Climate Jobs Network

By Paul Prescod - Jacobin, June 2, 2022

Climate and labor activists are coming together to hammer out ambitious but realistic plans for massively expanding the clean-energy sector in a way that also creates good union jobs. For both paychecks and the planet, it’s the only path forward.

The stalling of President Joe Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda raises serious concerns for those looking to the federal government for strong action on climate change. Much of the more ambitious climate-related aspects of the legislation have already been gutted — and the fact that it still can’t pass a Congress with a Democratic majority is a worrying sign for the future.

But despite the dysfunction at the federal level, there are encouraging developments occurring at the state level. Increasingly, climate and labor activists are coming together to hammer out ambitious but realistic plans for massively expanding the clean-energy sector in a way that creates family-sustaining union jobs.

These state-based efforts are often facilitated by the Climate Jobs National Resource Center. States like New York, Connecticut and Maine have managed to get real buy-in from the building trades on a vision that defies the false jobs versus environment dichotomy. Recently, the Illinois legislature passed landmark climate legislation that puts the state on a path to reaching 100 percent clean energy by 2050, all with the full support of the Illinois AFL-CIO.

Rhode Island has now joined the party. Earlier this year Climate Jobs Rhode Island, a broad labor-environmental coalition, released a report titled “Building a Just Transition for a Resilient Future: A Climate Jobs Program for Rhode Island.” The report, compiled in partnership with the Worker Institute at Cornell, takes a comprehensive approach to limiting carbon emissions — containing recommendations on retrofits, public transportation, renewable energy, and climate resilience.

The Rhode Island initiative is a good model for activists in other states to consider. In addition to meaningfully addressing climate change, there’s no doubt that this program would result in the creation of tens of thousands union jobs. It points the way forward for both the climate and labor movements, which must join together in order for the working class to have any hope of a sustainable future.

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 2022

This second of two commentaries on “Unions Making a Green New Deal from Below” portrays what it looks like when unions in a town decide to create a local Green New Deal or when unions in a state decide to transform their economy to expand jobs and justice by protecting the climate.

Workers and unions are among those who have the most to gain by climate protection that produces good jobs and greater equality. That’s why unions in the most diverse industries and occupations are creating their own Green New Deal-type programs in localities around the country. Here are some examples:

By various - ILR Worker Institute - March 4, 2022

On Friday, March 4, researchers from Cornell University joined with leaders of the Climate Jobs RI coalition, a group of labor, climate, and community groups in Rhode Island, and discussed a new report unveiled last month that outlined a comprehensive action plan to put RI on the path to becoming the first fully decarbonized state and building an equitable, pro-worker, clean energy economy.

Watch the panel here:

By J. Mijin Cha, Hunter Moskowitz, Matt Phillips, and Lara Skinner - Maine Labor Climate Council, March 2022

This report, written in consultation with researchers at Cornell University’s Worker Institute, examines the interrelated crises of climate breakdown and inequality, and lays out an ambitious roadmap for how Maine can build a renewable energy economy, create good union jobs, and tackle racial and economic inequality.

The report’s science-based recommendations will broadly help our state achieve four goals: quickly decarbonizing Maine’s economy; ensuring that the tens of thousands of new jobs that get created as part of Maine’s energy transition adhere to high labor standards in terms of pay, benefits, training, and job security; bringing underrepresented workers into the clean-energy workforce through well-run apprentice and pre-apprentice programs; and ensuring a just transition for workers and communities most affected by these changes. 

The report sets bold objectives for building out Maine’s renewable energy economy, including:

• Electrifying all state and local vehicles, including school and city buses, by 2040;

• Building a high speed rail corridor from Bangor to Boston while connecting to Lewiston/Auburn;

• Doing deep energy-efficiency retrofits and installing solar on all K-12 public schools and publicly owned buildings by 2035; and

• Installing 3GW of renewable energy by 2030 and upgrading Maine’s energy transmission and storage capacity

Read the report (PDF).

By Sophia Reuss - Climate Jobs National Resource Center, February 28, 2022

Today, climate jobs leaders from across the United States responded to the latest IPCC report, which spells out the dire costs and consequences of the impacts of the climate crisis, arguing that the updated climate science underscores the urgency of taking bold, science-backed, and pro-worker climate action to build an equitable renewable energy economy.

The Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability report released today represents the second portion of the IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report. The IPCC experts find that human-caused climate breakdown has already led to certain irreversible impacts and that the window for adapting to climate breakdown will close quickly over the next decade. The report’s core message is that we must take immediate transformative action to implement equitable climate adaptation measures and slash emissions in order to avoid climate catastrophe.

By Lara Skinner, J. Mijin Cha, Avalon Hoek Spaans, Hunter Moskowitz, and Anita Raman - The Worker Institute and The ILR School, January 2022

A new report released today by climate and labor experts at Cornell University in collaboration with the Climate Jobs Rhode Island Coalition outlines a comprehensive climate jobs action plan to put Rhode Island on the path to building an equitable and resilient clean-energy economy.

The report lays out a series of wide-ranging policy recommendations to transition the Ocean State’s building, school, energy, transportation, and adaptation sectors to renewable energy with the strongest labor and equity standards. Core provisions of the plan include decarbonizing the state’s K-12 public school buildings, installing 900 MW of solar energy statewide, 1,300 MW of offshore wind energy, and modernizing the state’s electrical grid by 2030. 

