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Beyond a Band-Aid: A Discussion Paper on Protecting Workers and Communities in the Great Energy Transition

Submitted by x332349 on Fri, 06/10/2016 - 11:31

By Arjun Makhijani, Ph.D - Institute for Energy and Environmental Research and Labor Network for Sustainability, June 10, 2016

This discussion paper presents a strategy for protecting workers and communities that may be threatened by the current and future transformation of the U.S. energy system. It is derived from the recognition that recent technological developments have made solar and wind energy, in combination with efficiency, cheaper than continued reliance on fossil fuels. An economical transition to an energy system that is nearly emissions-free is possible. The transition will provide enormous benefits, both in terms of climate protection and to workers and communities. The new energy system will be cleaner, and more resilient. Air pollution will decline. Solar and wind energy require essentially no water at a time when stress on water resources is becoming an ever larger economic and ecological issue.

Notwithstanding these benefits, significant issues of justice will be raised by the transition to a clean energy future. Even though large numbers of new jobs will be created, there is no guarantee that workers and communities which lose existing jobs will have them replaced by new ones. Indeed, unless proactive policies are in place, many current workers in fossil fuel industries will become unemployed. The communities they live in will be disrupted by loss of tax revenues.

Too often these downsides are disregarded because they seem insignificant compared to the benefits of energy transition and climate protection. But no job is insignificant if it is your job; and it will be of little comfort to low-income households if utility bills go down on average, but theirs do not.

Some proposals for transitioning to clean energy include assistance programs for workers who lose their jobs. But often these are little more than extended unemployment compensation and training for jobs that may or may not exist. Often they would be both too little and too late – more like putting a Band-Aid on an accident victim than a well-considered plan to keep people from getting run over. And they disregard some of the most devastating impacts of energy system change, like the loss of the local tax base that often funds critical community services like libraries and parks and provides supplemental money for schools and for fire and police departments.

“Beyond a Band-Aid: A Discussion Paper on Protecting Workers and Communities in the Great Energy Transition” proposes direct investments in local economies dependent on fossil fuel jobs before devastating economic disruption begins. And it proposes a strategy to protect low-income consumers from the effects of that tax increase. However, this discussion paper does not cover the more general longstanding problem of energy affordability for low-income households. Tens of millions of households face high home energy bills, often exceeding 10 or even 20 percent of income. IEER has examined this issue in detail in an energy justice study specific to Maryland and proposed a three-pronged solution that is broadly applicable: limiting bills of low-income households to 6 percent of gross income, increasing energy efficiency, and providing universal solar access to low-income households.

Read the report (PDF).

EcoUnionist News #107

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 06/06/2016 - 21:17

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 7, 2016

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

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
just transition
Thin Green Line
climate justice
agriculture
agricultural workers and peasants
La Via Campesina
renewable energy workers
Coalition of Immokalee Workers
health and safety
whistleblowers
green jobs
labor and environment

EcoUnionist News #106

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 05/30/2016 - 21:17

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, May 31, 2016

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

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

The Thin Green Line:

Just Transition:

Bread and Roses:

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
just transition
Thin Green Line
climate justice
agricultural workers and peasants
agriculture
Nigeria
agroecology
health and safety
whistleblowers
renewable energy workers
green jobs
labor and environment

Climate, Jobs, and Justice: A plan for a just transition to a climate-safe economy

Submitted by x332349 on Thu, 05/12/2016 - 16:55

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, May 12, 2016

Can we radically reduce the climate-destroying greenhouse gases (GHGs) we put into the atmosphere, yet also increase jobs for American workers, protect those whose jobs may be threatened by climate policies, and reduce America’s inequality and injustice? A series of reports from The Labor Network for Sustainability and Synapse Energy Economics shows we can.

The plans to create jobs and build a more just society by putting people to work protecting the climate are laid out in the LNS Climate, Jobs and Justice Project. They project an effective, workable program for a just transition to a climate-safe economy. They include a broad national jobs program and detailed studies of local, state, and regional plans that provide opportunities for organizing around and creating economic alternatives while developing examples that can inspire further changes at a national level.

