green unionism

By Julia Conley - Common Dreams, February 21, 2024

With the electric vehicle battery industry expected to add tens of thousands of jobs in the coming years, the United Auto Workers announced Wednesday its plan to ensure the new workers will benefit from labor protections and fair wages.

The UAW's International Executive Board voted Tuesday to commit $40 million to help support and organize nonunion autoworkers and battery workers, said the union.

The decision reflects that "organizing the unorganized and fighting for a just transition for workers in the emerging EV industry are our union's top priority!" said Chris Brooks, an adviser to UAW president Shawn Fain.

By Emma Foehringer Merchant and Joshua Yeager - Inside Climate News, February 21, 2024

On a recent Tuesday evening, several oil workers in Kern County, California, spoke out in support of a project that they hope will create much-needed jobs.

“What I’m hoping to get out of this is hope for my grandson’s generation,” said Allen Miller, a third-generation oilman who came to work in the petroleum-rich region in 1984. “That they can provide for their family the way my grandpa did and the way I did.”

The audience applauded Miller’s comments during a crowded public meeting in Taft, a city of about 8,500, in the heart of the state’s oil country. 

The proposed project, known as Carbon TerraVault 1, would store millions of tons of planet-warming carbon a mile beneath the nearby Elk Hills Oil Field. Oil production in that field and others nearby has sustained the county’s economy for over a century. 

“This is our oil field,” said Manny Campos, a longtime Taft resident and businessman. “I’m glad to see we are being intentional about keeping it that way and keeping the benefits local.”

Some environmental advocates are skeptical of the carbon removal industry — and its ability to create a significant number of jobs — but California policymakers view carbon removal and storage as a necessary tool to manage greenhouse gas emissions. 

The fledgling technology is a key part of the state’s plan to fight climate change, which also includes phasing out oil drilling by 2045. The county and California Resources Corporation (CRC), the oil company hoping to build the TerraVault, see carbon management as a vital new revenue stream. Kern County stands to lose thousands of jobs and millions in tax dollars as drilling declines 

But carbon storage facilities themselves are not currently projected to generate large numbers of jobs, according to a report prepared for the county. Kern’s own analysis shows the initial phase of the TerraVault project will only produce five permanent positions.

By Sean Strickland, Lindsay Amonson, et. al. - Canadian Building Trades Unions, February 20, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, February 20, 2024

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, February 19, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, February 16, 2024

By Bianca Cunningham, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, February 20, 2024

By Rune Møller Stahl and Jonas Algers - Jacobin, December 11, 2023

Since the end of October, mechanics at Tesla workshops in Sweden have been striking in an attempt to pressure the firm to agree to collective bargaining with the Swedish Metalworkers’ Union.

Tesla does not manufacture cars in Sweden, so the strike covers only 130 workers. Despite the small number of affected workers, this has become a very prominent strike in the region because it pits two powerful parties against one another.

On one side is Tesla, by far the world’s most valued automaker, currently valued higher than the next nine car companies combined. It boasts 130,000 workers and the top two best-selling EV models. On the other side is the Swedish Metalworkers’ Union, a union with 230,000 members organizing 80 percent of all workers in its sectors. With a large membership that has not taken party in many strikes, the union has amassed a war chest of about $1 billion. It is able to pay the striking workers 130 percent of their salaries.

If either side caves, it will have profound impacts across Sweden. If the unions lose, it might spell the end of the Swedish norm-based labor market system of high unionization rates, sectoral bargaining, and few regulations (there is, for example, no minimum wage in Sweden as most employers simply pay the wages agreed in negotiations with the unions). If Tesla loses, it will be the first union with which the company has been forced to negotiate.

Recognizing these stakes, several other sectors have started sympathy strikes. The transport workers are now refusing to unload Teslas in Swedish ports, the construction workers are not doing repair work on Tesla facilities, and the postal workers are not delivering mail, including license plates to Tesla. The latter strike was branded as “insane” by Elon Musk on Twitter/X.

By Tom Heap - Climate Cast, February 9, 2024

By Young Worker Project - Labor Network for Sustainability, February 7, 2024