green unionism

Adopted by Unanimous Vote: February 16, 2023

Whereas, rail infrastructure the world over is held publicly, as are the roads, bridges, canals, harbors, airports, and other transportation infrastructure; and

Whereas, numerous examples of rail infrastructure held publicly have operated successfully across North America for decades, usually in the form of local/ regional commuter operations and state-owned freight trackage; and

Whereas, due to their inability to effectively move the nation’s freight and passengers during WWI, the U.S. government effectively nationalized the private rail infrastructure in the U.S. for 26 months; and

Whereas, at that time it was agreed by shippers, passengers, and rail workers that the railroads were operated far more effectively and efficiently during that time span; and

Whereas, every rail union at that time supported continued public ownership (the “Plumb Plan”) once the war had ended; and

Whereas, specifically, when the rank & file rail workers were polled by their unions in Decem­ber 1918, the combined totals were 306,720 in favor of continued nationalization with just 1,466 in favor of a return to private ownership; and

Whereas, the entire labor movement at that time was in favor of basic industry being removed from private hands, with the delegates to the 1920 AFL Convention voting 29,159 to 8,349 in fa­vor, overruling the officialdom of the AFL and its conservative position; and

Whereas, in the face of today’s crumbling infrastructure, crowded and clogged highways and city streets, poor air quality, lack of transportation alternatives and deepening climate crisis, ex­panded rail transportation – for both freight and passenger - presents a solution to these social ills and problems; and

Whereas, the rail industry today however is contracting – rather than expanding – at a time when we need more trains, trackage, rail workers, and carloads, not fewer; and

Whereas, the private rail industry is moving 5 to 10% less freight than it did 16 years ago, and in recent years has shuttered diesel shops and classification yards, and has drastically reduced the number of employees; and

Whereas, the private rail freight industry is generally hostile to proposals to run any additional passenger trains on their tracks – despite having legal common carrier obligations to do so - making it difficult if not impossible to expand the nations’ passenger rail network; and

Whereas, the rail industry has come to focus solely on the “Operating Ratio” as a measure of their success, and in doing so have engaged in massive stock buybacks and other measures that deliver short-term gains for stockholders but at the expense of the long-term health and vitality of the industry; and

Whereas, the Class One carriers’ failures to move freight effectively have contributed greatly to the ongoing supply chain crisis, resulting in some of the highest inflation rates in many years; and

Whereas, these “Fortune 500” corporations have raked in record profits, in both “good” years and “bad”, right through the “Great Recession,” the pandemic, and otherwise, right up to the most recent Quarterly financial announcements; and

Whereas, during these years of record profits, these same Class One carries have:

• Failed to solicit nor accept new but “less profitable” freight traffic.
• Forwarded less freight than 16 years ago.
• Stonewalled practically every attempt by Amtrak and other agencies to add passenger ser­vice.
• Failed to run Amtrak passenger trains on time, despite regulation and law to do so.
• Downsized the infrastructure, physical plant, and capacity.
• Eliminated nearly a third of the workforce.
• Outraged shippers and their associations by jacking up prices, providing poor service, and
• assessing new demurrage charges.
• Thumbed their nose at state and federal governments.
• Blocked road crossing and increased derailments by the implementation of extremely long trains.
• Threatened and attempted at every turn to run trains with a single crew member.
• Opposed proposed safety measures, from Positive Train Control (PTC) to switch point indi­cators;
• the End-of-Train Device (EOT) to Electronically Controlled Pneumatic Brakes (ECP).
• Taken a hostile stance towards the myriad unions, refused the bargain in good faith, consist­ently demanding concessions, all the while expecting these “essential workers” to labor through the pandemic without a wage increase.

Therefore, be it Resolved that the ILWU NCDC supports the public ownership of the rail infrastructure of the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, to be operated henceforth in the public interest, placed at the service of the people of all three nations; and

Be it Further resolved that the ILWU NCDC urge all of its members to voice their support for this proposal; and

Be it Further Resolved that the ILWU NCDC urges all ILWU locals and IBU regions to take a similar stand; and

Be it finally Resolved that the ILWU NCDC urges all labor unions, environmental and com­munity groups, social justice organizations, rail advocacy groups and others to push for a mod­ern publicly owned rail system, one that serves the nation’s passengers, shippers, communities, and citizens.

