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EcoUnionist News #15

Submitted by x344543 on Tue, 12/30/2014 - 12:53

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 30, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
direct action
climate justice
movement politics
fracking
tar sands
mining
mine workers
transportation
transportation workers
railroad workers
Railroad Workers United (RWU)
crude-by-rail
International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART)
privatization
health and safety
Alex Lotorto
Alexander Reid Ross
J.P.Wright

EcoUnionist News #14

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 12/29/2014 - 09:19

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 29, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
green unionism
Eco Unionist News
climate change
carbon bubble
extractivism
mine workers
mining
fisherfolk
capitalism
slaughterhouses
man camps
combating patriarchy
malthusians
migrant labor
Greenpeace
Big Green
green capitalism
green syndicalism

EcoUnionist News #13

Submitted by x344543 on Sat, 12/20/2014 - 10:48

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 21, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

Dispatches from Lima COP20:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
green unionism

EcoUnionist News #12

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 12/19/2014 - 19:59

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 19, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

Dispatches from Lima COP20:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
green unionism

EcoUnionist News #11

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 12/17/2014 - 18:58

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 18, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

Dispatches from Lima COP20:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
green unionism
Big Green
COP20
National Nurses United
crude-by-rail
green syndicalism
climate justice
coal
mine workers
railroad workers
black lung
renewable energy

EcoUnionist News #10

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 12/15/2014 - 18:09

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 17, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

Urgent Action:

  • Philippines sugar organizer murdered - Act Now!

Dispatches from Lima COP20:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
green unionism
COP20
climate justice
nuclear power workers
fracking
crude-by-rail
mine workers
jobs versus environment
Keystone XL Pipeline (KXL)
National Nurses United
North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU)
railroad workers
movement politics
greenwashing
health and safety

EcoUnionist News #9

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 12/12/2014 - 14:34

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 13, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Noam Chomsky:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
green unionism

My Social Credo

Submitted by x332349 on Thu, 12/11/2014 - 14:44

By Arthur J. Miller - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 12, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

1. ALL THINGS ARE CONNECTED: There are many needed struggles, but they are all connected because in one way or another, we all struggle against the same oppressors and the same abusive system. In the natural world all life is connected.

2. LIFE IN BALANCE: Life out of balance with all is the greatest threat we face to our survival. Life out of balance, a violent world of pursuit of greed and power for some at the expense of the many is leaving our world a wasteland of human folly and suffering. Life in balance with all around us is our only means of survival.

3. HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ALL: The right to exist, the right to food, shelter and medical care, the right to dwell upon the land, the right of free speech, free assembly and the right to organizing for better conditions, the right to live without oppression, should be the rights of all of humankind.

4. DIVERSITY AWARENESSS AND RESPECT: Humankind is a great diversity of cultures. When we treat that diversity with acknowledgment and respect, that diversity becomes our strength and not our weakness.

5. INCLUSION: The oppressed and exploited are a great mass of people. But they are not all the same. Seeking to include all people and their concerns makes real social change possible. Seeking to exclude people makes real social change impossible. For in that you only change things for the better of some at the expense of the many.

6. SELF-DETERMINATION: The oppressed organizing against our oppressions and struggling to control our own fate.

7. SPEAKING FOR OURSELVES: The oppressed and exploited people need to be able to speak for ourselves by means of writing, speaking, art, music and so on, because we are the only ones that are truly able to understand what we are going through. And that understanding is necessary in order to free ourselves from the way things were not meant to be.

8. GENERATIONS IN BALANCE: Creating balance between the old and the new. What came before lays the foundation, the new adds to it and passes it on to the future generations.

9. THE 7TH GENERATION: Instant gratification of greed is a suicidal direction. In all things, look to the 7th Generation to come as to what we do now will effect the future, many Indigenous cultures teach us this.