The Clean Energy Future

The Climate, Jobs, and Justice project begins with a report titled “The Clean Energy Future: Protecting the Climate, Creating Jobs and Saving Money,” prepared for the Labor Network for Sustainability [1] (LNS) and 350.org, [2] with research conducted by a team led by economist Frank Ackerman of Synapse Energy Economics. [3] It shows that the United States can reduce GHG emissions 80 percent by 2050 — while adding half-a-million jobs annually and saving Americans billions of dollars on their electrical, heating, and transportation costs. While protecting the climate has often been portrayed as a threat to American workers’ jobs and the U.S. economy, this report shows that a clean energy future will produce more jobs than “business as usual” with fossil fuels and will save money to boot.

The Green Jobs and Employment Policies in Transition Process to Green Economy: Evidence from British Labour Force Survey

Submitted by x332349 on Sun, 05/01/2016 - 00:00

By Ayhan GÖRMÜŞ - Çalışma ve Sosyal Güvenlik Eğitim ve Araştırma Merkezi, 2016

Climate change and its effects on environment and economy have become one of the most debated issues academically and institutionally. In this respect, it is expected that transition to green economy will reverse or mitigate the negative effects of climate change on environment and general economy. However, specific analyses of effects of climate change on labour market are limited numbers in academic debates. In this context, this paper explores relationship between jobs in green industries and socio-economic circumstances to contribute to academic debates. For this purpose, British Labour Force Survey data set is analysed by using logistic regression modelling to examine the part of those who are employed by green industries. The research results suggest that a range of workplace characteristics, flexible work and work-status nominators have effect on jobs in green sectors. Also, the paper suggests that British green sectors offer good prospects for creation of better jobs.

Read the text (Link).

Tags: 
United Kingdom (UK)
just transition
energy transition
green unionism
jobs
green jobs
International Labour Organisation (ILO)
green economics
decarbonization
Trades Union Congress (TUC)
Blue Green Alliance
Robert Pollin
publications
reports
highly recommended

Just Transition, System Change, and Revolutionary Green Transformation

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 04/21/2016 - 16:55

By That Green Union Guy - Environmental Unionism Caucus, April 21, 2016

The term “Just Transition” is becoming increasingly prevalent in discussions involving workers, climate change, and post carbon energy economics.

Wikipedia describes Just Transition as, “a framework that has been developed by the trade union movement to encompass a range of social interventions needed to secure workers’ jobs and livelihoods when economies are shifting to sustainable production, including avoiding climate change, protecting biodiversity, among other challenges.”

This is particularly timely given the fact that humanity faces a deepening crises due to global warming, brought on by capitalist economic activity centered on a fossil-fuel based economy. In order to prevent the absolute worst case scenarios of what will almost undoubtedly a warming world, at least 80% of the known fossil fuel reserves will need to remain unextracted, and humanity will need to transition to a renewable energy based post-carbon economy. Such a shift will inevitably require a massive transformation of the means of production, likely affecting much of the working class.

Already we’re witnessing the beginnings of major upheaval simply due to the innate characteristics of chaotic capitalist market activity, as 100,000s of workers jobs are imperiled by collapsing coal, oil, and commodities markets worldwide, combined with just the beginnings of a major shift as disruptive technologies such as wind and solar achieve greater and greater share of the mix of energy sources now available.

Furthermore, climate justice and/or environmental activists know—at least intuitively—that the fossil fuel based economy, including all parts of its supply chain must be shut down as rapidly as possible and replaced by ecologically sustainable alternatives, and all attempts at expansion of the fossil fuel based activity must be opposed, by any means necessary, including (but limited to) direct action. 

