jobs versus environment

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 1, 2015

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’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

• Register now for the Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment Conferences: Richmond, California (March 14, 2015) and Olympia, Washington (March 22, 2015) - railroadconference.org
• How Scrappy Community and Labor Activists Took on a California Oil Giant—and Won - By Jane Slaughter, In These Times, January 26, 2015
• Shut It Down Now! Former Nuclear Plant Technician Bob Rowen on Nuclear Power - By Steve Zelter, TruthOut, January 30, 2015
• Union rejects second refinery workers contract proposal - By Erwin Seba, Reuters, January 27, 2015

Crude by Rail:

• California Cities and Citizens Speak Out Against Oil Trains - By Ethan Buckner, Forest Ethics, January 26, 2015
• The Dangers of Hauling Crude Oil by Rail - By John Kristensen, Railroaded, January 25, 2015
• Oil Train Spills Hit Record Level in 2014 - By Tony Dokoupil, NBC Nightly News, January 26, 2015
• Why New "Improved" Oil Trains Are Not Nearly Good Enough: a closer look at the many flaws of CPC-1232 tank cars - By Eric de Place, Sightline Daily, January 28, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Big Oil needs a Plan B. It hasn’t got one - By Giles Parkinson, ReNew Economy, January 29, 2015
• BP cuts jobs in Houston as it trims Gulf of Mexico business - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, January 28, 2015
• BP will freeze pay for most of its employees - By Robert Grattan, FuelFix, January 26, 2015
• ConocoPhillips tells employees to expect layoffs - By Robert Grattan, FuelFix, January 29, 2015
• Drilling contractor may cut 2,000 field jobs as rigs idle - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, January 30, 2015
• The False Promise of Local Fracking Jobs - By Susan Christopherson, The Conversation, January 27, 2015
• Glencore mulls shutting down South African coal mines, lay offs - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, January 28, 2015

Green Jobs and Just Transition:

• Just Transitions Speaking Tour with Bob Massie - Yes 2 Renewables [FOE], January 30, 2015
• Parents, Teachers and Students Ask School Districts to Go 100% Renewable Energy - By Stefanie Spear, EcoWatch, January 27, 2015
• SMA Solar to cut 1,600 jobs as European demand slides - By Christoph Steitz and Maria Sheahan, Reuters, January 27, 2015

Other News of Interest:

• 400 parts per million and class struggle - By Victor Wallis, Climate and Capitalism, January 25, 2015
• ALEC Forces the Question: Will Labor Really Go Local? - By Simon Davis-Cohen, Truthout, January 25, 2015
• Bangladesh Garment Workers Win Bargaining Pacts at 5 Factories - By Jennifer Kuhlman, AFL-CIO Solidarity Center, January 27, 2015
• Bribery Is a Bargain for Big Oil - By Steve Kretzmann, Oil Change International, January 22, 2015
• Former DNR employees say regulator stifles public information - By Jacob Barker, St Louis Post Dispatch, January 26, 2015
• The Heat Is On: Via Campesina and Allies Challenge Climate Capitalism - La Via Campesina, January 27, 2015
• The Precariat and the Basic Income: Part 1 - By Andrew Curry, The Next Wave, January 26, 2015
• The Precariat and the Basic Income: Part 2 - By Andrew Curry, The Next Wave, January 27, 2015
• 'Tiny houses' no solution to the unaffordability crisis - By Mike Stewart, Rabble.Ca, January 28, 2015
• Uber Accused of Lax Safety Practices by Delhi Woman - By Mike Isaac, New York Times, January 29, 2015
• Union workers press their case for contract demands at Lyondell refinery - By LM Sixell, FuelFix, January 28, 2015
• Up to 6,000 carcinogens, mutagens and reprotoxins floating around EU - European Trade Union Institute, January 30, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

By David Goodner - Truthout, January 20, 2015

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’s.

The debate surrounding labor's support for oil pipelines has largely centered on a false "jobs versus climate" dichotomy. But labor's position is also alienating them from their potential allies while strengthening the hand of their sworn enemies.

