green unionism

By Jesse Strecker - The Trouble, November 23, 2023

Last week, UAW officials announced that workers at GM, Ford and Stellantis approved new contracts, officially capping off the union’s historic six-week strike at the Big Three automakers. The deals have been rightly celebrated by the left as marking the beginning of a new era of ambitious, militant organizing for the US labor movement. What’s more, major wins for electric vehicle (EV) workers could help to build the labor-environmentalist coalition needed to advance a just and rapid transition—if my union, the UAW, aligns behind ambitious clean car standards.

The UAW’s contracts include ground-breaking gains that help make the shift to electric vehicles less disruptive for workers and grow my union’s stake in the clean auto industry of the future. Stellantis agreed to re-open a shuttered plant in Belvidere, Illinois to produce both combustion vehicles and EVs, and include 1,000 new workers at an EV battery facility slated to open nearby in the union’s national contract. Ford and Stellantis granted the union the authority to strike to prevent plant closures. At Stellantis, workers can also strike to uphold company commitments to produce specific products.

Winning these demands marks a historic first, harkening to former UAW president Walter Reuther’s push for the union to play a role in guiding production decisions to meet social and environmental ends. With new federal funding available to re-tool automaking facilities to make EVs, the new contracts will pressure companies to retain their current workforce as they transition to EVs, pushing back on right-wing efforts to scare workers into opposing the EV transition. And though neither Stellantis nor Ford followed GM’s lead by agreeing to extend the contract to workers at its joint-venture EV battery facilities, Ford acceded to a card check neutrality process that would incorporate them if a majority indicate they support the union, along with transfer rights for workers laid off from other facilities.

The left has rightly celebrated these victories as a turning point in the push for a just transition to a decarbonized economy. Throughout the strike, progressives and environmentalists have stood with the UAW, rightly rejecting the notion that strong contracts threaten to “crash” the EV transition. As Erika Thi Patterson, clean car campaigner at Public Citizen, told Politico, to win policies that quickly ramp down climate pollution, “[w]e need workers on our side.” Now, then, is the time for the UAW to embrace the policies needed to clean up climate pollution from the transportation sector.

By staff - La Via Campesina, November 22, 2023

(Bagnolet: November 24, 2023) In response to the genocidal war being waged on the people of Palestine, we, La Via Campesina, reiterate our steadfast solidarity with the peasants, fisherfolk and working families of Palestine. Many of them dedicate themselves daily to the realization of Peasants Rights and Food Sovereignty, engage in heroic acts such as planting their lands, caring for their orchards, fishing in their rivers and sea, and organizing themselves within the Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC), a longstanding member of La Via Campesina.

There are no words to describe the pain and the heartbreak felt within all of La Via Campesina with each life lost, each child maimed and orphaned, each home and hospital destroyed, each farm and field abandoned for fear of death by air raids in Gaza or armed emboldened settlers across the West Bank. This illegal Israeli occupation that has lasted far too long now carries out what one UN official described as a “textbook case of genocide”.

Over 13,500 civilians have been killed, at the time of writing this press release, and the numbers of lost souls continue to increase. The majority of the casualties are women and children. Another 3,000 missing trapped under the rubble. A ceasefire is imperative to prevent further horrors. It is our duty as social movements, organizations, and individuals within society to globalize the struggle and solidarity, and put to an end these shameful crimes that do not lead to peace and undermine sovereignty, destroying the future of generations.

By Dan DiMaggio - Labor Notes, November 22, 2023

Is it time for a big, united strike by millions of union members against the billionaire class?

We get pitched this idea sometimes at Labor Notes. Usually we dismiss it as coming from starry-eyed dreamers eager to pass over the hard work of organizing and skip ahead to the “general strike.”

But now the call is coming from a major international union: the United Auto Workers, whose new contracts covering 146,000 workers at the Big 3 are strategically set to expire on May 1, 2028. The union wants others in the labor movement to align their own expirations for that date, setting up a battle with some of the country’s biggest corporations in four-and-a-half years.

“If I could have a dream scenario,” UAW President Shawn Fain told In These Times, “it would be that all of organized labor maps their expiration dates to May 1.”

By staff - Equidem, November 20, 2023

Workers at the heart of the United Arab Emirates's renewable and gig sectors, and at the site that will host the UN Climate Change Conference (COP28) have left homes in Africa and Asia because of climate change only to be subjected to physical abuse, heat stress, exploitation and discrimination, a new report from Equidem reveals. Serious labour violations have taken place at the site of COP28, Expo City, as well as at five renewable energy firms, including Siemens Energy. 

Based on correspondence with 248 workers, and interviews with 102, the expansive report offers unprecedented insight into the renewables, construction, security, and delivery sectors in the UAE, shedding light on both industrial and service sector working conditions for 9 million migrant workers. 