In this context, the issue of jobs and just transition has become a major topic. Obviously, shutting down any project cold (even if possible) would result in the loss of jobs performed by the workers, who’re not responsible for the activities of their employers (and quite likely do not entirely agree with their employers’ motives). Even limiting such projects can potentially negatively affect the workers’ livelihoods. Given such a threat, it’s understandable that these workers would oppose efforts by climate justice and environmental activists to disrupt fossil fuel supply chains.

It’s not a new concept...

(Read the entire document here in PDF Form)

Tags: 
just transition
energy democracy
green unionism
green jobs
labor and environment
green syndicalism
x344543
highly recommended

Recycling is a Feel Good Activity, But Not for Workers Hurt or Killed on the Job

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 04/21/2016 - 16:41

By Brian Joseph - Fair Warning, April 12, 2016

Darkness had enveloped the Newell Recycling yard by the time Erik Hilario climbed into a front-end loader on a cold evening in January 2011. Just 19 years old, Hilario, an undocumented immigrant, had followed his father from Mexico to an industrial park in East Point, Ga., near Atlanta, where they worked as low-skilled laborers amid jagged piles of scrap metal bound for the smelter.

Hilario drove to a paved section of the nine-acre yard known as the defueling or car-processing area. Here, according to witnesses in a court case, gasoline was removed from junked cars through a crude process employing a 30-foot crane and a long spike welded atop a metal trough. A claw attached to the crane would pick up cars and smash them, gas-tank first, onto the spike, spilling gasoline into the trough. The crane then would swing the cars across the pavement and drop them onto a pile, dripping gas along the way. Hilario was using the loader – which Newell later would say he was not trained or authorized to operate – to scrape up bits of metal left behind.

Hilario was slowly pushing the scraps into a pile when an intense fire suddenly engulfed him. A spark had ignited gasoline on the ground. “Help me!” he screamed, co-workers later testified in the case.

A green industry

Recycling may be good for the environment, but working conditions in the industry can be woeful. Recycling encompasses a wide range of businesses, from tiny drop-off centers operating out of strip malls and parking lots, to sprawling scrapyards and cavernous sorting plants, where cardboard, plastic and metal destined for places like China and Turkey are separated. The recycling industry also includes collection services, composting plants and e-waste and oil recovery centers. Some of these jobs rank among the most dangerous in America. Others offer meager pay, and minimum wage violations are widespread. Experts say much of the work is carried out by immigrants or temporary workers who are unaware of their rights or are poorly trained.

“These are not good jobs,” said Jackie Cornejo, former director of Don’t Waste LA, a campaign to improve the working conditions and pay for workers in the Los Angeles municipal waste and recycling industries. “People only hear about the feel-good aspects of recycling and zero waste, and rarely do they hear about the other side,” she said.

Despite its virtuous image as one of the original green industries, recycling is dirty, labor-intensive work. It involves loud, heavy machinery, including semis, forklifts, conveyor belts, loaders, cranes, shredders and grinders, all of which pose a serious threat to life and limb, especially if they’re not properly serviced or lack basic safety features, which is often the case at recycling firms. Unlike manufacturing, recycling cannot be completely systematized because it depends on an ever-changing flow of recyclable materials that come in all manner of shapes and sizes. This can require recycling workers to personally handle most of the scrap passing through a facility, potentially exposing them to carcinogens, explosives or toxics, to say nothing of sharp objects.

Exposures are especially problematic at e-scrap and battery recycling facilities, where the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has found workers with elevated levels of lead in their blood or on their skin.

In one case in Ohio, the high lead levels in the blood of a young brother and sister were traced to the work performed by their father, a former e-scrap recycling worker who crushed cathode ray tubes. The father didn’t wear any protective gear at work and often came home with dust in his hair. High lead levels also were found in the children of workers at a battery recycling plant in Puerto Rico.

While major corporations like Waste Management are in the recycling business, many of the companies that do this work are small, which can mean they lack the knowledge and resources to establish effective safety procedures. Recycling workers, by virtue of their immigration status or status as temps, often hesitate to speak up when they see hazards on the job or are victimized by the outright illegal behavior of their supervisors.