By various - Central Florida Jobs With Justice - February 16, 2022

By staff - Global Climate Jobs, February 15, 2022

The 2022 Lisbon Declaration on Climate Jobs and Just Transition was written as part of the training that took place in January 2022, in Lisbon, and was attended by 20 participants from 11 different nationalities. The declaration was later presented at the final plenary of the V International Ecosocialist Encounters, which took place in the same month, in Lisbon. At that time it was signed by more participants of the Encounter.

The text calls for environmental, climate justice, trade unions, labour and other civil society organizations to come together to support existing campaigns and create new Climate Jobs Campaigns, which seek to create decent jobs that contribute to reducing the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, stoping climate collapse and building an economy with life at its center.

The climate is changing. Increases in average temperatures and disruptions to local climates are resulting in extreme weather events and ecological catastrophes. As a consequence, the livelihoods, identities, and cultures of people are threatened and are already being destroyed. These impacts are inherently unjust as the regions and communities with the least historical responsibility for GHG emissions are the ones most affected and often the ones least listened to.

Science has told us that we need to drastically reduce emissions within a relatively short timeframe if we wish to avoid climate collapse. In order to do this, we need to create millions of new jobs that aim to cut greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. This will facilitate a fast transition away from ecologically destructive industries while also being fair to those who contribute to, or would be affected, by this transition.

Within this challenge are the opportunities of creating new emission-cutting jobs that are dignified, with fair wages, while respecting environmental, health, hygiene and safety rules. We refer to these as Climate Jobs. These must be in renewable energies, public transportation systems, building and infrastructure energy efficiency, forest protection, waste management, professional training and re-qualification, and agriculture that respects the natural cycles of our global and local ecosystems. Large amounts of funding will have to be mobilized, carrying out actions without the need to maximize profits, but rather guaranteeing direct and immediate jobs to workers that will lose their old jobs due to the transition. These have to be public jobs, created in the optic of public service, to ensure they are stable to the workers and beneficial to all of society.

Governments, international institutions and the “invisible hand of the market” have failed in their responses to the climate crisis. Nevertheless, we know that historically the biggest developments in democracy, social rights, and access to public services, such as healthcare and education, have been gained due to the organized struggles of the working class. This was so because the workers if organized and united through their different oppressions of class, race, gender expression and sexuality, have massive power.

Similarly, stopping climate change can’t be done without a massive popular movement. Indigenous people have been fighting against the destruction brought upon by multinational corporations that have been ensuring climate and ecological catastrophe. Recently we have seen the strengthening and internationalization of a climate movement that has been demanding climate justice all around the world. This movement is seeking to unite workers everywhere to ensure a just transition.

Such a transition will have to also involve sectors of work that capital considers non-productive. Any kind of organizing for Climate Jobs campaigns will have to involve, organize, and mobilize workers doing care work, which are mainly women and racialized persons. Reproductive labour is very often made invisible and left out of the labour movement, even though these workers – that ensure the pillars of the capitalist system – are the most marginalized and thus the most fragile of the working class. This transition has to change the path of our economy from a profit-extracting march of death to an economy with life at its centre. In the process, this builds a new system that cares for both people and planet, that values indigenous and peasant knowledge, and respects nature and its cycles.

Workers have been left out of the discussions on how to carry this transformation. Attempts to transition so far have occurred without considering workers interests, rights and demands, while at the same time has not resulted in an actual decrease in global greenhouse gas emissions or in an improvement of local ecological conditions. On the contrary, any plan that aims to solve the climate crisis should not be dictated by the needs of companies but instead by the needs of both workers and life on Earth. A Just Transition plan needs to specially include workers and communities affected by the climate crisis and/or by the transition, so it can result in the improvement of living conditions everywhere. It should never result in an increase of exploitation or extractivism, but on the contrary, should be built upon international solidarity, with the goals of peace and democracy at its core.