The shining facilities at Expo City Dubai boast internationally lauded solar and wind parks and a booming local gig economy. Underneath that cheerful exterior, however, women and men from some of the poorest countries on earth are falling victim to an unjust transition: Migrant workers from Africa and Asia are being subjected to serious human rights abuses in a nation whose oil and gas-powered economy is at the heart of the planet’s climate crisis. 

“Hosting this peak global conference in a climate and rights abusing state was bad enough. Equidem’s research starkly reveals that the UAE is failing on almost every metric of the UN’s own human rights benchmarks for addressing climate change through the COP process,” said Mustafa Qadri, CEO of Equidem. 

Abuses include workplace violence, wage theft, working in extreme heat and other occupational health and safety risks, nationality-based discrimination, exploitative hiring practices, understaffing and overwork, lack of opportunities for promotion, overcrowded accommodations, inadequate food allowances, and inadequate channels for workers to seek relief from these violations. 

Investigations by Equidem were carried out between February and October 2023 at Expo City Dubai and in the renewables and delivery sectors, including at Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Solar Park, Al Dhafra Solar Power Project, Noor Abu Dhabi Solar Plant, Sir Bani Yas Wind Farm Project; and in the delivery sector in the UAE. 

• Together, 57% of the migrant workers interviewed come from climate impacted areas of Asia and Africa.
• 41 % of the workers reported nationality-based discrimination.
• 77.% of the workers in renewable sector reported living in overcrowded accommodations, with up to 20 people in a room fit for six or fewer workers.
• 83% of the African and Asian workers interviewed reported being unable to afford nutritious and healthy food.
• 40% of the workers said they were skipping meals.

Equidem’s research found that African and Asian workers have migrated for employment based upon climate impacts in their own country, and then find employment in the industrial and service sectors in the UAE. These migrant workers are doubly impacted by the global climate crisis—they migrate in response to climate impacts and find employment in exploitative industrial and service contexts where they work long hours in extreme heat. These rights violations take place against a backdrop of racially delineated exclusion from labour rights protections, denial of freedom of association, and authoritarian suppression of dissent in the UAE. 

Download a copy of this publication here (Link).

By Katie Myers - Grist, November 20, 2023

Members of the United Auto Workers have overwhelmingly approved a contract that will deliver higher wages, assure them of a role in the EV transition, and possibly lead toward greater unionization of the auto sector. With all of the benefits the pact provides, tens of thousands of people will immediately see their pay rise more than 40 percent, the union said.

The union’s ratification of the pact, by a margin of 64 percent, with Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis followed a two-month strike. Though the electric vehicle transition was never an explicit part of bargaining, it ran as a simultaneously tense and hopeful undercurrent through the walkouts, pickets, and negotiations. This contract, analysts say, will allow the union’s 150,000 members to maintain their quality of life as the nation decarbonizes the transportation sector.

“Those are all huge wins,” said Albert Wheaton, director of the Cornell Institute for Labor Studies. “The biggest wins by far have been for the lower paid workers.”

Under the contract, the base wage paid to workers will increase 25 percent, while the top wage will climb 33 percent. It also provides cost-of-living adjustments and eliminates the two-tiered wage system that saw new hires permanently earn lower wages than veterans. Temporary workers will see their pay jump 150 percent, and the pact cuts from eight to three the number of years required to reach the top pay level.

The agreement with Stellantis also provides for the reopening of a plant that the automaker had planned to close in Belvidere, Illinois, and will add 1,000 jobs at an EV battery plant in the same town. 

By Luke Tonachel - National Resources Defense Council, November 20, 2023

When the United Auto Workers (UAW) started its strike against Ford, GM, and Stellantis earlier this year, a grim storyline took shape in the press: This strike pitted President Biden’s push for a transition to electric vehicles (EVs) against his support for workers. 

Writing about the strike and the transition to zero-emitting vehicles, the New York Times put it this way: “The political challenge posed by the industry’s transition to electric cars may be only beginning.” Politico was one of any number of publications issuing a simple warning: “UAW Strike Could Disrupt EV Rollout.” Two so-called facts were seemingly inarguable: Electric vehicles require far fewer workers to build, and none of the new battery plants could be unionized. 

But now that the strike is over—more quickly than many assumed and on much better terms for workers than analysts had said was possible—a different set of lessons are clear, and they are the exact opposite of what many in the media and hot take marketplace had predicted:

• The Big Three automakers can invest in both their workers and the factories to make new EVs.
• Workers at many of the new battery plants can enjoy the same union protection as other autoworkers or have an easier pathway to join the union. 
• Building EVs can create more jobs over the next few decades as the industry builds up its capacity and know-how. 

Before examining each of these three points, it’s important to correct one misunderstanding.

By Dan DiMaggio - Labor Notes, November 17, 2023

After a six-week escalating strike, the Auto Workers (UAW) ratified agreements with each of the Big 3 automakers. The deals are a sharp about-face from decades of concessions.

