gender equity

By Julia Conley - Common Dreams, January 3, 2023

New analysis shows how California "can achieve a just and equitable transition away from fossil fuels for oil and gas workers."

A new analysis out Tuesday shows how a just transition towards a green economy in California—one in which workers in the state's fossil fuel industry would be able to find new employment and receive assistance if they're displaced from their jobs—will be "both affordable and achievable," contrary to claims from oil and gas giants and anti-climate lawmakers.

The study published by the Gender Equity Policy Institute (GEPI) notes that a majority of workers in the oil and gas sectors will have numerous new job opportunities as California pushes to become carbon neutral by 2045 with a vow to construct a 100% clean electricity grid and massively reduce oil consumption and production.

"The state will need to modernize its electrical grid and build storage capacity to meet increased demand for electricity," reads the report. "Carbon management techniques, plugging orphan wells, and the development of new energy sources such as geothermal will all come into play, providing economic opportunities to workers and businesses alike."

GEPI analyzed the most recent public labor data, showing that the oil and gas industries in California employed approximately 59,200 people as of 2021 across jobs in production, sales, transportation, legal, and executive departments, among others.

The group examined potential job opportunities for fossil fuel workers "in all growing occupations, not solely in clean energy or green jobs," and found that about two-thirds of employees are likely to find promising opportunities outside of fossil fuel-related work.

"Our findings show that a sizable majority (56%) of current oil and gas workers are highly likely to find jobs in California in another industry in their current occupation, given demand in the broader California economy for workers with their existing skills," the report says.

By Staff - Gender Equity Policy Institute, January 23, 2023

California’s ambitious climate goals, supported by state and federal investment, will create enormous economic opportunity over the coming decades. To meet the 2045 target of carbon neutrality, a 100% clean electric grid, and a 90% reduction in oil consumption and refinery production, the state will need to modernize its electrical grid and build storage capacity to meet increased demand for electricity. Carbon management techniques, plugging orphan wells, and the development of new energy sources such as geothermal will all come into play, providing economic opportunities to workers and businesses alike. Reducing use of polluting fossil fuels will likewise result in significant health benefits to Californians, especially to communities disproportionately burdened by polluting enterprises and proximity to freeways.

Supported by state investment and federal funding through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and the Inflation Reduction Act, the actions necessary to tackle the challenges of climate change are projected to create 4 million new jobs in the state. California is investing in developing the clean energy workforce, with an equity commitment to recruit and train historically disadvantaged and under- represented communities.

Decarbonizing the economy and accelerating the adoption of clean energy is necessary if we are to preserve a habitable planet. Progress to a carbon neutral future is already well underway in the state. Wind and solar power are less expensive than natural gas or coal powered electricity. A large majority of Californians are concerned about climate change and support action to address its impacts.

However, as with all sectoral economic change, some industries will grow and thrive, while others will shrink, leaving some of their workers behind. Labor unions and trades groups are rightly concerned that workers are not forced to abandon skills developed over their careers and thrown into an inhospitable labor market with no support.

Thus, a key challenge in meeting California’s climate action goals is to devise a fair, equitable, and empirically-based policy to provide support for workers at risk of unemployment and income loss as many factors combine to reduce demand in state for oil and gas products.

By Michelle Chen - In These Times, November 21, 2017

Ahead of the Thanksgiving feast, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) hit midtown Manhattan on Monday to face down the suits with chants of “Exploitation has got to go!” CIW was there to demand humane working conditions on their farms.

Peppered with brass-band musicians and street puppets, the protesters rallied at the New York, N.Y. offices of the fast food giant Wendy’s.

CIW members hoisted tomato and bucket-shaped picket signs with slogans like “freedom from sexual violence” and “Justicia” to face off against Wendy’s cheery, red pigtails. They demanded fair wages and freedom from violence and exploitation.

This week’s march, part of the coalition’s multi-city tour to promote its Fair Food labor protection program, put women workers at the frontlines, protesting the epidemic of sexual assault in agricultural labor, which affects as many as eight in ten women.

Decades before labor-relations courts and bureaucracy-laden contract negotiations, workplace disputes with powerful corporations were resolved with fists and clubs. And in Trump’s America, CIW workers are turning Florida’s vast tomato fields into the latest frontline in the struggle for the rights and dignity of immigrant communities.

“As farmworker women, this experience poses an incredibly hard choice; we don’t have another job, we have to suffer this abuse, because we have a family to maintain,” said organizer Lupe Gonzalo, speaking on the violence that stalks women working the fields, at an October gathering at a Minnesota theater. “Our silence is something we must grow accustomed to every day.”

