green unionism

By staff - International Labour Organization, July 5, 2023

Climate change has profound impacts on, and synergies with the world of work, especially regarding the sound management of chemicals. Many chemicals that are produced and utilized in the workplace can have impacts on the environment and climate, with climate change in turn impacting the ability to safely store, transport and use chemicals.Appropriate climate change adaptation and mitigation measures are needed as a matter of urgency.

The inclusion of a ‘safe and healthy working environment’ as an ILO fundamental principle and right atwork (FPRW) provides a framework for action to tackle emerging risks to workers from climate change,through a systems approach to managing occupational safety and health (OSH). Addressing harmful chemical exposures in the working environment through effective OSH policies and practices are a top priority for advancing climate change agendas and ensuring decent working conditions.

Download a copy of this publication here (link).

By Steve Keen - Carbon Tracker, July 2023

Pension funds are risking the retirement savings of millions of people by relying on economic research that ignores critical scientific evidence about the financial risks embedded within a warming climate.

This report reveals that many pension funds use investment models that predict global warming of 2 to 4.3°C will have only a minimal impact on member portfolios, relying on economists flawed estimates of damages from climate change, which predicts that even with 5 to 7°C of global warming, economic growth will continue. The report underscores that such economic studies cannot be reconciled with warnings from climate scientists that global warming on this scale would be “an existential threat to human civilisation.”

Loading the DICE against pension funds is a call to action for investment professionals to look at the compelling evidence we see in the climate science literature, and to implement investment strategies, particularly a rapid wind down of the fossil fuel system, based on a ‘no regrets’ precautionary approach. Behaving cautiously now and acting to avoid a 1.5°C increase (let alone the 4°C outcome featured in this report) will enable future generations to secure the prosperity and quality of life that comes from a healthy planet.

By Tahir Latif, et. al. - Public and Commercial Services Union, July 2023

PCS has always argued that protecting the long term job security of our members in aviation means recognising the impact of flying on the environment, and vice versa.

Technical fixes – new fuels, better engines, more efficient aircraft – will help but not solve the challenge of climate change. To meet the UK’s climate targets will involve managing down.

As a trade union we want to ensure a reduction in flying does not lead to an accompanying loss of jobs but to a planned transition of workers to the jobs required in a greener aviation industry that is part of a broader integrated transport system, owned by and run for the public, and that meets its climate commitments.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Jacob Whiton and Greg LeRoy - Good Jobs First, July 2023

Under a provision of the Inflation Reduction Act, some factories making batteries for electric vehicles will each receive more than a billion dollars per year from the U.S. government, with no requirement to pay good wages to production workers. Thanks to the Advanced Manufacturing Production Credit, also called 45X for its section in the Internal Revenue Code, battery companies will receive tax credits that they can use, sell, or cash out.

The 45X program alone will cost taxpayers over $200 billion in the next decade, far more than the $31 billion estimated by Congress’s Joint Committee on Taxation. On top of 45X and other federal incentives, factories manufacturing electric vehicles and batteries have also been promised well over $13 billion in state and local economic development incentives in just the past 18 months.

What do local communities get from companies in exchange for public money? The Biden administration says the IRA will create “good-paying union jobs,” but the federal tax credit has no job quality requirements for permanent jobs and doesn’t mandate companies pay market-based wages or benefits.

Good Jobs First did the math for five recently announced battery factories. Here’s what we learned:

• Total subsidies will range from $2 million to $7 million per job.

• Average annual wages, as announced, will be below the current national average for production workers in the automotive sector.

• The 45X credit alone is large enough to cover each facility’s initial capital investment cost and wage bill for the first several years of production.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 30, 2023

The government of Canada has just introduced in Parliament the “Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act.” According to the government, the Act will “facilitate and promote the creation of sustainable jobs and support workers and communities in Canada in line as the world advances toward a net-zero future.” It will “put workers and communities at the center of federal policy and decision-making by establishing a framework for accountability, a governance structure and engagement mechanisms to guide effective federal action.”

To hit the ground running, a Sustainable Jobs Interim Action Plan includes:

• Establish the Sustainable Jobs Secretariat
• Create a Sustainable Jobs Partnership Council
• Develop economic strategies through the Regional Energy and Resource Tables
• Introduce a sustainable jobs stream under the Union Training and Innovation Program
• Advance funding for skills development toward sustainable jobs
• Promote Indigenous-led solutions and a National Benefits-Sharing Framework
• Improve labor market data collection, tracking and analysis
• Motivate investors and draw in industry leadership to support workers
• Collaborate and lead on the global stage
• Establish legislation that ensures ongoing engagement and accountability

For text of the bill: www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/training/initiatives/sustainable-jobs/plan.html

For a government backgrounder on the bill: www.canada.ca/en/natural-resources-canada/news/2023/06/backgrounder-canadian-sustainable-jobs-act.html

For Sustainable Jobs Action Plan: www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/training/initiatives/sustainable-jobs/plan.html

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 30, 2023

The Gulf South and Appalachia have increasingly been the targets of environmental destruction by fossil fuel and other toxic industrial infrastructure – and the location of significant campaigns against that destruction. Over the past year-and-a-half the climate justice center Taproot Earth convened People’s Movement Assemblies to align grassroots organizers and regional efforts across the Gulf South and Appalachia. Along with the Climate and Community Project they have issued the “We Choose Now Climate Action Strategy” which highlights the deep connections between the Gulf South and Appalachia and calls for action to reject extractive economies and cultivate regional solutions that advance collective healing and climate justice.

