green unionism

By Frank Kelly, Shelly Asquith, Sarah Wolley, et. al - Greener Jobs Alliance, June 21, 2024

By Julie Grant - Allegheny Front, June 21, 2024

After a train derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, last year, and chemicals were released throughout the community, the National Transportation Safety Board investigated what happened and why. 

The agency will hold a meeting on Tuesday to vote on its findings. One major issue is whether Norfolk Southern provided all relevant information to decision-makers as the disaster unfolded. 

What happened?

The Norfolk Southern train derailed in East Palestine on February 3, 2023, a Friday night, and fires flared up from the smoldering tank cars through the weekend. 

A Unified Incident Command quickly formed. It included Norfolk Southern, emergency responders, Ohio governor Mike DeWine, and was led by East Palestine Fire Chief Keith Drabick. 

That Monday, Drabick stood behind the governor at a press conference, as DeWine explained why he and Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro were issuing mandatory evacuation orders for residents in a one-by-two miles radius around the derailment site, more than 2,000 people.

“The vinyl chloride contents of five rail cars are currently unstable and could potentially explode, causing deadly disbursement of shrapnel and toxic fumes,” DeWine said. 

He then pointed at a map with a red circle outlining a one-mile radius around the derailment site: “Those in the red area, those in the red area are facing grave danger of death. Those in the orange area are at severe risk of injury, including skin burns and severe lung damage.” 

By Clara Polliard, Shelly Asquith, Lorenzo Feltrin, Manju Goel, Sebastiano Calleri, Nuala Lam, Riccardo la Torre, Robert Woodland, Claire Trevor, and Paul Holleran - Tipping Point UK, June 14, 2024

By Jessica Corbett - Common Dreams, May 17, 2024

Organizers are expected to continue their effort, drawing inspiration from a recent success in Tennessee that followed two defeats.

Workers at a pair of Mercedes-Benz plants near Tuscaloosa, Alabama narrowly voted against joining the United Auto Workers this week, according to a preliminary tally on Friday.

As of press time, the UAW webpage had the National Labor Relations Board tally at 2,045 in favor of joining the union (45%) and 2,642 opposed (56%).

Voting at the large facility in Vance and the battery plant in Woodstock kicked off Monday and wrapped up Friday morning. Speaking to reporters Friday evening, UAW president Shawn Fain said that it was "obviously not the result we wanted" but "we'll be back in Vance."

"These courageous workers reached out to us because they wanted justice," Fain said of the Mercedes employees. "They led us. They led this fight, and that's what this is all about—and what happens next is up to them."

"Justice isn't just about one vote or one campaign, it's about getting a voice and getting your fair share," he continued, noting that "workers won serious gains in this campaign."

Fain added that "it's a David v. Goliath fight. Sometimes Goliath wins a battle but ultimately David will win the war."

The Alabama election followed a UAW win in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where Volkswagen workers last month voted to join the union.

Labor reporter Mike Elk noted that the "tough loss" in Alabama was "not a blowout," and organizers now have "a solid base that future campaigns can build on like they did at Volkswagen," where winning a union election took three rounds of voting.

By Finlay Asher - Safe Landing, June 13, 2024

By Gareth Dale - Green European Journal, June 12, 2024

Inspiration for decarbonising industry and creating green jobs is within the hands of those already facing precarity in today’s economically unstable times. A resilient history of workers’ initiatives overcoming redundancies, alongside recent activist, trade-union, and workforce collaborations, provides concrete examples for empowered transitioning.

In 2023, when Europe was blasted by a record-breaking heatwave named after Cerberus (the three-headed hound of Hades), workers organised to demand protection from the extreme heat. In Athens, employees at the Acropolis and other historical sites went on strike for four hours each day. In Rome, refuse collectors threatened to strike if they were forced to work during periods of peak heat. Elsewhere in Italy, public transport workers demanded air-conditioned vehicles, and workers at a battery plant in Abruzzo issued a strike threat in protest at the imposition of working in “asphyxiating heat”. 