Voices like Gonzalo’s rarely take the public spotlight in conversations on sexual violence and discrimination, but her words resonate deeply on the edges of the economy. As a minority in a male-dominated workforce, working in brutal, isolated conditions, women are exposed daily to sexual violence, be it coworkers’ harassment or rape by supervisors.

Although agribusiness corporations have historically failed to address sexual abuse in their supply chains, CIW members say they’ve virtually eliminated sexual harassment from the fields they’ve organized via targeted enforcement, broad-based monitoring and worker education efforts. Additionally, strong community support and the group’s pioneering Fair Food Program (FFP) has helped break the culture of silence in the fields by making women’s rights everybody’s business—from coworkers and neighbors all the way up to multinational restaurant chains.

Wendy’s is now the lone holdout among the large restaurant chains that CIW has pushed over the years to sign onto its FFP code of conduct. Since the 1990s, the group has marched on college campuses, rallied at corporate offices and lobbied on Capitol Hill to promote an innovative form of collective worker protection that has evolved into FFP's worker-led social responsibility system.

Though not a formal union contract, the program's model, which now protects some 35,000 workers, essentially provides a bill of rights for thousands of laborers in Florida’s heavily consolidated agribusiness sector to promote structural change at all levels of the industry. The binding agreement mandates that all companies in the supply chain—including growers and retailers—provide an additional penny-per-pound premium that is passed through to pickers. This adds a considerable amount to workers’ annual wages. Meanwhile, the agreement ensures enforceable standards for fair working conditions, job security through direct, long-term employment and due process for abuse complaints.

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 15, 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 21, 2015) - railroadconference.org
• Support the USW Oil Workers ULP Strike and Defense Fund - USW Fundraising Appeal

USW Refinery Workers Strike News:

• [Photos] USW Tesoro Picket 2/12/15 (Martinez, California) - United Steelworkers, February 12, 2015
• At my oil refinery, my life is worth the price of a pie; We don’t want to be exposed to potentially fatal hazards unnecessarily. That’s why we’ve organised the largest strike since 1980 to demand worker safe - By Butch Cleve, The Guardian, February 12, 2015
• Health and Safety Concerns Forced Workers into a Work Stoppage [Podcast] - By Steve Garey, United Steelworkers, February 9, 2015
• The same fight; Nurses support the United Steelworkers on their strike lines - By Lucia Hwang, National Nurses United, February 15, 2015 [related] Nurses support refinery protest - By Rick Hurd, San Jose Mercury News, February 13, 2015
• Shell, union spar over picket line etiquette - By LM Sixel, FuelFix, February 13, 2015
• Three U.S. Oil Plants Targeted by Union Strike Report Upsets - By Lynn Doan and Daniel Murtaugh, Bloomberg, February 11, 2015
• USW Striking Oil Workers Speakout For Health And Safety At Tesoro Refinery [video] - By Steve Zeltser, Labor Video Project, February 12, 2015
• Washington Refinery Workers Protest for Better Working and Safety Conditions; Thirteen workers were killed in accidents at two refineries in the state in recent years - By Jonathan Rosenblum, Alternet, February 10, 2015
• [Another Strike?] 1,100 natural gas utility workers on Long Island eye walkout - Associated Press, February 12, 2015

Carbon Bubble:

• Apache slashing Eagle Ford drilling rigs - By Jennifer Hiller, FuelFix, February 13, 2015
• Cenovus to cut 15% of staff, freeze pay - By Michael Allan McCrae, Mining.Com, February 12, 2015
• Driller: More than 1,000 field hands out of work as rigs decline - By Collin Eaton, FuelFix, February 12, 2015
• Hercules Offshore lays off 30 percent of workforce - By Ryan Holeywell, FuelFix, February 12, 2015
• Mirroring oil, this fossil fuel is plunging, too - By John W. Schoen, CNBC, February 11, 2015
• Texas idles more drilling rigs - By Jennifer Hiller, FuelFix, February 13, 2015

Green Jobs and Just Transition:

• California labor: "There are no jobs on a dead planet" - By Michelle Kern & Alex Farr, People's World, February 10, 20155

Global Anti-Capitalism:

• The Debt Slavery Must End to Prevent Environmental Catastrophes: Will Greece Kick Start a Paradigm Shift? - By Stefano Balbi, Common Dreams, February 10, 2015

Other News:

