COVID-19

By Gareth Dale - Green European Journal, June 12, 2024

Inspiration for decarbonising industry and creating green jobs is within the hands of those already facing precarity in today’s economically unstable times. A resilient history of workers’ initiatives overcoming redundancies, alongside recent activist, trade-union, and workforce collaborations, provides concrete examples for empowered transitioning.

In 2023, when Europe was blasted by a record-breaking heatwave named after Cerberus (the three-headed hound of Hades), workers organised to demand protection from the extreme heat. In Athens, employees at the Acropolis and other historical sites went on strike for four hours each day. In Rome, refuse collectors threatened to strike if they were forced to work during periods of peak heat. Elsewhere in Italy, public transport workers demanded air-conditioned vehicles, and workers at a battery plant in Abruzzo issued a strike threat in protest at the imposition of working in “asphyxiating heat”. 

One could almost say that the Ancient Greeks foretold today’s climate crisis when they euphemistically referred to Hades, god of the dead, as “Plouton” (giver of wealth). The reference is to the materials – in their day, silver, in ours, fossil fuels and critical minerals – that, after extraction from the Underworld, line the pockets of plutocrats. Modern society’s plutocratic structure explains the astonishingly sluggish response to climate breakdown. The much-touted green transition is barely taking place, at least if the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is taken as a yardstick. These continue to rise, even accelerate, and likewise the rate of global heating. The transition remains in the grip of powerful and wealthy institutions that – even if we leave aside motivations of avarice or greed for status – are systemically constrained to put the accumulation of capital above the habitability of the planet.

Against this backdrop, the politics of transition is class struggle beyond that of workers defending themselves and their communities against weather emergencies. That is part of the picture, of course. But class struggle is, above all, evident in the liberal establishment seeking to displace transition costs onto the masses, even as it presides over ever crasser wealth polarisation. From this, resistance inevitably flows. The question is, what form will it take? 

Some takes the form of an anti-environmental backlash, instigated or colonised by conservative and far-right forces. While posing as allies of “working families”, they denigrate the most fundamental of workers’ needs: for a habitable planet. Some takes a progressive form, the classic case being the gilets jaunes in France. When Emmanuel Macron’s government hiked “green taxes” on fossil fuels as a signal for consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars, the rural working poor and lower-middle classes, unable to afford the switch, donned yellow safety vests and rose in revolt. Although France’s labour-movement radicals joined the cause, they were unable to cohere into a political force capable of offering alternative solutions to the social and environmental crises.

By staff - La Via Campesina, December 9, 2023

More than 400 delegates of La Via Campesina, representing 185 organizations and movements in 83 countries, together with allies, are gathered in Bogotá, Colombia to celebrate our 8^th International Conference from the 1^st to the 8^th of December of 2023.

We, the peasants, rural workers, landless, indigenous peoples, pastoralists, artisanal fisherfolk, forest dwellers, rural women, youth and diversities and other peoples who work in the countryside around the world and united within La Via Campesina, declare that “Faced with global crises, we build food sovereignty to ensure a future for humanity!” towards a just and decent food system for all, recognizing peoples’ needs, respecting nature, putting people before profit and resisting corporate capture.

The 8^th Conference is happening at a time when the Colombian social movements are celebrating a major political victory, the creation of an agrarian jurisdiction, and the constitutional recognition of peasants as political subjects with rights. Our participation in the monitoring and follow-up of the peace agreement in Colombia inspires us as peasants to continue building peace worldwide.

By staff - Public and Commercial Services Union, October 25, 2023

The UK civil and public services have been under a decades old drive to reform in the name of efficiency savings and cost cutting. This is from both Labour and Tory administrations, and the ConDem coalition.

The reality of this for workers has been a relentless attack on their pay, jobs, terms and conditions. With increasing privatisation of public services and outsourcing, it has weakened the services they deliver and led to an ideological rolling back of the welfare state.

Today we have multiple crises facing us from the costs of living and energy crises, to public health and climate change. The twin impacts of Brexit and Covid-19 revealed two important things that were not surpising to those working in the UK civil and public services at least.

In the case of Brexit, the extent of which the hollowing out of expertise and experience showed that major transformations to our economy cannot be done on the cheap without both financial and human resources. In terms of the Covid-19 pandemic, the extraordinary commitment and adaptability of civil and public service workers illustrating just how vital they are to the economic, political, and social well-being of the nation.

Covid-19 gave a glimpse of what could be possible when the vital role of the civil and public services was briefly recognised. It also showed how the state can be transformative, act with urgency, and coordinate resources for the public good. Key civil service departments had to rapidly adapt for example in delivering the Coronavirus Job Retention or furlough scheme and benefit changes. Factory production lines, in consultation with unions, were quickly repurposed to produce ventilators or PPE equipment.

Now there is also the increasingly pressing challenge to respond to of climate change and biodiversity loss. Unfortunately we have politicians so hostile to public and democratic institutions, that it promotes inefficiency and profit making at the expense of organising the civil and public services in a way that can lead on the rapid and far reaching action that we need to address the climate crisis.

This is why we urgently need to develop an alternative vision and call for a radical rethink about how the machinery of government is configured to achieve our climate change and biodiversity targets. At the heart of this is the proposal for a National Climate Change and Biodiversity Service which for the rest of this pamphlet we will refer to simply as the National Climate Service (NCS).