The new contracts go further than many people thought possible, on issues that the companies had insisted were off the table. Stellantis agreed to reopen its idled Belvidere, Illinois, assembly plant. The companies will include most new battery plant workers in their master agreements.

While the contracts don’t abolish tiers for benefits, they mostly get rid of the wage tiers the Big 3 had created to drive down pay. Some workers will see their pay more than double.

The gains are a testament to the UAW’s aggressive strategy under its new leaders, which ramped up the strikes slowly at first and then faster until the companies caved one by one. The strategy threw the companies off guard and kept them guessing throughout.

The Stand-Up Strike began September 15 when 13,000 workers walked out at three Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis assembly plants; by the end it grew to 50,000, out of 146,000 UAW members at the Big 3. The agreements came after a major escalation: striking each company’s most profitable truck plant.

Workers approved the deals at GM, Ford, and Stellantis this week.

At Ford and Stellantis, two-thirds voted in favor. But at GM, the numbers were close. Just 55 percent of workers voted yes, reflecting workers’ heightened expectations and frustration with years of givebacks. Many higher-seniority assembly plant workers at all three companies voted no, saying the raises and retirement gains were not enough.

“They wanted higher increases in pay, higher than the 25 percent, and they wanted it all up front,” said Katie Deatherage, the recently elected president of Local 2250 at GM’s plant in Wentzville, Missouri. “Pensions and post-retirement health care were a huge topic and have been for a long long time.”

Deatherage estimates that 70 to 75 percent of workers at her plant have been hired since 2007, meaning they don’t get a pension or retiree health care. Still, in her 20 years at GM, “it’s the best contract I’ve seen in my career.” She voted yes.

By Jessica Corbett - Common Dreams, November 17, 2023

As voting wrapped up on Friday, United Auto Workers members at Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis were all on track to approve contracts finalized during a six-week UAW strike demanding improved pay, benefits, and working conditions from the "Big Three."

The union's online trackers had the ratification vote results as 68.2% to 31.8% at Ford, 54.7% to 45.3% at GM, and 69.6% to 30.4% at Stellantis as of press time. The UAW and companies have not yet commented on the results.

The UAW launched its "Stand Up Strike" in mid-September, and increased walkouts at various U.S. locations throughout the talks. Rutgers University labor studies professor Rebecca Givan toldThe New York Times that the strategy "really upended a lot of conventional wisdom" in the labor movement and helped reverse some concessions the union had previously accepted, showing that "if workers build enough power, they can win things back."

By Deepak Bhargava and Stephanie Luce - Newsweek, November 16, 2023

Amid growing threats to our climate, economy, and democracy, one thing has become increasingly clear: those who care about confronting these challenges need to get smarter about strategy.

We've seen right-wing extremists make enormous gains on everything from abortion restrictions to anti-trans legislation, and we'd be foolish to believe their war on our rights will slow down anytime soon. They've done so by being laser focused on strategy: specifically dividing and weakening their opposition. The assault on voting rights or on unions through state legislation are both highly strategic efforts to weaken pillars of the progressive coalition. The same goes for the moral panics about trans rights or critical race theory the right is relentlessly pushing.

To help point today's activists in the right direction, we wrote a book around seven strategies that, when used properly, can help progressives win some of our biggest battles ahead. These timeless strategies were deployed by some of our nation's most successful grassroots movements—from the abolition of slavery to the New Deal to the civil rights movement—in the face of enormous opposition, and we've seen a number of them resurrected to great effect in the past year by workers, voters, and progressive coalitions who've enacted sweeping and significant change, even with the odds heavily stacked against them.

Take, for example, the use of disruption to stop business as usual and build economic power. This time-tested strategy used by workers throughout history led to a major victory when auto workers at Ford Motor, Stellantis, and General Motors reached tentative agreements with their employers for record 25 percent raises nearly six weeks after the United Auto Workers (UAW) began a growing wave of strikes against the Big Three. These workers' win is an exemplary testament to the power of prolonged, creative, and unpredictable disruption to bring about a desired result. As we write in our book, disruption is the ability to stop those in power from doing what they want to do and to break up the status quo. After their union contracts expired last month, that's exactly what thousands of workers from the Big Three automakers did when they began ratcheting up a series of walkouts strategically at factories producing some of the automakers' most profitable models.

This was the first time ever that the UAW had struck all three companies simultaneously, and the choice to do so dealt a significant blow to the Big Three's profits. Altogether, 45,000 workers went on strike. Estimates show that after five weeks of strikes, the economic losses for the auto industry surpassed $9.3 billion. To stop the financial bleeding, the Big Three had no other choice but to meet workers' demands at the bargaining table.

By Union Jake, Adam Keller, and Mark Gevaart - Valley Labor Report, November 16, 2023