10. WORKING FOLKS: We live in a class society where those that do the useful work are of a lower class while those that oppress and exploit us exist as a higher privileged class. There is great dignity in the labor of working people, for we do all that is needed for our needs and wants. No society can exist without us. There is no dignity or usefulness in the class that oppresses and exploits us, they do nothing useful, they are unneeded and they stand in the way of the well-being of all.

11. FOR A CLASSLESS SOCIETY: The idle rich on top living off the labor of the classes below them, and thus creating endless class conflict. Organize for a classless society for the peace and well-being of all humanity.

12. REPLACING EUROCENTICISM WITH MULTI-ETHNIC INTERNATIONALISM: Eurocenticism seeks conquest of the world by the domination of a few imperialists, and to impose their cultural/political/economic system on all, which they view as superior to all else. Eurocentic supremacy needs to be replaced with multi-ethnic internationalism. True multi-ethnic internationalism is open to all the knowledge and cultures of the people of the world.

13. ENDING THE GENOCIDE: The Western lands are built upon genocidal policies against the Original People. It is important to understand this so that we can put an end to those policies that started with Columbus and continue to this day. FREE LEONARD PELTIER!

Tags: 
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
green unionism
green syndicalism
movement politics
green industrial unionism
Arthur Miller

Eco Unionist News #8

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 12/11/2014 - 12:51

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, December 10, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
green unionism

My Whole Foods nightmare: How a full-time job there left me in poverty

Submitted by x332349 on Wed, 12/10/2014 - 21:46

By Nick Rahaim - Salon.com, December 8, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Despite the corporate talk of "team" and "love," here's what working there was really like -- and why I had to quit

After years of organizing in secret, building bonds over beer and supporting co-workers when issues have arisen with management, team members at a Whole Foods Market in San Francisco disrupted the normal workday and demanded a $5 an hour pay increase last month. More than 20 employees beckoned store management to the floor and presented a petition signed by more than 50 of the store’s workers calling for more paid time off, better health and retirement benefits as well as steady, consistent schedules.

I worked at Whole Foods in the spring of 2012. As is the typical way of getting to know co-workers, I went out for drinks with a tight-knit group of employees. Conversations went quickly from the getting-to-know-you banter to politics, and it was at the time the Occupy Movement was running out of steam. We exchanged battle stories of political engagement and mused about how best to carry the momentum from Occupy in new directions. I asked about organizing at Whole Foods; a few of my co-workers smirked while others played dumb. A week later I was brought into the fold, and found people had been organizing for more than two years. I was feisty for action, but the others knew better; they were in it for the long haul.

Since workers came out after plotting in the shadows for nearly five years, store managers have reportedly attempted to kill them with kindness, while saying nothing of their demands. On the corporate side, Whole Foods Market announced a pay increase in its San Francisco stores effective Jan. 1, shortly after the Whole Foods Union went public. The $1.25 increase in the starting wage, from $11.50 to $12.75, sits 50 cents above San Francisco increase in minimum wage that will take effect in May of 2015. Outside of that, both the store and corporate management have refused to publicly address the situation. Workers organizing at Whole Foods claim the announced wage increase four months ahead of schedule was likely in response to their demands.

In an attempt to put teeth to their demands workers held pickets at the Whole Foods Northern California Regional distribution center in Richmond, California. The picket fell short of stopping the flow of goods to the Bay Area stores it had envisioned, in the spirit of the Black Friday actions taken in 2013 by retail workers. Although the Teamsters did agree that their drivers would not cross the picket line. To that Ruan, the shipping company contracted by Whole Foods, hired temporary workers — scabs — to cross.

Organizing with the radical-syndicalist union, the Industrial Workers of the World, Whole Foods employees are shunning traditional unions that represent the majority of workers at Safeway, Alberson’s and other national grocers. In doing so, they have given up access to the deep pockets of United Grocery Workers and the like, but have the added agility to stealthily maneuver. The IWW is also the only union to have successfully created union shops at Starbucks.

Tags: 
greenwashing
Industrial Workers of the World (IWW)
Food and Retail Workers Union
green unionism
green syndicalism

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