The points of convergence between the workers and the climate justice movements are immense. As so, we call for environmental and climate justice organizations, workers’ movements and unions, as well as other civil society groups, to come together to create and raise support for Climate Jobs campaigns. Multiple international campaigns would shift the global conversation about Just Transition, rescuing it from the hands of profit, and would mobilize workers and the climate justice movement everywhere – and in this process creates a future for all.

By Joty Dhaliwal and Nathan Swedlow - Labor Notes, February 15, 2022

Throughout the pandemic, transit workers have kept our cities in motion. In California’s East Bay, even when most residents were isolating at home, AC Transit bus operators were on the front lines ensuring that people could get where they needed to go, including to other essential jobs.

Bus operators spend hours every day in close contact with strangers. More than 200 transit workers have perished from Covid, including members of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) and the Transport Workers Union.

Despite this tragedy, and while it has touted their essential work in the press, AC Transit has yet to award hazard pay to front-line employees. The agency currently has a budget surplus of well over $66 million dollars, thanks to the federal relief money it received.

The following photographs and testimonials are taken from four interviews where members of East Bay Democratic Socialists of America spoke with AC Transit bus operators about their experiences on the front lines of the pandemic and the largely unacknowledged sacrifices and risks that come with the job.

By Lin Nelson - Labor Notes, February 14, 2022

Despite the short flurry of support (it seems so long ago) for workers on the front lines, many of the folks who help hold our health and the economy together feel abandoned and used up. The Covid calamity and the escalating climate crisis are creating worker sacrifice zones.

In December, more than 700 workers and allies from across the country made their way (online) to the 10th annual Council on Occupational Safety and Health conference, where they shared stories about the conditions that make going to work a risky affair.

Heat and climate were major threads. We might be in the chill-blast of winter now, but we remember the summer’s heat, from fires in British Columbia to evacuated towns in Oregon to the blistering heat in Washington farmlands.

Outdoor workers were at the center of risk this year. Many were sent into floods and fires—to harvest food, to fight the infernos in the West, or to do dangerous storm cleanup throughout the South and Midwest.

These workers grappled with urgent but often inaccessible health alerts about temperature, air quality, signs of heat stress and fire risk. Many didn’t have the benefit of unions, protective legislation, or functioning public agencies, and faced reprimand or firing if they spoke up about their concerns.

By Marisol Cantu, et. al. - Richmond Progressive Alliance - February 14, 2022

By Claire - Campaign against Climate Change: Trade Union Group, February 14, 2022

In a rich country like the UK, people should not have to choose between warm homes and decent food. But with a combination of rising gas prices, a failure to insulate homes or build enough renewable energy, and a deeply unequal society after a decade of austerity and benefit cuts... this is the reality for many.

On 12 February there were protests around the country about the cost of living crisis. Further days of action have been called for 5 March and 2 April.

The crisis is being used by some in the rightwing media and Conservative party to argue that we 'can't afford' climate action, or that pumping more fossil fuels from the North Sea could solve the problem - despite the obvious fact that in a global market, oil companies will export their product to wherever they get the best price.

As families struggle, oil companies' profits have shot up with rising gas prices.

Shell recorded $19.3 billion profits in 2021, while BP raked in $12.8 billion

A windfall tax on energy giants' profits would help ensure that no one has to choose between eating and heating their homes - sign the petition here

The current situation also makes clear that the current system of privatised energy - and the assumption that what's good for the big oil companies is good for all of us - is broken and dangerous. Find out more about campaigning for public ownership.

By CJ Lapointe - London Left Green Blog, February 11, 2022

The overwhelming majority of the world’s scientists agree, highlighted in the UN IPCC reports, that global warming/climate change is an urgent threat to the environment, which needs emergency action to cut greenhouse emissions in half by the end of the decade. 

