green unionism

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

By staff - People and Nature, February 6, 2024

On 9 July 2021, Melrose Industries announced the closure of its GKN Driveline (formerly FIAT) factory at Campi di Bisenzio, near Florence in Italy, which produced axles for cars. More than 400 workers were laid off. While in many such cases the workers and unions settle for negotiating enhanced redundancy benefits, the GKN Factory Collective took over the plant and kickstarted a long struggle against its closure.

But what makes the ex-GKN Florence dispute really unique is the strategy adopted by the workers, who sealed an alliance with the climate justice movement by drafting a conversion plan for sustainable, public transport and demanding its adoption.

This strategy engendered a cycle of broad mobilisations – repeatedly bringing tens of thousands to the streets – so that the dispute still continues, and the permanent sit-in at the factory remains until today.

The workers were meant to be finally dismissed on 1 January 2024. The GKN Factory Collective had thus turned New Year’s Eve into a final call to action to defend their conversion plan. Such pressure from below probably played a role in a decision by the labour court, announced on 27 December 2023, to overturn the layoffs for the second time.

The workers’ current plan is to set up a cooperative for the production of cargo bikes and solar panels, as part of a broader vision for a worker-led ecological transition. This needs material solidarity, now. A popular shareholding campaign has been started, to launch this co-operative: so far more than 600,000 euros have been collected, towards a target of one million euros.

All information on how to contribute, individually or as an organisation, can be found at the website Insorgiamo.org.

This interview with some GKN workers, by Luca Manes, was published in December on Comune-Info in Italy, and was translated into English by Lorenzo Feltrin.

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

By Tim Thomas, Sydney Ghazarian, Gaby Sarri-Tobar, and Ted Glick - Center for Biological Diversity, February 4, 2024

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, February 2, 2024

Green New Deal initiatives at local, state, regional, and civil society levels around the country have drawn together diverse, sometimes isolated, or even conflicted constituencies around common programs for climate, jobs, and justice. How have they done so?

Transcript Follows:

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, February 1, 2024

Auto workers at Hyundai in Montgomery, Alabama, have signed up more than 30 percent of their nearly 4,000 co-workers in an ambitious drive to unionize.

The Auto Workers (UAW) announced the organizing breakthrough with a new video, “Montgomery Can’t Wait,” where workers link the labor and civil rights movements: “Montgomery, the city where Rosa Parks sat down, and where thousands of Hyundai workers are ready to Stand Up.”

“There’s something about our fight to unionize being homegrown that makes it just that much sweeter,” said Quichelle Liggins, a 12-year quality inspector at Hyundai.

“All I can tell my people to do is be bold and intentional. Just like the leaders of the civil rights movement, we’re linking together one by one. One person had to say, ‘Hey, it's time for us to make a difference!’ And then several other people had to agree, and now we have a group of workers that feel the same way.”

Workers in this plant assemble the Santa Fe and Tucson SUVs, the Santa Cruz pickup truck, the Genesis GV70 luxury SUV, and the Electrified GV70.

They’re the third plant to reach the 30 percent milestone in the UAW’s new organizing push, just weeks after workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant near Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and on the heels of those at Tennessee’s Chattanooga Volkswagen plant in December.

The UAW announced Monday that more than 10,000 workers across 13 non-union plants have signed union cards since last November, when the union announced an ambitious goal to organize 150,000 autoworkers. That’s roughly the same number as are covered now under the Big Three contracts.

Once workers reach the threshold of 30 percent on signed union authorization cards, under the UAW’s rubric, they take their organizing public. At the 50 percent mark, they rally with their co-workers, families, neighbors, and community and union leaders, including UAW President Shawn Fain.

As soon as 70 percent of workers at a given plant sign cards, and their organizing committee has grown to include workers from every shift and job classification, they will demand voluntary recognition of their union. If the company refuses, the workers file for an election with the National Labor Relations Board.

By Christa, Chris Albright, Jessica Albright, Stella Gamble, Daren Gamble, and Maximillian Alvarez - The Real News, January 31, 2024

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

A just-published article by Todd E. Vachon, “Climate Justice for All: Pursuing a Just Transition in the Education Sector”—published in the American Federation of Teachers journal The American Educator—lays out in detail “what educators can do—and many already are doing—through their unions to promote climate justice and equity in their schools and communities.”

Vachon is an assistant professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, the director of the Labor Education Action Research Network, and the author of Clean Air and Good Jobs: U.S. Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice. He is also a co-author of the Labor Network for Sustainability report “Workers and Communities in Transition”.

Vachon argues that “the world is in the midst of two simultaneous and interconnected crises: a crisis of ecology and a crisis of inequality.” But “the good news is that there is an important role that students, educators, our local unions, and community allies can play in addressing the dual crises of climate change and inequality.” Confronting the climate crisis offers “a potential pathway for making some of the important changes in our economy that are needed to recenter the lives and well-being of people.” Such a “just transition” offers “a vision of economic democracy, including public investments to account for the full social costs and benefits of environmental and economic policies to create the most just—not necessarily the most profitable—outcome for all.”

Educators can start by promoting “green and healthy schools” that involve “installing renewable energy generation and storage systems, renovating existing school buildings to improve efficiencies, constructing new green buildings, securing strong labor standards, ensuring an open and democratic process for all stakeholders, and requiring local and preferential hiring to ensure that local communities and displaced workers benefit from the jobs that are created in the process.”

Forging a just transition in education with healthy green schools and social and economic justice requires “grassroots organizing and power building,” such as “forming local union climate justice committees, building strong partnerships with students and community groups, bargaining for the common good, and holding decision makers accountable.” The cross-union Educators Climate Action Network, convened by the Labor Network for Sustainability, brings together over 100 union educators from across the country to tackle climate change and promote climate justice in education.

Vachon ends with a challenge and an invitation: “Perhaps your local union will be the next to take bold climate action and become a part of the solution by helping to forge your own local Green New Deal and joining the national effort.”

Link to the article: https://www.aft.org/ae/winter2023-2024/vachon

Link to ECAN: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/ecan/

Link to LNS Just Transition Listening Project report: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/jtlp-2021/

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, January 30, 2024

“Bargaining for the Common Good” has become a crucial strategy for organized labor and a key means of forging broad coalitions for mutual support. For the past decade, unions and allies in Minnesota have developed powerful union and community alignments that have won victories at the bargaining table, in the community, and in the legislature.

In March, the union contracts are expiring for tens of thousands of Minnesota workers, and these allies are organizing in advance to align their demands and narratives.

You can watch a recorded webinar on “Minnesota Community and Labor Escalations” presenting an insider’s look at what it took to build this alignment over the last few decades, and what’s possible in this spring’s escalation. Speakers include Greg Nammacher, President of SEIU Local 26 Jennifer Arnold, Co-Director of Inquilinxs Unidxs por Justicia Veronica Mendez Moore, Co-Director of CTUL Marcia Howard, First Vice President of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Educational Support Professionals JaNaé Bates, Director of Communications of ISAIAH Phillip Cryan, Executive Vice President, SEIU Healthcare MN & IA.