green syndicalism

By Burkely Hermann - Z Blogs, June 13, 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.

Aggressive militarism continues to emanate from the office of the presidency and the US government itself. With drone strikes in foreign countries, an “empire of drone bases” in Africa as the Washington Post once called it, and a continuing war in Afghanistan, you would think that there would be mass protests on the streets against these injustices. Instead, there have been noble and honorable protests against drones, the war in Afghanistan, Bush era war criminals, and so on, but they have been too limited. At the same time, protests calling for the coming climate catastrophe to be adequately addressed have been growing among indigenous people and concerned citizens in both the Global North and the Global South. This is despite a laser focus of the big environmental organizations, Gang Green, on stopping Keystone XL but not a focus on many other issues. This article outlines why the peace movement[1] and the environmental movement within the United States should join together as a united front against corporate power and global neoliberal capitalism.

By Trish Kahle - Jacobin, June 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.

The “jobs versus environment” debate is often seen as a fundamental division between labor and environmentalists, most recently emerging in the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline. Despite dire warnings from scientists about its potentially disastrous environmental impact, the pipeline was endorsed by the AFL-CIO, which justified its decision by citing “job creation.” Estimates range from 5,000-9,000 temporary positions — a drop in the bucket compared to the more than 794,000 unemployed construction workers in the US — and a mere 35 permanent jobs.

Is there any kind of environmental degradation, environmental activists might wonder, unions won’t endorse to secure a small handful of construction jobs?

Jeremy Brecher is right to point in a recent piece to the need for the labor and environmental movements to “evolve toward a common program and a common vision.” To do so, we’ll need to break down the false “jobs versus environment” dichotomy created by capital to obscure the fact that the exploitation of workers and the degradation of the environment go hand in hand.

Noting the common source of workers’ exploitation and ecological degradation is important because it also points us to a solution. Workers are the ones who can halt the assault on the planet.

By x344543 - June 12, 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.

When the union leaders' payoffs by the bosses has begun,
There will be no labor trouble anywhere beneath the sun,
For the AFL trade unions and the management are one,
The union keeps us down.

Chorus
Aristocracy forever,
Aristocracy forever,
Aristocracy forever,

--lyrics excerpted from Aristocracy Forever, by Judi Bari

It happens far too often. Big corporate industrial polluters rape and pillage the Earth, whether by tar sands mining, fracking, mountaintop coal mining, offshore oil drilling, clearcut logging, and more. What's more, much of what they extract they export elsewhere, choosing to remove even the economic benefits of local production from the affected community. These corporations claim to be "good neighbors", but they suck up all the wealth (in the form of profits), and they outsource the costs to the community. And the workers who actually do the labor to produce all of this wealth? Not only are they not paid the full value of their labor, they're often the first to bear the brunt of the toxic pollution and chemical poisoning these companies create in their wake.

It's no wonder that time and time again we witness communities organizing and mobilizing opposition to this state of affairs, often assisted by environmental organizations of various types. What's curious, however, is how often the unions (if the workers in these facilities are fortunate enough to have union representation) defend the companies and even promote the companies' messages--even though it's ultimately not in the workers' interest to do so.

By Stefania Barca - RoarMag.org, June 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 conflict between labor and the environment is a neoliberal construct. What we need is a broad coalition that can fundamentally transform production.

Nowadays it sounds so familiar, almost natural: the mutually exclusive demands and apparently opposing agendas of labor and the environmentalist movement. But in fact, this artificial division is nothing more than a crucial neoliberal strategy to divide two of the most powerful social movements of the industrial era, whose alliance could be a dangerous liaison with the capacity to call into question the very essence of the capitalist “treadmill of production.” It is thus essential that labor and environmental/public health organizations gain a historical perspective on their current state of conflict and become aware of the revolutionary potential of a common political project.

