videos

By staff - IndustriALL, May 18, 2022

Today, manufacturing, mining and energy trade unions, under the umbrella of industriAll European Trade Union, are launching their Just Transition Manifesto.

As Europe gets ready to implement the Green Deal and the measures agreed in the Fit for 55 package, 25 million industrial workers in Europe potentially face restructuring and job losses due to the green transformation of our industries - exacerbated by the COVID-19 crisis, digitalisation, trade and market developments and a volatile geopolitical situation.

The manifesto is industrial workers’ call to policymakers across Europe to ensure a transition to a green economy that is fair to ALL workers, and that does not destroy but preserves and creates good quality jobs. They want a transition that is anticipated, managed and negotiated with workers for every aspect that concerns them.

To achieve this, we need a comprehensive Just Transition framework that provides guarantees for adequate resources, is based on effective policy planning, promoting and strengthening workers’ rights, and involves trade unions through intense social dialogue.

Our manifesto therefore calls for:

1. An industrial policy fit for ambitious climate goals and good quality jobs.
2. Adequate resources to fund the transition.
3. Stronger collective bargaining and social dialogue to negotiate the transitions.
4. A toolbox of workers’ rights and companies’ duties to anticipate and shape the change.
5. Tackling new skills needs and a right to quality training and life-long learning for every worker to support the Just Transition.

By Penny Logsdon, Jeff Kurtz, and Carrie Duncan et. al. - Fight for Two Person Crews, May 17, 2022

By Jessica Goodheart - Capital & Main, May 16, 2022

Tefere Gebre’s biography has touched on the major crises affecting the planet: the massive rise in refugees, skyrocketing economic inequality and climate change. The first of those cataclysms was thrust upon him when he was just a teenager. He fled the civil war in Ethiopia, enduring a perilous 2½ week journey through the desert. “Sometimes you’d find yourself where you were a week ago,” he told Orange Coast magazine in 2014. He spent five months in a refugee camp in Sudan before arriving in Los Angeles, where he attended high school.

As an adult, Gebre became active in the labor movement, organizing trash sorters in Anaheim and holding leadership positions at the Orange County Labor Federation and the AFL-CIO, where he served as executive vice president. In February, he took the position as chief program officer at Greenpeace USA, the 3 million-member direct action organization known for its high-profile banner drops, opposition to whale hunting and campaign against plastic waste.

Capital & Main spoke to Gebre two days before Greenpeace held its first-ever protest in solidarity with fossil fuel workers. Two boats with activists from Greenpeace USA and United Steel Workers Local 5 members formed a picket line from land into San Francisco Bay as an oil tanker headed to Chevron’s Richmond refinery in what Gebre described as “a genuine attempt to build a transformational relationship” with the striking workers. Nearly 500 refinery employees went on strike over safety and salary concerns in March. The two sides have yet to come to an agreement. The oil tanker crossed the picket line, according to sources at Greenpeace.

By Shiva Mishek - Richmond Progressive Alliance, May 4, 2022

“To strike at a man's food and shelter is to strike at his life, and in a society organized on a tooth-and-nail basis, such an act, performed though it may be under the guise of generosity, is none the less menacing and terrible.”

—Jack London, The Scab, 1904

This week, United Steelworkers (USW) Local 5 enters its seventh week on strike at the Richmond Chevron refinery. Over 500 Chevron employees have been on strike since March 21, rejecting a contract that would codify a meager raise, unsafe working conditions, and Chevron’s so-called “standby” policy.

Chevron would also like to drastically reduce death benefits and pay for the Lubrications plant refinery workers, thereby creating a two-tier wage system and offering wages that do not keep pace with inflation (a reduction from an annual 3% wage increase to .6%).

Refinery operations have continued by employing strikebreakers. Advertisements placed by Chevron offer pay of $70 an hour for non-union workers lacking adequate refinery experience, with the explicit mention of possible work for up to 5 months. Meanwhile, inflation has soared across the United States, and refinery workers must also contend with the skyrocketing costs of basic needs.

Unsurprisingly, the high cost of gas prices in California has been somewhat attributed to the labor action. The day the strike began, the Guardian wrote, “But if the strike were to halt operations at the refinery, that could negatively affect fuel prices in California, which already has the highest gas prices in the US at $5.86 a gallon, according to the American Automobile Association.” Meanwhile, Chevron just reported earnings of $6.3 billion for the first quarter (Q1) of 2022, compared with $1.4 billion in earnings during Q1 of 2021. 

It’s typical to see workers villainized when they go on strike—teachers are depriving students of needed support; nurses and doctors are leaving patients to die in their hospital beds. But it is Chevron, not the workers, that has put Richmond at risk for decades. 

By J. Mijin Cha, Vivian Price, Dimitris Stevis, and Todd E. Vachon - Labor Network for Sustainability, May 3, 2022

The Center for Global Work and Employment, Labor Education Action Research Network (LEARN) and Center for Environmental Justice at Colorado State University have recently sponsored a virtual discussion on the Just Transition Listening Project (JTLP)’s 2021 report Workers and Communities in Transition. You can watch the recording online on LEARN-TV.

By Dr. Robert Pollin, Veronica Wilson, and Norman Rogers - The Climate Center, April 28, 2022

By B.K. White and Steve Zeltser - Labor Video Project, April 27, 2022

By various - European Trade Union Institute, April 23, 2022

By various - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, April 19, 2022

By Eric Blanc, Angelika Maldonado, Michelle Valentin Nieves, and Chris Smalls - Jacobin, April 11, 2022

* The video also features Bernie Sanders, and the original title headlines this fact, however, this video is mainly about the union and its organizing drive.