There's a popular saying on the left that organized labor would build their own gallows if they were offered the jobs, and nowhere is this more true than in labor's support for the environmentally disastrous Keystone XL, Enbridge Sandpiper and Bakken oil pipelines.

As in much of the debate surrounding climate change, proponents of the Keystone XL pipeline, like Teamster president James P. Hoffa, generally argue that short-term job creation and economic growth trump environmental concerns about the long-term fate of the planet.

"America needs more good-paying jobs that support middle-class families. This project supplies them," Hoffa wrote in a letter published by The Detroit News in December 2014. He went on to claim that environmental concerns have been addressed by state and federal regulators, as well as by the oil company itself.

"It will be safer than any other domestic oil pipeline system built under current code," he added.

In reality of course, it is the jobs argument that is overblown, and it is the environmental threat to the survival of every living thing on earth that labor habitually understates or ignores.

The bottom line is there won't be any jobs, or an economy at all, if the planet is no longer hospitable to human life. There's no such thing as a safe oil pipeline because extracting fossil fuels from the ground and burning them into the atmosphere is what causes catastrophic climate change, not accidental oil spills.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, January 14, 2015

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’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

• To Save the Planet, We Need to Leave Fossil Fuels in the Ground—but Oil Companies Have Other Plans: They say no to any "stranded assets" -  William D. Cohan, The Nation, December 10, 2014

IWW Campaigns:

• I dreamed I saw Joe Hill with a safe crack use kit: Some harm reduction workers in Toronto have just joined the (Industrial) Workers of The World - By Joe Fiorito, The Toronto Star, January 13, 2015
• On the Beaches of Santa Monica, Temp Workers Organize - By Shyolanda Montana, Labor Notes, January 12, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Could Global Tide Be Starting To Turn Against Fossil Fuels? - By Fred Pearce, Yale Environment 360, January 13, 2015
• 2015: the fossil fuel endgame begins - By Melanie Mattauch, The Ecologist, January 12, 2015
• Halliburton cuts jobs in Houston - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, January 13, 2015
• Investment firm lays off 150 employees from oil field companies - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, January 12, 2015
• Oil price debacle likely to drive Alberta into recession - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, January 13, 2015
• Sand boom headed for uncertainty, Moody’s says - By Robert Grattan, FuelFix, January 12, 2015

Other News of Interest:

• Coal Companies Dodging Royalty Payments + Manipulating Government Subsidy Programs By Selling Coal To Themselves, Report Says - By James Ayre, Clean Technica, January 13, 2015
• Good riddance to Vermont Yankee - By Steve Ramey, Socialist Worker, January 12, 2015
• 9 Job-Creating Clean Energy Policies That Trump Keystone XL - By NGC Team, Next Gen Climate, January 12, 2015

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 17, 2014

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’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

• Pipe Dreams? Labor Researchers Say Keystone XL Project May Kill More Jobs Than It Creates - Sean Sweeney, director and founder of the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University, and Bruce Hamilton, vice president of Amalgamated Transit Union interviewed by Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!, December 12, 2014

Urgent Action:

• Philippines sugar organizer murdered - Act Now!

Dispatches from Lima COP20:

• 'Get the FF Out': Campaigners Reject Fossil Fuel Influence at Climate Summit - By Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, December 8, 2014
• Lima COP20 Climate Summit Marked By Protests, Publicity Stunts and PR Promises - By Brendan DeMelle, DeSmog Blog, December 10, 2014
• Lima's UN climate talks aren't even focusing on keeping down temperatures - By Simeon Tegel, Global Post, December 10, 2014
• People’s Summit in Lima Envisions Bottom-Up Movement for Global Climate Justice - By Sarah Lazare, Common Dreams, December 9, 2014
• Resistance and Solidarity at COP20, Lima - By Chris Eaton, Rising Tide North America, December 12, 2014
• Scenes from Climate Change Summit in Peru - By Lara Norkus-Crampton, National Nurses United, December 11, 2014

