green unionism

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, and Lee Harris - Valley Labor Report, April 25, 2023

By staff - Blue Green Alliance, April 24, 2023

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act together provide billions of dollars to states, local governments, and private entities to support transportation decarbonization through the installation of electric vehicle (EV) charging infrastructure, or EV supply equipment (EVSE). States—even when not the direct grantees or program administrators—have the capability to shape what these historic EV charging infrastructure provisions mean for the workers and communities impacted by the infrastructure, manufacturing facilities, and new job opportunities that come with them.

This guide supports states seeking to maximize the employment and economic benefits that can accompany EV charging infrastructure provisions in the BIL and Inflation Reduction Act.

Download a copy of this publication here (link).

By Rosemary - Extinction Rebellion Trade Unions, April 24, 2023

By staff - International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), April 24, 2023

On International Workers’ Memorial Day, 28 April, trade unions are promoting the role that organising plays in making workplaces safer and healthier as we remember all working people who have lost their lives to workplace accidents and disease.

Workers’ unions are planning to use the new ILO fundamental right to a safe and healthy working environment to tackle the shocking death toll of three million workers who die each year because of their work, with tens of millions more suffering life-changing injuries and ill health.

Trade unions will use organising to ensure that the new fundamental right is put into practice and makes a positive difference to the daily lives of working people. The two ILO Conventions (155 and 187) provide backing for union organising, through the creation of workplace safety committees with worker representation, and worker safety representatives in workplaces.

This organising can improve the working environment through the right to refuse dangerous work and consultation rights over risk assessments, occupational health services and the provision of personal protective equipment. Convention 187 also requires the creation of national tripartite health and safety bodies with representation for government, workers and employers.

Combatting toxic workplaces

Around the world, unions will use 28 April to fight risks like asbestos and toxic chemicals, and hazards like long hours and stress in the workplace, as well as demanding an increase in the number of countries ratifying and implementing all ILO health and safety Conventions.

ITUC Deputy General Secretary Owen Tudor said: “Every working person has the right to expect to return home at the end their day’s work. No one should die just to make a living.”

Trade unions make work safer, and they have already saved lives in these areas:

Silicosis

Companies are continuing to expose millions of workers to excessive levels of silica dust, which can cause deadly cancers and lung diseases. Australian unions won new restrictions on products containing silica and cut in half the exposure limit to silica for workers, which could see cases of deadly silicosis drop to one-sixth of the current level.

Seafarers

In 2022, a Dutch court handed an important victory to the ITF, FNV Havens and Nautilus NL who had brought a legal case against Marlow Cyprus, Marlow Netherlands and Expert Shipping. The court ruled that ship managers, ship owners and charterers must honour the non-seafarer’s work clause that only professional dockers do demanding, skilful lashing work when they are available, rather than seafarers. The decision means greater safety for seafarers and secures jobs for dockers.

Nursing homes

In 2020/21, 75,000 nursing home residents in the USA died from the SARS-CoV-2 virus with more than one million nursing home workers testing positive. Unionised nursing homes reported Covid-19 mortality rates of residents 10.8% lower and an infection rate of workers 6.8% lower.

By Paul Atkin - Greener Jobs Alliance, April 23, 2023

This excerpt from GJA Newsletter editor Paul Atkin’s speech at the Trade Union Hub of the XR Big One protest on Saturday has been put around by XR Trade Unionists.

The relevant part of the full speech is here.

Why organise in the trade unions? Because the climate struggle is a class struggle.

Most analyses of carbon impacts totalise emissions or investment by country. This is vital because its states that have to take the actions we need.

Private companies won’t do it. Only 4% of the biggest UK companies match the “gold standard” for transition plans set by the government. And that’s this government.

It’s therefore important to be very clear about who’s doing what.

The economist Adam Tooze makes the point that the world needs to invest $4 trillion a year for a viable, sustainable green transition. In 2022 the total invested was just over $1 Trillion. So, a quarter of the way there. And of that, 49.7% was China on its own. 70% more than the USA and EU combined. That’s not the image we normally have, so it’s worth mulling over.

The UK would only match EU levels of investment if an incoming Labour Government stuck with its pledge to invest $28 billion a year – and that will be a battle with the likes of Ed Balls and Peter Mandelson who are arguing that this is “unaffordable”; and we need that fight whether we are in an affiliated union or not.

By Madeline ffitch - Verso, April 22, 2023

Earth First! activist Madeline ffitch responds to Andreas Malm: "What if the mass climate movement was focused on supporting frontline direct action?"

By the time I read How to Blow Up a Pipeline, I had already seen its neon cover around, the unmistakable title plastered across the front in large block print. I had seen activists reading it, but not the activists I’d expected. These were well-heeled and buttoned-up types, people from environmental nonprofits, people I would associate with a permitted rally rather than an act of eco-sabotage. When I showed the book to one of my movement elders, a far less well-heeled person, they grimaced. “Who the hell comes up with a title like that?” they asked. “Does he think this is a game?” This movement elder, known for being grumpy and speaking plainly, is a decades-long veteran of direct-action eco-defense, a walking repository of tactical knowledge and movement history. They’re also an old Earth First!er. I’m a slightly younger one.

