terms.

We call on all working-class militants to join solidarity actions in their cities and provide material support for the Sacred Stone and Red Warrior camps which are on the frontline of the struggle.  Continued construction and transport labor on this pipeline needs to be recognized as scab-labor by the larger labor movement and condemned accordingly.  We encourage individual members of the labor movement as well as organizations who share this perspective to sign on to this open letter penned by the IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus.

We call on all public and private entities with a security interest in the Dakota Access Pipeline’s completion to cease all repressions, release all prisoners and go home to their families.  You are on the wrong side – your actions will not be forgotten – the resistance is winning.

In Solidarity!

By IWOC-NYC - It's Going Down, September 8, 2016

On September 9, 2016, the 45th anniversary of the Attica Uprising, as thousands of prisoners across the world are striking against prison-slavery, several thousand indigenous tribal members of over 160 tribes and supporters of #BlackLivesMatter are collectively resisting white-supremacist and settler-colonialist capitalist powers. In New York City, many will be gathering outside Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn to protest the police terrorization and kidnapping of 120 youth from Eastchester Gardens in the Bronx. At the same time, NYC Stands With Standing Rock will be holding a protest in Washington Square Park in support of the Sioux Tribe and water protectors resisting the Dakota Access Pipeline.

We express our solidarity with those on the frontline at the Camp of the Sacred Stones as well as with the NYC Stands With Standing Rock contingent. Although our acts of resistance are geographically separated, we will be joined together in the spirit of resistance. Just as state-sanctioned genocide against indigenous peoples continues today, slavery has persisted in the guise of the prison system.

Recognizing that slavery and genocide are two heads of the many-headed hydra that is amerikkka, let us strike forcefully at those heads today, until, through our collective struggle, we can deliver the lethal blow.

#NoDAPL #EndPrisonSlavery

in struggle,

IWOC-NYC

By John Reimann - Oakland Socialist,September 8, 2016

Many on the left have been inspired by the protest of Native Americans and their supporters against the Dakota Access Pipeline. They have been horrified at the recent use of police dogs by private security to attack these protesters.

Not so much the union leadership. Look at this letter they sent the governor of North Dakota, urging him to “enforce the letter of the law”. What a disgrace!

But what can you expect from a union leadership that brings out the likes of Mark Breslin or “Chef Bob” to preach to members about how they should work harder, a union leadership which honors a top capitalist as “union person of the year”, a union leadership which on a daily basis sides with management when they have a dispute with a rank and file member? (See here.)

Meanwhile, all too many socialists try to ignore or minimize the significance of this approach of the union leaders in the hopes of getting some support from these same leaders for some campaign the socialists are working on.

Years ago, Daniel deLeon called these leaders “the labor lieutenants of capital” – in other words, that they represented – were the lieutenants of – capital (the employers) within the labor movement. That is ever more so today. Socialists should be leading the effort to build opposition groups within the unions, not trying to curry favor with these lieutenants.