One of the largest sectors in recycling, scrapyards, has long had high fatality and injury rates. In 2014, for example, that sector’s fatality rate was 20.8 deaths per every full-time 100,000 workers, more than nine times higher than manufacturing workers overall. That same year, garbage and recycling collectors had the fifth-highest fatality rate among the dozens of occupations analyzed by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

No one tracks how many workers die across all recycling sectors. But at scrapyards and sorting plants, at least 313 recycling workers have been killed on the job from 2003 to 2014, according to figures compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A FairWarning analysis of Occupational Safety and Health Administration records found that inspections conducted from 2005 to 2014 resulted with scrapyards and sorting facilities receiving about 80 percent more citations than the average inspected worksite.

Industry leaders and safety consultants say it’s no secret that recycling firms have to do a better job of following basic safety procedures, like installing guarding on conveyor belts or properly shutting off machines before maintenance. The Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, a trade association, recently announced that it is partnering with OSHA to try to reduce injury and fatality rates.

OSHA has limited resources, especially given the sheer number of worksites it oversees. The AFL-CIO calculates that with current staffing levels federal OSHA can only inspect worksites once, on average, every 140 years.

“Systematically, across the country, (OSHA officials) haven’t given the industry the attention it’s due,” said Eric Frumin, the health and safety coordinator for Change to Win, a partnership of four national unions. Although OSHA says that five of its 10 regions have special enforcement programs covering sectors of the recycling industry, safety advocates say it isn’t enough. They are lobbying the agency to create a national program aimed at sorting plants, where recyclables like metal, paper and plastic are separated. “It’s a low end of the economy,” Frumin said. “We’ve shipped all the factory jobs to China, so what is the modern-day equivalent of dirty, dangerous factory jobs? Warehouses and recycling plants.”

Tags: 
recycling workers
recycling
green capitalism
health and safety
green unionism
greenwashing
green jobs

Energy Democracy: Inside Californians' Game-Changing Plan for Community-Owned Power

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 03/31/2016 - 19:07

Al Weinrub - Yes! Magazine, November 12, 2015

On September 21, Pa Dwe, a 16-year-old student at Oakland’s Street Academy, spoke out against the export of coal through the Port of Oakland to City Council members: “I’m opposed to this coal export because it will make my community in West Oakland sick. I support jobs, but not the kind of jobs that make us sick. There are clean job alternatives, like Community Choice energy, and this will be good for the health of my community. This is my generation; I want to have a healthy life.” 

Pa’s comments exemplify a growing awareness that the people of California can only successfully address climate change by breaking with fossil fuels and the state’s investor-owned utility companies.

These utilities, Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E), Southern California Edison (SCE), and San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E), control about 75 percent of the electricity market in California, with the other 25 percent being supplied by public (municipal) utilities.

By creating slick, misleading ad campaigns about how green they are, the monopoly utilities have done their best to fight renewable energy programs. This often happens behind the scenes, and with the willing assistance of the scandal-ridden California Public Utilities Commission—the agency that is supposed to regulate these behemoth energy enterprises.

Back in 2002, in the wake of the Enron-induced crash of California's electricity system—which to this day has left rate-payers bailing out the utility companies— California passed AB 117, the Community Choice Aggregation law. This law allows a city, county, or any grouping of cities and counties, to “aggregate” electricity customers in their jurisdictions for the purpose of procuring electricity on their behalf. Under this arrangement, a public agency—the newly formed Community Choice program—decides where electricity will come from, while the incumbent utility delivers the electricity, maintains the electric lines, and bills customers.

The new program is a hybrid between a public agency and a private utility. The utility owns the distribution infrastructure, but the public is in the driver’s seat regarding energy decisions.