One place where this fact has become much clearer in recent years is the Italian city of Taranto, Apulia, where a number of citizens’ organizations and “committees” emerged in response to one of the most serious occupational, environmental and public health crises of the last decade. These organizations and committees have now begun mobilizing different resources and forms of action — from cyber-activism and film-making to street demonstrations and campaigning — to fight against the occupational blackmail of a local employer. At the last May Day celebrations, they managed to gather more than 100,000 people for a self-organized, crowd-sourced mass concert, held in open competition with the one traditionally organized in Rome by the trade unions confederation and RAI, the national public television.

By x344543 - June 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.

Since I published a response to David Walters rather dubiously reasoned editorial A socialist defends nuclear energy over six months ago, I have been engaged with him in a back-and-forth debate with him, primarily on our respective Facebook pages over the issue. Two other socialists (not of the syndicalist orientation), Michael Freidman and Chris Williams also challenged David Walters on the his claims that nuclear power is "safe". I do not know if Freidman or Williams has experienced a similar debate with him.

In a nutshell, comrade Walters takes exception to my rebuttal of his initial arguments, perhaps in particular, because I speculated then that his arguments were informed principally by (capitalist) nuclear power industry propaganda. He also disagrees vehemently with my belief that human civilization can supply even a significant majority of its energy needs (let alone 100%) with renewable energy technologies.

In the intervening period he has tried very persistently to defend his original arguments as being independently thought out and my own as being influenced by propaganda of another source, that being the renewable energy industry and (what David apparently dismisses as their puppets) the big green NGOs.

After six months of this, I can confidently state that I remain steadfastly committed to my initial position, and--if anything--I am even more convinced that I am right and David is wrong, and it doesn't take much to prove it.

The reason I'm so certain is because David bases his arguments on the following fallacies, inaccuracies, and untruths:

• (1) Renewable Energy--specifically wind and solar-electric--are not reliable or dispatchable and must be backed up by another more stable source;
• (2) Baseload reliability and instant dispatchability are currently existing hallmarks of conventional power sources which will be lost if the world naively switches to renewable sources;
• (3) Energiewende is immensely unpopular in Germany, in spite of the claims made to the contrary by renewable energy advocates;
• (4) The German "Energiewende" is a "failure", because the nuclear plants that have been shuttered are being replaced by coal plants;
• (5) Germany is producing more CO₂ because of Energiewende;
• (6) France, a heavy producer of nuclear energy, is exporting electricity to Germany, because the latter has shuttered its nuclear plants;
• (7) Other nations are not only wisely avoiding "Energiewende", they're sticking with nuclear power;
• (8) Nuclear power is far cheaper than renewable energy technologies;
• (9) The real push for renewable energy comes from natural gas interests;

In the course of this back-and-forth debate I believe that I have provided ample evidence that not only is David Walters mistaken in his defense of nuclear power, his rejection of nuclear power's critics, and his dismissiveness towards renewable energy, he is so desperate to defend nuclear power, he will grasp at any claim that seems to defend his own position. However, when analyzed in greater context and taken as a whole, his entire premise has a half-life of less than that of Nobelium and rapidly decays within a few minutes

By Andrew Flood - Anarchist Writers, May 7, 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.

What if we build it and they don’t come? That was the experience of the left during the crisis - decades had been spent building organisations and a model of how crisis would create revolution but when the crisis arrived the left discovered that the masses weren’t convinced. The expected pattern of crisis leading to small strikes and protests, then to mass strikes and riot and then perhaps to general strike and revolution didn’t flow as expected. Under that theory the radical left would at first be marginal but then as conditions drove class militancy to new heights the workers disappointed by reformist politicians and unions leaders would move quickly to swell its ranks.

In 2008 and 2009 that was the expectation of the revolutionary left organisations across Europe and North America. But that cycle of growth never materialised. In 2011 revolts did break out, but not in the manner expected and so the left could only spectate and criticise. Beyond that the period of struggle from 2008-2014 suggests that there is less strength in building struggles around broad ‘bread & butter’ issues that we imagined and a suggestion that diversity proved more useful in sustaining progressive struggle.