One could almost say that the Ancient Greeks foretold today’s climate crisis when they euphemistically referred to Hades, god of the dead, as “Plouton” (giver of wealth). The reference is to the materials – in their day, silver, in ours, fossil fuels and critical minerals – that, after extraction from the Underworld, line the pockets of plutocrats. Modern society’s plutocratic structure explains the astonishingly sluggish response to climate breakdown. The much-touted green transition is barely taking place, at least if the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases is taken as a yardstick. These continue to rise, even accelerate, and likewise the rate of global heating. The transition remains in the grip of powerful and wealthy institutions that – even if we leave aside motivations of avarice or greed for status – are systemically constrained to put the accumulation of capital above the habitability of the planet.

Against this backdrop, the politics of transition is class struggle beyond that of workers defending themselves and their communities against weather emergencies. That is part of the picture, of course. But class struggle is, above all, evident in the liberal establishment seeking to displace transition costs onto the masses, even as it presides over ever crasser wealth polarisation. From this, resistance inevitably flows. The question is, what form will it take? 

Some takes the form of an anti-environmental backlash, instigated or colonised by conservative and far-right forces. While posing as allies of “working families”, they denigrate the most fundamental of workers’ needs: for a habitable planet. Some takes a progressive form, the classic case being the gilets jaunes in France. When Emmanuel Macron’s government hiked “green taxes” on fossil fuels as a signal for consumers to buy more fuel-efficient cars, the rural working poor and lower-middle classes, unable to afford the switch, donned yellow safety vests and rose in revolt. Although France’s labour-movement radicals joined the cause, they were unable to cohere into a political force capable of offering alternative solutions to the social and environmental crises.

By Frida Garza - Grist, June 10, 2024

Last month, Oscar Hernández couldn’t sleep. The cook, who worked at a restaurant located inside of a Las Vegas casino, had found that after coming home from his shifts, his body would not properly cool down. 

The air conditioning at work had been broken for about four months. Hernández worked eight-hour shifts during the restaurant’s brunch service, whipping up eggs, waffles, and fried chicken. He spent hours in front of a scaldingly hot grill — an older model that only ran at extremely high temperatures. Most often, his station on the line was in a corner, and it seemed as if all of the other heat sources in the kitchen — the gas burners, the four deep-fryers, the waffle iron — converged right there. Summer had not officially started, but Las Vegas was already seeing above-normal temperatures in May, sometimes reaching triple digits. The fans that the owners put in the kitchen were not strong enough to cool down the space.

Extreme heat is nothing new to Hernández, who lives in Nevada and has worked in the restaurant industry for 22 years. But the situation at this non-union restaurant, a rarity on the Las Vegas strip, was becoming untenable. Sometimes it got so hot in the kitchen that Hernández preferred the heat outside, where at least there was a breeze. He had a headache that would not go away, and at home he sometimes found himself getting irritated with his children over small things. 

“The heat inside a restaurant is different — it gets into your body,” Hernández said in an interview in Spanish. He knew doctors recommend getting adequate rest to help recover from overheating, but now he could not do even that. So he quit.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, June 5, 2024

By Emma Roberts and Sasha Josette - GND Media, June 4, 2024

By Tyler Norman - Just Transition Alliance, June 3, 2024

According to recent surveys, labor unions are overwhelmingly popular with the American public, with the highest rate of support since 1965. A number of widely-supported strikes in unexpected industries, from teachers and nurses to Starbucks and Amazon workers, primed the pump over the last decade. The extremely visible and highly successful SAG-AFTRA strike boosted public recognition of the need for strong fighting unions significantly.

The recent UAW strike took union support to an entirely new level. Although picketing autoworkers were demonized by media talking heads, working class communities were inspired by their spirited and ambitious “Stand Up Strike” campaign against the Big 3 automakers. New UAW President Shawn Fain did an exceptional job of publicizing their progress with regular livestream updates, and the American public eagerly watched this historic labor victory unfold in real time.

Our small team at JTA does not have the capacity to track every union campaign. But we have been paying close attention to the recent UAW struggles. We hope that they will continue to aggressively organize, fight to win, and command attention, adding momentum to the entire movement.