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Francesca Gabbriellini and Paola Imperatore - Berliner Gazette, October 16, 2023

Francesca Gabbriellini and Paola Imperatore · Working-Class Environmentalism from Berliner Gazette on Vimeo.

By Sean Sweeney - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, August 31, 2023

Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, calls for a GGND and a commitment to GPGs intensified. In July 2020, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared, “The global political and economic system is not delivering on critical global public goods: public health, climate action, sustainable development, peace…we need a New Global Deal to ensure that power, wealth and opportunities are shared more broadly and fairly at the international level.” 

Authored by TUED Coordinator Sean Sweeney, the paper argues that a GGND of the left must distinguish itself from green “recovery economics.” Many North-based progressives are comfortable talking about the need for “more public investment,” and the need for “ambitious climate action” but many continue to be vague or agnostic on questions of public ownership and control. 

The paper argues that an undiscerning approach to public investment weakens the case for a GGND. It shows how the current emphasis on “de-risking” private investment means that public money is used to make profitable what would not otherwise be profitable. Obama’s stimulus package of 2008, to the more recent Green Deal for Europe, and the Biden Administration’s Inflation Recovery Act that commits $369 billion of public spending to secure long-term revenue streams and profits for mostly private investors and developers. The more recent “Just Energy Transition Partnerships” and the emphasis on “blended finance” are an extension of this approach. 

Taking a deep dive into the roots of neoliberal climate policy, Beyond Recovery shows how a “recovery” narrative has helped both conceal and perpetuate the failures of the current investor-focused approach to energy transition and climate protection. For more than three decades, this approach has shown itself to be ineffective in terms of reducing economy-wide emissions. Sweeney describes the policy as a resilient failure, the extent of which is not always fully grasped. 

Energy: The Means of Production

The paper argues that a left GGND must view public investment as a means to extend public ownership, with energy systems and critical supply chains being a priority target. 

Public ownership of energy gives governments the power to pivot away from the highly commodified “energy for profit” regime. More than any single policy option, control over energy will ensure that governments are better positioned to advance an economy-wide energy transition in ways that can control and then reduce emissions while also addressing joblessness, inequality, and other social problems. It can set the stage for the kind of sweeping interventions in the political economy that are needed to address climate change, confront the political power of fossil fuel interests, and intercept the dynamics of “endless growth” capitalism. 

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Gina Jiménez - Inside Climate News, August 15, 2023

Around 4 million people in the U.S. work as contractors for app services like DoorDash delivering pizzas, salads and pad thai. Those in areas with extreme heat are taking new measures to keep working through it.

Jessica Fawcett wakes up at 5:30 a.m. so she can deliver groceries and take-out orders throughout Tempe, Arizona by 6:30 a.m. She has been working 12- to 14-hour shifts for Instacart and DoorDash since December, but lately, the heat in Tempe has been making them harder. 

Some days, Fawcett must walk 20 minutes or climb four floors of stairs in a 116-heat index just to deliver one order. “I joke and say I don’t need to go to the gym because I already walk a lot with this heat,” she says, “I have lost so much weight.” 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported this year’s June was the hottest the Earth has ever registered, and last week the Copernicus Climate Change Service said July was the hottest month ever recorded. High temperatures have continued this month, and over 100 million Americans were under an extreme heat alert at some point during July.

Nevertheless, app delivery workers in states with extreme weather, like Arizona and Texas, have kept working. Some feel the consequences on their health, and others are changing their working hours and carrying around cold water to survive long shifts in the blistering heat. 

“It feels like you are standing in an air fryer or a microwave,” says Hector Mejía, a 30-year-old who has been working doing DoorDash deliveries in Phoenix for around a year. He compares heat these days in Arizona with standing next to a campfire. “It’s almost hard to breathe.” 

The number of people working for app delivery platforms in the U.S. has exponentially increased in the last few years, from just over one million in 2018 to over four million in 2021, a recently published study found. That represents almost three times Amazon’s global workforce. 

While some platform workers like the flexibility of the job, they are especially vulnerable to inclement weather, sickness or any situation that keeps them from working since as independent contractors, their livelihood depends on them being on the streets.

In New York City, app delivery workers have been fighting to get an hourly minimum wage, but in the rest of the country, organization efforts are scarce, said Ligia Guallpa, the executive director of the Workers Justice Project, an organization that has supported app delivery workers in New York. 

By Rebecca Burns - The Lever, August 9, 2023

Fossil fuel and corporate lobbying groups blocking action on climate change are also fighting labor protections meant to safeguard workers from its intensifying effects. As record-high temperatures kill the workers who grow our food, deliver our packages, and build our homes, industry lobbying has stalled heat safety measures in Congress and at least six states, according to a Lever review.

As a result, most of the nation’s workers still aren’t guaranteed access to water, rest, and shade — the basic precautions needed to fend off dangerous heat stress. Heat exposure could already be responsible for as many as 2,000 workplace deaths each year, and research suggests that it is three times as deadly when combined with exposure to air pollution from sources like wildfire smoke.

Business lobbies representing the agriculture, construction, and railroad industries have also opposed state rules protecting outdoor workers from smoke exposure.

The key opponents to worker climate protections include the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), a well-funded influence machine that describes itself as “the voice of small business” while pushing corporate agendas like the rollback of child labor protections. The group reported spending more than $1 million lobbying the federal government last year on issues including legislation to fast-track heat protections for workers. Soon after, the bill stalled.