COVID-19

By staff - European Transport Workers Federation, September 2022

As it is now, the aviation sector needs a long-term sustainability perspective, both from the environmental and social points of view.

On the one hand, workers are leaving the industry due to a lack of decent jobs. On the other hand, the industry accounts for 4.8% of total CO2 emissions. While not the most polluting economic sector globally, aviation must do its part and put forward an ambitious decarbonisation plan.

So how can environmental and social sustainability go hand in hand? With a plan for decarbonisation with the heart of the industry at its core: its workers.

By staff - Fight the Fire, September 2022

There are three aspects to the war in Ukraine.

First, the war began as a Russian invasion. A large majority of Ukrainians support the resistance by the Ukrainian armed forces. This is a fight for democracy. Invasion is always an act of dictatorship, whether in Ukraine, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq or Palestine.

Putin’s invasion is of a piece with his previous military interventions in Chechnya, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kirghizstan and Syria. This is part of reestablishing Russian power and influence in the region of the old Soviet Union and the previous Russian Empire.

But Putin is also afraid of the spreading movements for democracy in Belarus and Central Asia. And he is afraid of the growing internal opposition in Russia. Military excursions to solidify internal power are a constant in the history of Putin’s Russia.

A victory for Ukraine would make the movements for democracy in Central Asia and Eastern Europe stronger.

But then there is the second aspect: this is a real war between Russia and Ukraine. But it is also a proxy war between the United States / NATO and Russia.

What this is not is a confrontation between the forces of democracy led by Biden, Scholtz and Macron and the forces of dictatorship led by Putin. What Russia is doing to Ukraine now, the US has done to many countries. Joe Biden supported the American invasions of Vietnam, Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq. Washington, Paris and Frankfurt have supported the Israelis, the Assads in Syria, the Saudis in Yemen and Sisi in Egypt. The list goes on and on.

The most important climate crime in the world right now is the US economic blockade of Afghanistan. The purpose of this blockade is to punish the Taliban and the Afghan people for defeating the American military. The blockade has turned a serious drought caused by climate change and a massive earthquake into a serious famine.

A victory of Ukraine over Russian invasion would also strengthen the power of NATO and American imperialism in many parts of the world.

The third aspect of the war is political. Putin is the leading figure in the growing global movement of the racist right. Other leading figures include Modi in India, Bolsonaro in Brazil, Trump in the United States, Orban in Hungary, Le Pen in France and Duterte and Marcos in the Philippines. There are many more leaders, in many more countries, that constitute this reactionary international, which is a bullwark for climate chaos.

By Jim Abernathy - Labor Network for Sustainability, September 2022

Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS) stands firmly in solidarity with railroad workers in this historic moment. Our railways are the veins of our nation, and these workers ensure our healthy circulation, getting our people and our goods wherever they are needed. Every person in this country fundamentally relies on the hard work and immense expertise of rail workers.

They worked on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic to keep the country alive, without a contract, and they have been thanked by private railroad corporations with sweeping layoffs, a refusal to pay just wages and benefits, and utterly inhumane working conditions. Let us not mince words - being forced to work alone, in dangerous conditions, sometimes for up to 80 hours a week is fundamentally inhumane. These workers, too long pitted against one another by the bosses, by CEOs who seek to divide and conquer the working class of the nation, now stand united as one against this unacceptable status quo.

Rail transportation and rail labor are also vital to the health of our entire planet. They are a crucial piece of solving the climate crisis, and they must be respected as a core part of the solution to many of our systemic problems. Respect for rail transportation and rail workers means expanding the workforce so that workers can have decent schedules, ensuring robust compensation, and ensuring their safety - putting our railroads front and center in the fight for good union jobs and a livable planet.

The bosses will not act unless they are forced to by a unified working class. Our railroad workers, united, spurred on by their own righteous history of labor militancy, are prepared now to use their collective power. LNS stands ready to support our brothers and sisters on the railroad and their fight for justice on the job and for all our communities.

Read the text (PDF).