“Rhode Island is in a unique position as a state, in 2019 it had the lowest energy consumption per capita across all the United States. Rhode Island can use climate change as an opportunity to eliminate carbon emissions, increase equity, and create high-quality jobs that support working families and frontline communities,” says Avalon Hoek Spaans, Research and Policy Development Extension Associate for the Labor Leading on Climate Initiative at the Worker Institute, Cornell ILR School and one of the authors of the report.

The Worker Institute’s Labor Leading on Climate Initiative in partnership with the Climate Jobs National Resource Center, and Climate Jobs Rhode Island, began a comprehensive research, educational, and policy process in early 2021 to develop an implementation framework to drastically reduce emissions in the state while creating high-quality union family sustaining jobs.

Over the past year, the Labor Leading on Climate team has conducted outreach to numerous leaders of the labor and environmental movements as well as policymakers and experts in the climate, energy, and labor fields to better understand the challenges and opportunities that climate change and climate mitigation and adaptation presents to Rhode Island workers and unions.

“With Rhode Island on the frontlines of the climate crisis, it will take bold, ambitious action to combat climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution to the levels that science demands. Fortunately, tackling climate change is also an opportunity to address the other crises Rhode Island is facing: inequality and pandemic recovery,” says Lara Skinner, Director, Labor Leading on Climate Initiative, at the Worker Institute, Cornell ILR School and one of the authors of the report.

“As a small state with one of the lowest emissions in the country, Rhode Island can be innovative and efficient, employing cutting-edge approaches to reverse climate change and inequality. Rhode Island has the potential to be the first state in the country to fully decarbonize and build out a net zero economy with high-quality union jobs. This would make Rhode Island's economy stronger, fairer, and more inclusive,” says Lara Skinner, Director, Labor Leading on Climate Initiative, at the Worker Institute, Cornell ILR School and one of the authors of the report.

Read the text (PDF).

By Vincent Alvarez, President of the New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO and Pat Devaney, Secretary-Treasurer of the Illinois AFL-CIO - Climate Jobs National Resources Center, November 4, 2021

With Washington still negotiating critical climate provisions in the reconciliation bill, you’d be forgiven for feeling impatient. The dual crises of climate change and extreme inequality are a threat to our society, and every one of us has a stake in pushing our elected leaders to build a climate-safe and equitable future.

Fortunately, workers and their unions are making tremendous progress in advancing bold legislation at the state level to address these two existential crises. Just last week, labor unions united under the Climate Jobs Illinois coalition scored a massive victory for workers and the planet when Illinois enacted a landmark climate bill that sets the state on a path to a carbon-free power sector by 2045 with the strongest-in-the-nation labor and equity standards.

Thanks to the labor movement’s leadership on climate change, the Illinois bill will slash emissions, create thousands of new clean energy union jobs, expand union apprenticeships for Black and Latinx communities, increase energy efficiency for public schools, and safeguard thousands of union workers at the state’s nuclear plants that currently generate the bulk of Illinois’ zero-emissions energy. It also contains a transition program for families and communities currently reliant on jobs in the fossil fuel industry. This win shows what’s possible when workers and their unions lead on pursuing bold climate action at the scale that science demands.

Illinois isn’t alone. This summer, unions and environmental groups in Connecticut organized to pass strong labor and equity standards for renewable energy projects through the state legislature. The legislation they won includes prevailing wage and project labor agreement provisions and requires energy developers to partner with in-state apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, which will expand access to good union jobs, specifically in communities of color that have seen generations of underinvestment and underemployment.

By Ellie Cohen, Michael Leon Guerrero, Vivian Price, Aiko Schaefer, Hunter Stern, and Veronica Wilson - The Climate Center, October 28, 2021

By various - Climate Jobs NY, October 4, 2020

By Michael Sainato - The Guardian, September 20, 2021

In the beginning of this summer, the US state of Connecticut passed legislation to guarantee prevailing wage and benefits are provided to workers on clean energy projects.

The law was a product of labor unions and environmental groups working together to educate workers about the climate crisis and develop solutions, with a focus on creating good-paying, unionized jobs and opportunities to combat economic inequities.

Through organizing led in part by the Climate Jobs National Resource Center and the Workers Institute at Cornell University, this strategy has been adopted in other states around the US, such as New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Illinois and Texas. For the labor movement and environmentalists it seems a win-win: tackle the ever more urgent climate crisis while at the same time address inequality by strengthening America’s labor movement.

Aziz Dehkan, executive director of the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs, a coalition of local labor unions and environmental groups, explained the legislation in the state was built on efforts to ensure that a large solar project in East Windsor employed local, union workers rather than out of state or low-wage workers. The project also provided opportunities for individuals to enter apprenticeship programs and access jobs created through renewable energy projects.

“It came naturally to us that for every renewables project, we can’t keep going after individual projects,” said Dehkan. “If we don’t do it this way, we’re not going to be able to meet the standards in Connecticut to get close to zero carbon emissions by at least 2030.”

The coalition is also working on carbon-free schools and public transit equity campaigns.