“It puts our community in control of the most important part of our electricity system,” explains Woody Hastings of the Center for Climate Protection in Sonoma County, one of the jurisdictions that has opted for a Community Choice energy program. “That means we can purchase more renewable and greenhouse-gas-free energy on the market than PG&E offered us. But more importantly, we can build renewable energy assets right here in the County. We not only get the benefits of low carbon electricity, but we get the economic benefits—the business opportunities and clean energy jobs—that come from investing in our own community.”

Sonoma County’s Community Choice customers get power that is 30 percent lower in greenhouse gases than PG&E. They also pay up to 9 percent less on average than PG&E customers. In addition, electricity net revenues go back into the community rather than into the pockets of PG&E shareholders and overpaid executives.

Tags: 
Al Weinrub
just transition
green jobs
green unionism
community choice aggregation (CCA)

Fairbanks Rally Demands Climate Justice and Clean Energy

Submitted by x344543 on Sun, 03/20/2016 - 15:16

By Tristan Glowa and Enei Begaye Peter - Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition, March 15, 2016

Fairbanks, Alaska—On Tuesday, March 15, the Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition (FCAC) hosted a testimonial rally calling for a transition to a clean energy economy. Around 100 people convened in Constitution Park on the UAF Campus to hear a diverse array of speakers from Fairbanks and other parts of Alaska, who stood in front a banner proclaiming, “ALASKANS DEMAND CLIMATE JUSTICE AND CLEAN ENERGY.” The rally was held during the 2016 Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW), an international gathering of Arctic scientists and policymakers, held at UAF, to coordinate and collaborate in all areas of Arctic science and policy. The rally, which was held at the center of the ASSW conference area, communicated the diversity of Alaskan voices appealing to citizens, political leaders, and researchers for action on climate change. Speakers specifically called on Alaska’selected leaders, both statewide and nationally, to transition Alaska to a clean energy economy.

According to organizers, the rally was catalyzed by the growing urgency of climate change impacts to Alaskan communities as the state warms at nearly twice the rate of the lower 48 states. “In Alaska and throughout the Arctic, we know that our communities are disproportionately on the front lines of climate change with worsening fires and permafrost melt,” said Tristan Glowa, an event organizer, UAF student and Fairbanks resident. “We have a stake in solving the climate crisis and we know that we can do our part by investing in a transition towards renewable energy and a sustainable economy.”

Esau Sinnok, a young man from Shishmaref, told the crowd about the impacts of climate­ driven coastal erosion threatening his home. “Our community’s voice needs to be heard so that we can move as a community instead of relocating individually,” he said, “because once we lose our land, we will lose our culture and we will lose our identity as Iñupiaq Eskimo people.”

Bessie Odom, Vice President of the NAACP Youth Council in Anchorage, emphasized the connection of all Alaskans with people and communities who are on the front lines of climate change: “What happens to one individual, one family, one community, happens to us all. Where one is suffering, it is only natural to be sympathetic but we must take this response much further and put action with it.”

Speakers Jan Bronson and Ritchie Musick cast climate change as a moral issue in addition to its social and ecological dimensions. “Faith communities in Alaska are coming together to protect the climate,” said Bronson. “We recognize the moral and spiritual imperative to stand with vulnerable communities and protect the great Earth systems which sustain us all. “Climate change is illuminating the injustices and the disparities that we face as indigenous people,” noted Princess Johnson, Netsaii Gwich’in and resident of Fairbanks. “We need to restore balance, and climate change is the catalyst that can bring us together.”

Throughout the rally, speakers and organizers pointed to the need for a transition to a clean energy economy as a solution to climate change. “A ‘Just Transition’ means shifting our state towards a clean energy economy through a fair and equitable plan for everyone, especially our workforce,” Johnson said. “As scientists, tribal members, as mothers and fathers, as citizens of the North, we have a responsibility to act on climate change now. We have an opportunity to lead the world in making a Just Transition.” Johnson underscored the importance of popular pressure in demanding that leaders rise to this occasion: “We need to challenge our elected leaders to push for the shift to clean energy. This is how we will move to diversify our economy and protect critical ecosystems.”