By Abdullah Farooq - Jacobin, August 23, 2022

As climate change disrupts migration patterns, animals and the viruses they carry will come into unusual contact with each other — and inevitably with humans, unleashing new pandemics. The only thing that can stop this unfolding nightmare is a mass movement.

When animals migrate, be they butterfly kaleidoscopes or elk herds or bat cauldrons, they do so in response to ecological cues, which guide the manner and extent of the migration process. As climate change disrupts those cues, so too will it disrupt the migration of animals.

Climate change will thus deal a horrible blow to butterflies, bats, elk, and all manner of migratory animals. That’s tragic enough, but it gets worse: according to a recent study in Nature, this disruption will result in unusual interspecies contact, which will in turn cause new transmissions and mutations of viruses.

Through extensive modeling work, the study’s authors show that climate change will lead to altered migration patterns for thousands of animals, resulting in close to fifteen thousand new interspecies viral transmission events by the year 2070. In addition to having a massive ecological impact on the global fauna, this trend is of critical public health importance to us as humans, given that the majority of emerging infectious disease threats are zoonotic (transmitted by animal-to-human contact) in origin. The authors are cautious about predicting the probability of zoonoses into humans, but predict that geographies that are densely populated with humans will be future hot spots for interspecies viral transmission.

The study’s findings suggest that we are on the precipice of this mass-scale viral transmission event. The authors predict that the majority of these transmission events will happen between 2011 and 2040, indicating that many of them may already be taking place. While keeping temperature increases to within or below 2 degrees Celsius is a necessary goal, the authors predict that the accomplishment of this goal itself will not result in reduced viral sharing. In short, we’re probably stuck with massive changes in animal migration and vast quantities of viral transmission even if we slow climate change. However, there are other interventions we can make to stop the worst from happening.

In their model, the authors rely on a variety of land use scenarios — including alterations in deforestation, agricultural land usage, and human settlements — due to the uncertainty of how land is going to be used over the next fifty years. But none of that is inevitable. We can ensure that our land usage mitigates the impacts of climate change and prevents the emergence of the next pandemic. This can only happen if we’re able to take back control over how land is used, and democratically determine the best way to use it instead of leaving the decision up to capitalist markets.

Currently, our governments are beholden to corporate interests, which means that real estate and agribusiness have outsized influence over where and how land is developed. This has led to the unmitigated proliferation of sprawling housing developments, which often push deep into important ecological niches. This trend has already directly led to the destruction of 67 percent of coastal wetlands, which play a critical role in supporting local ecosystems, flood mitigation, carbon sequestration, and erosion control. In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro’s far-right government has facilitated the rapid destruction of the Amazon rainforest to facilitate increased agricultural land usage. The Amazon is a massive carbon sink, and its destruction could make it impossible for the rest of the world to keep global warming from rising faster than 1.5-2 degrees Celsius.

By staff - International Trade Union Confederation, July 18, 2022

The Ministerial Declaration of the High Level Political Forum on Sustainable Development (HLPF) contains many key workers’ demands. But more ambition is needed to rescue the SDGs with a New Social Contract.

This year’s HLPF focused on “building back better” from Covid-19, while moving towards the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda. Although the Sustainable Development Goal on Inclusive Growth, Productive Employment and Decent Work (SDG 8) was not reviewed at this edition of the Forum, trade unions welcome that the centrality of its targets has been reflected by governments in the HLPF Ministerial Declaration, supporting key workers’ demands for a new social contract centred on SDG 8:

• Governments highlight the “urgent need to create conditions for decent work for all, protect labour rights of all workers and achieve universal social protection”, as well as the need to “ensure just transitions that promote sustainable development and eradication of poverty, and the creation of decent work” with direct reference to the role of the UN Global Accelerator for Jobs and Social Protection for Just Transitions, as requested by the ITUC.
• Trade unions particularly welcome governments recognition of the role of social dialogue in designing policies to guarantee equal access for women to decent work and quality jobs in all sectors and at all levels, including through “ensuring equal pay for work of equal value, (…) ensuring the safety of all women in the world of work, and promoting the right to organise and bargain collectively”. The Declaration also identifies "improved wages, working conditions and social protection” as key to recognising and rewarding women’s disproportionate share of care and domestic work, and calls for gender-responsive social protection policies and care services.
• Trade unions welcome the objective to adopt education and lifelong learning strategies and budgets that ensure gender equality and prioritise skills development and decent employment of young people.