Other News of Interest:

• Cultivating Climate Justice through Compost: the Story of Hernani, Spain - By Beverly Bell, Global Justice Ecology Project, December 11, 2014
• Greetings from the Frontline Shale Fields of Pennsylvania - By Spencer Johnson, Talk Fracking, December 11, 2014
• Native Americans challenge construction of Mojave Desert solar plant - By Louis Sahagun, Los Angeles Times, December 12, 2014
• New strike hits Peru's largest copper mine - By Cecilia Jamasmie, Mining.Com, December 11, 2014
• North Dakota's Meaningless New Bakken Oil Regulations Will Keep Bomb Trains Rolling - By Justin Mikulka, DeSmog Blog, December 11, 2014
• NRC cites Palisades for worker radiological safety violations, record number of failures during Component Design Basis Inspections - Beyond Nuclear, December 11, 2014
• Seven injured, two seriously, in explosion at rail car repair facility near Atchison - By Michelle Pekarsky, Megan Dillard and Eric Burke, Fox4 Kansas City News, December 11, 2014
• Todos Somos SAWETO - By Michael Williams, Blue-Green Blog, December 10, 2014

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

By Mugsy - Daily Kos, November 17, 2014

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’s.

Seeming overlooked during yesterday's (11/16/14) interview on ABC's "ThisWeek", Russ Girling, current CEO of "TransCanada"... the company behind the Keystone XL Pipeline... conceded a claim by Reuters last year that, once constructed, the Keystone XL would produce as few as "FIFTY permanent jobs." But, he went on to argue, that the number did not take into account the nearly "9,000 temporary construction jobs" or the estimated "42,000 'indirect' jobs (from new businesses along the construction route)."

Seriously? These are the “jobs, jobs, jobs” Republicans have been promising? The very thought that this country may risk certain environmental disaster to create fewer jobs over TWO years than it needs every TWO weeks just to keep up with population growth, is unfathomable. Tell me we’re not being ruled by people THAT dumb!

By Anastasia Pantsios - EcoWatch, November 11, 2014

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’s.

A new study by the UK’s Energy Research Centre (UKERC) took a deep dive into job creation claims made by proponents of renewable energy and energy efficiency, looking at the figures and projected figures for the EU from a number of angles. It came to the conclusion that in the short run, moving to renewables and ramping up energy conservation would create more jobs than the fossil fuel sector, at a rate of about one job per gigawatt hour of electricity saved or generated by a clean energy source, with the long-term picture murkier because of factors in the economy and government policy that are hard to predict.

The report, Low Carbon Jobs: The evidence for net job creation from policy support for energy efficiency and renewable energy, said, “‘Green’ sectors account for as many as 3.4 million jobs in the EU, or 1.7 percent of all paid employment, more than car manufacturing or pharmaceuticals. Given the size of the green jobs market, and the expectation of rapid change and growth, there is a pressing need to independently analyse labour market dynamics and skills requirements in these sectors. What is more controversial is the question of whether policy-driven expansion of specific green sectors actually creates jobs, particularly when the policies in question require subsidies that are paid for through bills or taxes. Politicians often cite employment benefits as part of the justification for investing in clean energy projects such as renewables and energy efficiency. However, other literature is more sceptical, claiming that any intervention that raises costs in the energy sector will have an adverse impact on the economy as a whole.”

The report focused not simply on job creation, but on net job creation, subtracting the number of fossil fuel-based jobs that could potentially be displaced by spending on green infrastructure projects. It also employs “counterfactuals”: what other power generation sources would have been built instead without green policies. It says that over-optimistic green jobs figures don’t take this into account. But it also says that jobs skeptics tend to be overly broad in their application of counterfactuals.

By Kari Lydersen - In These Times, October 27, 2014

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’s.

DONORA, PA — Forty-six years ago this week, a thick noxious cloud enveloped Donora, a steel mill town on a lush hillside above the Monongahela River 37 miles south of Pittsburgh. Residents were used to pollution from the town’s cluster of industries that formed the bedrock of the region’s economy making steel, wire and nails.