Jessica Girard, FCAC Organizer and Program Director for the Northern Alaska Environmental Center, stressed the need to speak up against offshore drilling in Alaska’s Arctic in order to keep climate change in line with what science says is required for a habitable planet: “We need to leave fossil fuel energy in the past and invest in the future with renewable energies like wind and solar,” she said. Echoing Girard’s call, event emcees Enei Begaye and Cathy Walling led the crowd in chants of “Circumpolar Wind and Solar!”

The rally sounded these local calls for a Just Transition to the officials gathered for the conference. UA Regent and Borough Assembly member John Davies spoke at the rally and gave his support to the movement, describing a variety of tools Alaska can use to address the climate crisis. More than 10 UAF researchers and scientists signed an open letter urging ASSW leaders and policymakers enact policies reflecting what climate science says is necessary. “Scientists understand better than anyone that we must adjust our policies to the Earth­­atmospheric physics aren’t going to adjust to us humans,” said FCAC organizer Odin Miller, who coordinated and helped draft the letter. FCAC and its allies renewed their commitment to work for climate justice and a fair and equitable transition to a clean energy economy.

The Fairbanks Climate Action Coalition represents a broad constituency of local grassroots groups and concerned citizens. The group currently includes members from trade unions, Alaska Natives, conservationists, students, scientists, farmers, and multiple faith groups. The coalition formed out of the need to amplify voices throughout Fairbanks who demand a fair and equitable transition to a clean energy economy.

Tags: 
just transition
green unionism
Alaska
green jobs

What Keeping Oil in the Ground Can Do for Economic Inequality

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 03/18/2016 - 17:35

By Yessenia Funes - Yes! Magazine, March 15, 2016

Our lifestyle is inextricably linked to fossil fuels. We pay the industry to heat our homes and power our cars. Though driving might be optional where public transit is available, heat is not during harsh winters. We know about the effects on the climate of burning oil, gas, and coal for energy, but we don’t know what turning our backs on them will do to our economy. Some worry that closing our oil refineries and shutting down our mines would throw the market into a dangerous vortex. That doesn’t need to be the case. A successful energy transition could actually benefit the economy and reduce inequality.

The economy relies on a number of things, including spending, manufacturing, trade, and personal income. The availability of fossil fuels has largely driven these for 150 years. “[Oil] is the world’s first trillion-dollar industry in terms of annual dollar sales,” environmental author Jack Doyle wrote in 1994. In North Dakota, a major oil- and gas-producing state, an oil boom created the $53.7 billion gross domestic product the state sees today.

But booms often have downsides. When the journal Energy Economics compared six states that produced the vast majority of the West’s crude oil and natural gas, it saw per capita income decrease by as much as $7,000 in counties whose incomes relied most on such development. Also, the crime rates and percentage of adults without a college education increased in those counties. The study offers possible explanations, including an increasing reliance on nonlocal workers and changing wage structures.

The oil and gas industries are the largest industrial sources of volatile organic compound emissions—2.2 million tons a year. These chemicals cause smog, which can increase the risks of asthma and premature death. The industry also produces cancer-causing pollutants: benzene, ethylbenzene, and n-hexane, which are emitted during the refinement process.

Low-income communities of color disproportionately bear this health burden and are also least likely to have access to health care, including preventive medicine, checkups, and prescription drugs. The inequality of care only widens the income gap by adding more financial pressures to an already stressed group.

What about jobs? Extractive industries currently employ nearly 200,000 Americans and pay some employees as much as $42.90 an hour. These jobs are a valid concern. The U.S. unemployment rate is finally down to about 5 percent. Surely we don’t want all those people put out of work.

That won’t happen if we launch the renewable energy sector in sync. Economists at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) have studied this topic since the early 2000s. Their research shows how a transition to renewables can lead to a post-carbon world and a fairer economy.

Tags: 
decarbonization
energy transition
just transition
labor and environment
green jobs
extractivism
fossil fuel capitalism
green unionism
green economics
Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS)
Jeremy Brecher

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