green unionism

By Michael Goldfield, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 31, 2024

By Clara Polliard, Jason Wyatt, Claire Peden, Jan Hines, Ellen Robottom, John Morrisey, and Morten Thaysen - Tipping Point UK, May 29, 2024

By Sarah Jaffe, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 27, 2024

By Daphna, Maria, Mijin Cha, Mad Austin, Alfredo Juarez, Lauren Bianchi, and Joseph S - Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, May 26, 2024

By Union Jake and Colin Smalley - Valley Labor Report, May 23, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 22, 2024

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 22, 2024

By Karen Pickett, Scott Parkin, and Bob Buzzanco - Green and Red, May 22, 2024

By Nicholas Kusnetz - Inside Climate News, May 22, 2024

On a pair of aging piers jutting into New York Harbor, contractors in hard hats and neon yellow safety vests have begun work on one of the region’s most anticipated industrial projects. Within a few years, this expanse of broken blacktop should be replaced by a smooth surface and covered with neat stacks of giant wind turbine blades and towers ready for assembly.

The site will be home to one of the nation’s first ports dedicated to supporting the growing offshore wind industry. It is the culmination of years of work by an unlikely alliance including community advocates, unions, oil companies and politicians, who hope the operations can help New York meet its climate goals while creating thousands of high-quality jobs and helping improve conditions in Sunset Park, a polluted neighborhood that is 40 percent Hispanic.

With construction finally underway, it seems that some of those hopes are coming true. Last month, Equinor, the Norwegian oil company that is building the port, signed an agreement with New York labor unions covering wages and conditions for what should be more than 1,000 construction jobs.

The Biden administration has been promoting offshore wind development as a key piece of its climate agenda, with a goal of reaching 30,000 megawatts of capacity by 2030, enough to power more than 10 million homes, according to the White House. New York has positioned itself as a leader, setting its own goal of 9,000 megawatts installed by 2035.

Officials at the state and federal levels have seized on the industry as a chance to create a new industrial supply chain and thousands of blue-collar, high-paying jobs. In 2021, New York lawmakers required all large renewable energy projects to pay workers prevailing wages and to meet other labor standards. The Biden administration has included similar requirements in some leases for offshore wind in federal waters to encourage developers to hire union labor.

While the last year has brought a series of setbacks to the offshore wind industry, including the cancellation of several projects off New Jersey and New York that faced rising interest rates and supply chain problems, many of the pieces for offshore wind are falling into place. New York’s first utility-scale project began delivering power in March, while two much larger efforts, including one that Equinor will build out of the new port, are moving toward construction. Together, they will bring the state about 20 percent of the way to its 2035 target.

By Jeremy Kimbrell - Labor Notes, May 21, 2024

I’m still hot as hell three days after losing a union election at the Mercedes factory complex in Alabama. After years of laying a foundation and six months of 100 percent dedication and putting everything on hold, it’s a tough pill to swallow—losing by 597 votes out of 5,000. That’s especially hard when a large majority of workers had committed to vote yes, but some flipped in the closing weeks.

It’ll take time to know everything that went wrong or what exactly led to the loss, but while things are fresh on my mind, I’ll share a few thoughts. I’ve worked at Mercedes for nearly 25 years and have been part of multiple efforts over those years to build a union. This was the first time we got to a National Labor Relations Board-supervised election on whether to unionize.

Until you go to an election, you can’t understand what it entails or what your company will do. We never really knew how many workers we had. We never really knew which workers would be included or excluded, including students, temps, or contractors.

Now we have a list with every employee on it that we never had before. And while these workers will now have to claim some ownership of every decision the company makes that impacts them, should the company end up lying—as I expect it will—we’ll be able to quickly capitalize on it and remind these workers that with a union contract we don’t have to trust in the company. We’ll have it writing.