The report notes that,

For many communities in the Gulf and Appalachia, the most lucrative financial paths are fossil fuels, military, or drugs. Future generations deserve more opportunities. We need solutions that move us away from labor that is extracted and exploited, to labor that is fulfilling and life-giving.

Proposed solutions include:

1. Repurpose fossil fuel infrastructure for renewable energy economy
2. Build a mine/well reclamation or fossil fuel transition workforce
3. Develop state Civilian Climate Corps and expand existing environmental job training programs

For Executive Summary: https://taproot.earth/wp-content/uploads/CAS_Executive_Summary_2023.pdf

For Full Reports: https://taproot.earth/category/reports/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=433c6f6a-c4d1-4906-bb49-a4cb89ac33eb

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 30, 2023

In what may be the first strike in US history to demand green jobs, 1400 striking members of UE Locals 506 and 618 who build locomotives for Wabtec in Erie, PA are demanding that their employers start producing green locomotives. Their proposals grow out of UE’s “Green Locomotive Project,” which aims to “build the worker and community power necessary to compel the railroads to upgrade their locomotive stock and adopt green technology, and to ensure that new technologies lead to jobs at existing union factories.” A recent report from the University of Massachusetts Amherst finds that building such locomotives would create between 2,600 and 4,300 jobs in the Lawrence Park plant, as well as three to five thousand additional jobs in Erie County.

For more on the strike: Wabtec Workers Walk Out for Grievance Strikes and Green Locomotives | Labor Notes

For background on the Green Locomotive Project: The Filthy Emissions of Railroad Locomotives—and the Rail Unions Sounding the Alarm | The American Prospect

To contribute to the strike solidarity fund: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/support-ue-members-striking-for-green-jobs

By Barbara Barrett - Stateline, June 30, 2023

Nearly 400 U.S. workers died of heat exposure over a decade.

Even as summer temperatures soar and states wrangle with protecting outdoor workers from extreme heat, Texas last week enacted a law that axes city rules mandating water and shade breaks for construction workers.

In state after state, lawmakers and regulators have in recent years declined to require companies to offer their outdoor laborers rest breaks with shade and water. In some cases, legislation failed to gain traction. In others, state regulators decided against action or have taken years to write and release rules.

Heat causes more deaths in the United States each year than any other extreme weather. And in Texas, at least 42 workers died of heat exposure between 2011 and 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, though labor advocates say the number is much higher because other causes are cited in many deaths.

A 2021 investigation by NPR and Columbia Journalism Investigations found nearly 400 workers had died of environmental heat exposure in the previous decade, with Hispanic workers — who make up much of the nation’s farm and construction workforce — disproportionately affected.

Climate change has brought more days of extreme heat each year on average, and scientists say that number will grow. Yet only three states — California, Oregon and Washington — require heat breaks for outdoor workers. Minnesota has a rule that sets standards for indoor workers, and Colorado’s heat regulations cover only farmworkers.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, June 30, 2023

1400 workers in Erie, PA have been out on strike since June, demanding that their employer, Wabtec, start producing green locomotives. In a statement of solidarity, the Labor Network for Sustainability said:

The unions were denied their basic rights to strike over grievances, and most importantly, over the company’s refusal to move forward with worker-supported, environmentally necessary green locomotive production.

 This strike may well represent the first instance ever of unionized workers striking to force their employers to make products to protect the climate. That’s historic. 

 The Labor Network for Sustainability supports the United Electrical Workers in their fight to manufacture more sustainable transportation. Their decision to strike represents their decision to prolong life on our planet by making lower emission locomotives to carry freight across this great country. Their decision also upholds the livelihood of many communities that these railroads run through that face negative effects from the current engines.

 The railroad industry is still behind with making the necessary steps in maximizing their efficiency with their right-of-way, including: electrifying the last-mile of their urban rail yards, sharing their tracks with electrified inter and intracity transit, and upgrading their locomotives to non-pollutant green locomotives, ones touted by the UE workers in Erie.

By Naveena Sadasivam - Grist, June 29, 2023

Ever since Democrat Janet Mills was elected governor of Maine in 2018, she has been a strong advocate for renewable energy in general and wind energy in particular. The state has tremendous potential for wind production, given the high wind velocities off its coast, and it has committed to procuring 100 percent of its energy from clean sources by 2050. Earlier this year, in an attempt to supercharge wind energy production in the state, Mills proposed legislation to speed up permitting for wind ports, sites where wind turbines could be built before being deployed offshore.

That bill got the votes needed to pass in the state legislature — only to be vetoed by Mills herself earlier this week. At issue are amendments to the bill made in the state senate, which require the undertaking to incorporate Project Labor Agreements, or PLAs, a type of collective bargaining agreement in the construction industry that streamlines work on projects and establishes standards for wages and working conditions — standards that are typically more robust than those that would prevail in their absence. 

In a letter vetoing the bill, the governor said the provision would have a “chilling effect” on companies that are non-unionized, raise construction costs for the wind port which would eventually be borne by Maine taxpayers, and lead to out-of-state workers being bussed to Maine. The idea is that the PLAs will lead to fewer firms pursuing contracts for work on the wind project — or firms will increase costs to meet the PLA requirements — leading to a higher overall price tag and less employment for local residents. (Only 10 percent of construction workers in Maine are in a union.)