• Constitution Pipeline Threatening 7 PA Landowners With Un-Constitutional Eminent Domain - Energy Justice Summer, February 14, 2015
• Death toll in Brazil offshore oil platform explosion climbs to 5 - Natural Gas Watch, February 11, 2015 [related] Death toll of Brazilian oil ship explosion rises to 5 - Associated Press, February 12, 2015
• Enormous Toxic Cloud Shrouds Six Towns In Spain After Blast At Chemical Plant (VIDEOS) - By Dylan Hock, Addicting Info, February 12, 2015
• Exclusive: Exxon wants five-year Beaumont pact to avert strikes during buildout - By Erwin Seba, Reuters, February 12, 2015
• Growing voices say gig workers need protections, benefits - By Carolyn Said, San Francisco Chronicle, February 13, 2015
• Homophobic culture permeates mining industry - By Ashley Renders, Corporate Knights, February 6, 2015
• Libya reopens strike-hit oil port as U.N. convenes talks - By Ahmed Elumami, Reuters, February 10, 2015
• The Lumber Man In Charge of Climate Policy; Bay Area billionaire Robert Fisher profits by logging California's North Coast forests, even as Governor Jerry Brown has tapped him to help implement the state's anti-global warming agenda - By Will Parrish, East Bay Express, February 11, 2015
• Peru anti-oil protest leaves 1 dead, 22 wounded - Associated Press, February 11, 2015
• VT Gas pulls the plug on pipeline expansion to NY - By Dan D’Ambrosio, Burlington Free Press, February 10, 2015

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

By Andrea Bowen - Labor Notes September 3, 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.

My building trades organizer friend didn’t exactly have the language, but he knew the worker was in trouble:

“She said she went to work looking like a woman, and the supervisor told her he didn’t want people like that working there.”

This was new territory for my friend—trying to help out a transgender worker—but he knew his job was the same as ever: protect her rights.

Transgender people are a workplace reality. And some unions, like the Communications Workers (CWA) and Service Employees (SEIU), have long advocated for transgender workers.

SEIU passed a resolution in 2012 vowing to provide its members health insurance covering transgender-specific needs, such as hormones, mental health care, and different surgeries that some people use for transition.

CWA submitted an amendment to the AFL-CIO constitution, ratified in 2013, explicitly stating that the federation encourages transgender workers “to share equally in the full benefits of union organization.”

These examples are impressive and remarkable. But not every union, and not every local, has the knowledge required to make transgender workers feel safe and respected at its hall and in its workplaces.

From Earth First! Newswire - September 8, 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.

Demonstrators from Trans and/or Women’s Action Camp (TWAC) and the Gender Alliance of the South Sound (GASS) have staged a dance party at a billboard along I-5 (Northbound, Exit 72). The billboard’s former advertisement was replaced with a massive banner with the message “Transgender Health, Not Fossil Fuel Wealth.”

This action intends to raise awareness about two issues of concern to Washington’s residents. The demonstrators oppose public tax dollars subsidizing the fossil fuel industry and the increase in oil and coal train traffic in many neighborhoods. The public would bear the largest portion of the cost of any railroad improvements to accommodate the coal and oil trains. The protesters also wish to draw attention to the fact that the investment in fossil fuels comes at the expense of the basic needs of citizens such as affordable healthcare. In particular, transgender citizens in Washington are commonly denied health coverage for medically necessary drugs, therapy, and procedures.

“Fossil fuel companies plan to turn our rails into coal and oil corridors, putting local communities and the global climate at risk,” stated TWAC spokesperson Eva Jones. “These industries are banking on taxpayers paying for better rails and training for emergency responders. This is an unacceptable funneling of limited state funds away from real public services like affordable healthcare.”

Washington State Medicaid currently discriminates against transgender residents by denying them coverage for treatments deemed necessary by the American Medical Association. Although it would cost relatively little, Washington cities and counties do not offer their employees trans inclusive health insurance. “A society is judged by the way it treats its members most in need. Transgender people have been forced to remain hidden and anonymous which results in tremendous mental, physical, and emotional damage. Transgender people deserve their basic healthcare needs to be met,” says Rikki Dean, member of GASS.

This protest concludes the annual Trans and/or Women’s Action camp, a camp for environmental and gender justice activists. This spectacle joins numerous actions that have taken place this summer against fossil fuel infrastructure in the Pacific Northwest.

By Eve Andrews - Grist, July 3, 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 other day, I was talking to my dad on the phone about an essay I wrote about sexual harassment in a warming world.

“Honey,” he said, “I thought it was great – but where did you get the idea to write about something like that?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Personal experience, I guess.”

“You mean men say things like that to you? Just walking down the street?”

Well, no — not just walking down the street, but also on the bus, in parks, and even in the Twittersphere. I suppose no father wants to think of his little girl being talked to that way, but I was shocked that it had never occurred to him because for me and billions of other women all over the world, it’s such a constant reality. I started thinking more about how, as a woman, my right to exist peacefully and safely in public spaces is compromised on a fairly regular basis. And I know that I’m not alone, which is why I’m still writing about it.