While trade unions are pleased with these important recommendations, they are concerned that the declaration does not reflect the urgency needed to rise to the challenge of achieving the 2030 Agenda.

As the UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres stated: “We are far from powerless. (…) We have the knowledge, the science, the technology and the financial resources to reverse the trajectory.”

Halfway to 2030, trade unions believe in the world’s ability and responsibility to change course.

Trade unions therefore urge governments to come together and build a New Social Contract centred on SDG 8 putting in place job creation plans, labour rights, universal social protection, minimum statutory living wages with collective bargaining, equality and inclusion.

The time to rescue the SDGs is now.

By D'Arcy Briggs - Spring, July 7, 2022

Low-wage workers have been hit hardest by the pandemic, they were the first to lose their jobs and most likely to get COVID. A new survey shows that workers in the most precarious jobs, who are disproportionately racialized, are directly dealing with the impacts of the worsening climate crisis. Spring Magazine spoke with Jen Kostuchuk of Worker Solidarity Network about the links between climate justice and workers’ rights.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the Worker Solidarity Network

I’m a settler from Treaty 1 territory, currently working on Lekwungen territory. My experience as a worker in the hospitality industry motivated me to engage with and advocate alongside workers in food service. I’m currently filling the Worker Solidarity Network’s (WSN) climate and labour project coordinator position. WSN is a community-centered organization that fights for worker justice. Through organizing, mutual aid, and legal advocacy, our goal is to support workers through labour injustices and build worker power. 

Given the dual pandemics of Covid-19 and climate change, how have workers been affected?

Between being overworked and understaffed, lay-offs, and termination, workers have been affected in ways that lead to deep vulnerability. But disproportionately, COVID-19 and climate change have hurt essential, low-wage workers in highly gendered and racialized sectors. Many workers in industries like hospitality, retail, and food service, bear the brunt of stolen wages, normalized discrimination, sexual harassment, and harsh working conditions like cooks standing in front of hot grills during heatwaves. 

At the height of the pandemic, I heard from folks whose employers told them to ignore COVID protocols if a customer “wanted it a certain way.” I also heard from food and beverage servers who were asked to remove their masks before customers entered a tip. So in some cases, it’s clear that workers were risking their own health and safety to avoid jeopardizing their income. 

The pandemic fostered an environment where we saw first hand that low-wage workers were deemed essential yet not treated that way. At the same time, we know that the pandemic provided an opportunity to build momentum to expose our most broken systems through mobilizing together for racial, gender, and environmental justice. 

By staff - IndustriALL, June 21, 2022

The transition to a more sustainable aviation sector will impact workers and trade unions are demanding concrete measures to ensure a Just Transition and a fair transformation of the sector, which is inclusive and maintains and creates decent jobs.

This week, international and European trade unions representing workers in the aerospace and aviation sectors met to discuss a united position ahead of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Assembly in September, at which it is hoped that the future pathway towards sustainable aviation will be agreed by international governments and key industry stakeholders.

At such a critical time, where the aviation industry faces the urgent challenge of responding the continued fallout from the Covid crisis, unions have identified the need for a coordinated industry-wide response from airlines, airports, governments, and unions to rectify capacity shortages, flight delays and beleaguered service levels that have plagued the industry for months.

Workers’ participation is critical, not just in fixing the underlying issues that are currently crippling the industry, but crucially in the addressing the long-term sustainability and decarbonisation of the industry. Workers’ participation will be essential in the social management of such a major industrial change. Climate justice cannot exist without labor justice with decent work being created through freedom of association and collective bargaining.

The meeting organized by IndustriALL Global Trade Union, International Transport Workers’ Federation, and their European counterparts industriAll European Trade Union and the European Transport Workers’ Federation follow successful collaboration on the Toulouse Declaration on the future sustainability and decarbonisation of aviation.