They were used to plumes of smoke billowing into the sky and seeing everything covered in red dust from the iron ore used to make steel, as Charles Stacey, a long-time resident, teacher and local historian, told In These Times on a visit in June.  

Stacey grew up by the river across from the Donora Zinc Works, where no vegetation grew because of the fumes.

“I didn’t see grass until I was 50,” he says. “Air pollution was a way of life in Donora. You put your hand out and you couldn’t see the tip of your fingers. You could trip off a curb because you couldn’t see. But usually by lunchtime, the wind would blow it away.”

On October 26, 1948, a Tuesday, the cloud did not move by lunchtime or by evening. The cloud didn’t lift the next day, or the next. The annual Halloween parade was held on Friday as usual, but you couldn’t see across the street. People struggled to breathe during the high school football game on Saturday.

Stacey, who was 16 at the time, described valiant firefighters going house to house checking on residents, carrying oxygen tanks, crawling and feeling their way along the streets they had grown up on because walking made it too difficult to see and breathe.

Investigations would later confirm that a temperature inversion, a layer of warm air hovering above the valley, was preventing the dissipation of air pollution from the mills—specifically from Donora Zinc Works, which produced a toxic blend of sulfuric acid, nitrogen dioxide, fluoride and other compounds.

Officials at U.S. Steel Corp., owner of the mills and the zinc works, maintained that the situation was not caused by their operations. For several days, the company refused to shut down despite public pleas to do so. The zinc works finally halted operations on Sunday. After a rain fell soon afterwards, the air began to clear.

At least 20 deaths were attributed to the pollution, and up to 7,000 people fell ill or were hospitalized. The total death toll could be pegged at more than 70, according to some reports, by comparing normal mortality rates with rates in the month following. The incident became known as the Donora Smog.

Read the entire article, here.

By Nick Mullins - The Thoughtful Coal Miner, October 27, 2014

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’s.

State Senator Jared Carpenter sat across his desk within the capitol annex of the Kentucky State Capitol, his smile was the same I imagined he greeted customers with at the First Southern National Bank in Richmond, Kentucky. It is Valentine’s Day of 2013, a day selected by the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to lobby for the health and safety of Appalachian communities. I sat beside John Wright-Rios who had set up the meeting.

I’m already annoyed by the “Friends of Coal” license plate proudly displayed on Carpenter's bookshelf, along with a roll of “I ♥ Coal” stickers, both likely given to him by coal’s well-funded corporate lobbying force known as the Kentucky Coal Association. Carpenter was the chair of the Energy and Natural Resources committee, according to his website "His ascension to the position made him one of the fastest rising committee chairs in the chamber, and one of the youngest.  Through his work on the committee, he has gained attention for his work on behalf of Kentucky coal and for taking a strong stand against President Obama and his EPA." Coal has a lot of power in the state capitol, perhaps more than the 4 million residents living in the state.

Regardless of the uphill battle to put people before coal industry profits, we try, even after passing dozens of representatives, senators, and lobbyists wearing the same stickers that spilled from their roll on Carpenter's bookshelf.

“Did you take that tour in to coal country you said you were going to take last year?” My casual tone was much friendlier than I felt.

Carpenter’s smile grew a little larger. “I sure did and I learned a lot. We went into an underground mine and I watched a couple of men run a roof bolter. That’s some hard work they do. I have a lot of respect for them.”

His words grated on me. He'd never worked in the coal mines, he didn't know what hard work was, but I steeled myself and avoided confrontation.

“It's definitely hard work. A lot of the miners get hurt doing it. The person I started roofbolting with was only in his late twenties and was already having a lot of back and shoulder issues. ”

“Well, that’s with any industry.” He said, his smile only fading a little.

It was a programmed response, one I'd heard before from other politicians and coal industry supporters.  It is their way of downplaying the pain and suffering caused by the “jobs” they so proudly provide.

As you would imagine, their statements are untrue….