In his sensationally titled book, Andreas Malm tells us that between 1973 and 2010, Earth First!, the Earth Liberation Front, the Animal Liberation Front, and related groups pulled off 27,100 separate acts of direct action and sabotage. These would seem to be laudable examples in service of Malm’s central proposal, which is that climate activists must be willing to escalate tactics and consider property destruction. Yet Malm includes these actions only in order to disqualify them. “All those thousands of monkeywrenching actions,” he writes, “achieved little if anything and had no lasting gains to show for them. They were not performed in dynamic relation to a mass movement, but largely in a void.” Malm goes on to say that these actions “petered out just as the climate movement came into its own.”

Malm gets a lot right in his slim neon polemic, but when he dismisses existing traditions of militant eco-defense, he undermines his own good ideas. Direct action is not made relevant by its link to mass movements. It is the other way around. The more out of touch the climate movement is from what is happening on the frontlines, the more irrelevant it becomes. The frontline might sound to some like revolutionary jargon, but it’s simply another name for the often rural and sparsely populated places where people must defend their homes and lifeways from being sacrificed to industrialization. Here, theory is put into practice. There is real work to do—dishes, chopping wood, hauling water, physically stopping a pipeline from being built—and this means that the abstractions that bog down mass movement participation (ideological pacifism, climate fatalism) are less likely to gain a foothold. If the climate movement is looking for direction, as Malm claims, it would do well to pay attention to the tactics and strategies of those who defend the land and water far away from major centers of commerce and policy, often with only a handful of people and by whatever means necessary. In comparison to mass movement maundering, the ethical and strategic clarity on the frontlines is bracingly refreshing.

By Todd E. Vachon and Ayesha T. Qazi-Lampert - Common Dreams, April 22, 2023

The pathway to a Green New Deal for Education runs through teachers, school leaders, students, and organized communities willing to embrace a bold vision for learning and a more sustainable future.

The Earth is burning, and our schools are crumbling. Investments in healthy, sustainable, green schools can help solve both problems.

As a result of human-caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, generated primarily by the combustion of fossil fuels, the global climate is now about 1°C (nearly 2°F) warmer than the historical climate in which modern civilization emerged. Every amount of GHG emitted into the atmosphere worsens the global climate crisis, leading to real and increasingly measurable risks to human and ecosystem health, to the economy, and to global security. Predominantly Black and Brown communities and economically disadvantaged communities are at the frontlines of the impacts of the crisis.

At the same time, our nation’s public schools are drastically in need of improvements. According to the Aspen Institute, there are nearly 100,000 public schools in the U.S. They are, on average, 50 years old and emit 78 million metric tons of CO2 per year at an energy cost of about $8 billion annually. Investments in school infrastructure and climate mitigation, including the replacement of outdated and ineffective heating and cooling systems, improvements to ventilation and insulation, the installation of rooftop solar, and the remediation of asbestos, lead, and mold will not only improve the school environment for students and staff, but will also address historical injustices along the lines of race and class. These investments will also contribute to stabilizing the Earth’s climate.

That's why this Earth Week (April 17-22), students, educators, parents, school staff, and community members around the U.S. are taking action to demand healthy, green schools now.

By staff - International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), April 21, 2023

Climate scientists have issued a dire warning about an impending global catastrophe – there is an urgent action from G20 governments.

Rather than continuing to allow corporate interests to dominate decision-making, the L20 statement calls for a globally coordinated, state-led, rapid just transition to combat climate change.

Chronic underinvestment in the real economy and corporate price gauging have created a cost-of-living crisis, with workers bearing a disproportionate share of the burden. Historic levels of inequality and social injustice have eroded trust in democracy and hindered global growth.

The international labour movement urges G20 leaders to prioritise the protection and promotion of labour rights. Fair and living wages, collective bargaining, social protection and decent work are essential for a new social contract for recovery and resilience.

Leaders need to act for the rights of informal workers, asylum-seekers and migrant workers, women, young workers and take urgent action to eliminate forced and child labour.

India’s presidency of the G20 should be marked with achievements of global goals and coherence across various agendas. The L20 calls for the restructuring of the International Financial Institutions and the repurposing the international financial architecture to serve a just transition to carbon neutrality, sustainable development and investment in the care economy and public services.

By Andy O’Brien - Maine AFL-CIO, April 20, 2023

The Maine Lobstering Union (IAM 207) and the Maine AFL-CIO Executive Board have voted to support a proposal that would protect fishing grounds while also allowing offshore wind development in a way that creates good union jobs. The Maine Lobstering Union, IAM Local 207, the building trades, the Maine Labor Climate Council and others have worked tirelessly on the legislation, LR 741, -- with the support of bill sponsor Sen. Mark Lawrence and Senate President Troy Jackson -- to protect core fishing grounds and set high fisheries, environmental, equity, and labor standards on offshore wind development.

"We applaud the Maine Lobstering Union, Building Trades locals and others for doing the spade work to develop a solid plan for workers that protects Maine fisheries and guarantees good union jobs in the development of this new industry," said Matt Schlobohm, Maine AFL-CIO Executive Director. "When we work together to develop a worker led vision for climate action, we can create new union jobs, protect existing industries and tackle climate change head on."

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, and David Grisco - Valley Labor Report, April 20, 2023