However, the failure of the 2021 UN climate summit, COP26, to take real leadership in addressing the crisis shows capitalism’s inability to put the planet and human life before profit. In fact, countries like the U.S. and China are ramping up the use of fossil fuels, as competition between the two imperialist nations for markets and resources drives extractive industries for coal, petroleum, and rare minerals.

Competition over markets by competing imperialist powers puts an undue burden on the global South, which faces the worst effects of climate change. Instead of reparations in the billions of dollars, countries in Africa, for example, will face deeper environmental racism through exploitation of their labor and resources, and the destruction of air, land, and water.

Daniel Tanuro, agronomist and eco-socialist author writes in his assessment of COP26, “The issue of loss and damage is even more explosive by far. Take the example of Somalia. It has contributed to 0.00026% of historical climate change … but is suffering repeated droughts, clearly attributable to warming. In 2020, 2.9 million people were severely food insecure. International aid is highly insufficient. Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan and Uganda are experiencing the same drama.”

Tanuro continues, “Who will pay? And who will pay for future disasters? The NGO Christian Aid estimates that, with unchanged policies, climate change will cause the GDP of the poorest countries to fall by 19.6 per cent by 2050 and 63.9 per cent as an annual average by 2100. 

If we limit the temperature rise to 1.5°C, these figures would be -13.1 percent and -33.1 percent respectively. The bill for losses and damages will quickly rise to several thousand billion. The principle of financing by rich countries is enshrined in the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, but imperialist governments plainly refuse to respect it. Period.”

People living in one third of the counties in the United States experienced climate change-driven billion-dollar catastrophes with high death tolls such as arctic temperatures in Texas, Hurricane Ida, and California wildfires. Most of them are working families with a disproportionate number from Black, Indigenous, Latino, and other oppressed communities. 

One of the most recent climate-related tragedies occurred in the U.S. in December as tornadoes ripped through Kentucky and Illinois. A heartbreaking scene played out when six died at an Amazon facility and eight died at a candle-making factory in each of the respective states. Workers’ text messages reveal that the companies refused to allow their workers to leave for safety.

John Leslie, a retired union carpenter and writer for SR News reported, “According to the National Climate Assessment, ‘Some extreme weather and climate events have increased in recent decades, and new and stronger evidence confirms that some of these increases are related to human activities.’ 

By Matt Trinder - Morning Star, February 10, 2022

Working people want more government action on climate change but only a quarter believe that plans from Tory ministers will create many new green jobs in their local area, a TUC poll finds.

Today’s research, published ahead of next week’s release of official statistics on jobs in Britain’s green industries, suggests that 86 per cent of workers support the transition to a low-carbon economy.

The vast majority — 78 per cent — agree that the government should invest in retraining and reskilling people to achieve this, with 3 per cent objecting.

But just 26 per cent think that ministers are doing enough to make the necessary changes, compared to four in 10 who believe the government’s response has been inadequate.

Two in three feel it is important that their employer is actively helping to tackle climate change, but only a third say bosses are addressing the issue.

And just 13 per cent report being given the opportunity to participate in making the business they work for greener, despite 71 per cent wanting management to consult them.

The proportion left out of the loop drops to one in 10 for those earning less than £29,000 a year.   

TUC general secretary Frances O’Grady said:  “Changing our economy and society to deal with climate change gives us the chance to create millions of new, good, green jobs.

“Workers are ready, but ministers are doing nowhere near enough to create good new jobs and future-proof the industries that are delivering good jobs now.

“Workers and unions are coming together to innovate and create worker-led decarbonisation plans.

“Ministers and employers need to get with the programme — and deliver the just transition we all need.”

By Haley Zaremba - Oil Price, February 9, 2022

• The global energy transition may have hit a snag in 2021, but it’s clear that it is a force that will not be stopped
• A loss of respect, opportunity, and income in coal country has led to severe political fissures and a growing feeling of underappreciation for coal miners. 
• While phasing out fossil fuels is crucial, so too is supporting and acknowledging the contributions, needs, and priorities of the many workers and communities who stand to lose everything in the energy transition.