The aerospace and aviation sectors are intrinsically linked. Global trade union federations are particularly important in these processes playing a key role linking common needs and are essential in turning them into an international vision and strategy. Trade unions from both sectors see significant opportunities offered by a combined and cross-sectoral approach, based on a supply chain-wide vision and an international industrial strategy that is built on foundations of sustainability and decent work.

By Samantha O’Brien - Rupture, June 9, 2022

“It’s not fair, living this shitty life, the workers said in meetings, in groups at the gates. All the stuff, all the wealth that we make is ours. Enough. We can’t stand it any more, we can’t just be stuff too, goods to be sold. Vogliamo tutto - We want everything”

- Nanni Balestrin

Labour Power

The four-day work week has captivated media headlines internationally, with different countries piloting programmes in the Global North. Seventeen companies have signed up to commit to a pilot programme in Ireland. Thirty companies in the UK are taking part in a new pilot. Workers will maintain one-hundred per cent productivity for eighty per cent of their time.[1] Belgium has given workers the right to request a four-day work week with no loss of pay, effectively condensing their five day work week into four days. This has rightfully attracted criticism, as working time has not reduced, but workers get to maximise their stress levels by working nine and a half hours per day.[2] The central theme of many global campaigns is that the implementation will look different in varying sectors, rosters and working arrangements. The campaign’s main aim is for a shorter working week with no loss of pay and challenging the dominant narrative that long hours equate with greater productivity.[3]

The key demand of socialists has long been a shorter working week with no loss of pay. Karl Marx in Capital describes how the hours that make up the working day mean different things to employees and employers. Workers put in their time to afford the basic necessities in life. Employers buy labour-power, and the value is determined by working time. Any labour-power beyond what is required to produce the necessities of life is surplus-value that employers get for free. It is not necessary for us to work long hours to produce what is needed, but instead employers maximise their profits by taking our surplus value. Marx notes that “the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., working-class.”[4]

There are many examples of struggles over shorter working hours throughout history. The eight-hour working day in the Global North was not granted because of benevolent employers or lobbying politicians, but fought for and won through struggle. In 1856, Australian Stonemasons who were working harsh ten hours days walked off their job and eventually won an eight-hour day.[5] The same story was echoed in struggles internationally, with workers taking a collective stand for their pay and conditions. Eleanor Marx, who was a founder of the GMB Union in 1889, fought and won an eight hour workday for gas workers. On May Day in 1890, she also played a crucial role in organising the Hyde Park protest in London. This protest gathered hundreds of thousands of people with the key demand of an eight-hour workday.[6]

By Sotiria Theodoropoulou, Mehtap Akgüç, and Jakob Wall - European Trade Union Institute, June 2022

This paper assesses how well national recovery and resilience plans (NRRPs) aim at jointly tackling the social and climate/environmental challenges of recovery from the crisis and the transition to a net zero carbon socioeconomic model. Drawing on the conceptual frameworks proposed by Mandelli (forthcoming) and by Sabato et al. (2021) on how economic, social and green objectives can be integrated in general, and more particularly in the EU Recovery Policy framework, this paper goes a step further and examines NRRP documents as well as secondary evidence from, among others, the assessments of the European Commission. We develop some indicators which operationalise, at ‘bird’s eye view’ level, the balance between policy interventions aiming at social and green objectives and which explore how well they promote the concept of ‘just transition’. Moreover, the paper looks in more detail at the plans of France, Greece and Germany to provide more qualitative evidence on how these countries have articulated their proposed policy interventions to have a joint impact(s) on both green and social objectives.

Our analysis suggests that planned spending from the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) is tilted in favour of green transition objectives relative to social objectives. This might be a reason for concern about a new imbalance at the expense of the EU’s social dimension, beyond that already in existence with regard to the economic dimension; namely that there is an imbalance between the environmental/green dimension and the social one. Such a new imbalance, however, will also depend on a Member State’s capacity to cushion the impacts of the green transition beyond the use of RRF funds.