green unionism

By staff - Global Justice Ecology Project, May 2, 2023

Note: In collaboration with several Brazil-based organizations including FASE, Global Justice Ecology Project is organizing an international meeting of the Campaign to STOP GE Trees in Espirito Santo, Brazil, where we will meet with members of Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement (MST) in communities that have taken over and occupied industrial tree plantations. Please check out this New York Times article for more on the history and mission of the MST.

The New York Times article by Jack Nicas first appeared April 30, 2023 in the New York Times and discusses the Landless Workers Movement in Brazil, a large – and polarizing – social movement in Latin America.

Below are excerpts from the article, which can be read in full on the New York Times website.

The movement, led by activists who call themselves militants, organizes hundreds of thousands of Brazil’s poor to take unused land from the rich, settle it and farm it, often as large collectives. They are reversing, they say, the deep inequality fed by Brazil’s historically uneven distribution of land.

Group organizers and outside researchers estimate that 460,000 families now live in encampments and settlements started by the movement, suggesting an informal membership approaching nearly two million people, or almost 1 percent of Brazil’s population. It is, by some measures, Latin America’s largest social movement.

Despite the landless movement’s aggressive tactics, the Brazilian courts and government have recognized thousands of settlements as legal under laws that say farmland must be productive.

The proliferation of legal settlements has turned the movement into a major food producer, selling hundreds of thousands of tons of milk, beans, coffee and other commodities each year, much of it organic after the movement pushed members to ditch pesticides and fertilizers years ago. The movement is now Latin America’s largest supplier of organic rice, according to a large rice producers’ union.

By staff - Blue Green Alliance, May 1, 2023

On November 15, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL)—also known as the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. The law includes $550 billion in new federal funding to repair and help rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. The following year, on August 16, 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. These two laws hold the transformational potential to reduce pollution, prevent the worst impacts of climate change, make our workers and communities safer and healthier, and create the good-paying, union jobs we need to give all workers in the United States the opportunity for a middle-class life.

Federal agencies are playing a crucial role in uplifting workers and communities as they develop programmatic requirements and incentives to implement BIL and Inflation Reduction Act investments. In parallel, the Biden administration laid out clear commitments to maximize the job quality, equity, and community benefits of these laws and other federal spending through executive orders and initiatives. The president and his administration are seeking to deliver on their commitment to working people by advancing high-road labor standards and securing worker rights and protections through policies such as Executive Order 14063 on Project Labor Agreements (PLAs).

By working to more consistently apply the Good Jobs Principles and associated metrics across Inflation Reduction Act and BIL-funded programs, agencies can help advance equity and rebuild the middle class. Federal agencies that have not already entered into MOUs with the DOL to support this effort should do so.

Download a copy of this publication here (link).

By Greg Cumpton, PhD and Christopher Agbo - Ray Marshall Center and Texas Climate Jobs Project, May 2023

A new report from the Texas Climate Jobs Project and the Ray Marshall Center at the University of Texas, Austin, suggests that efforts for preventing and plugging methane leaks from oil and gas operations could result in the creation of thousands of jobs throughout Texas.

Under the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA's) recent methane reduction rule and a new methane fee under the Inflation Reduction Act, the oil and gas industry is expected to be hard hit, potentially resulting in the loss of untold jobs in oil and gas producing regions, notably in the Permian Basin, where nearly 40% of all oil production in the U.S. and nearly 15% of its natural gas production occurs.

However, the report suggests that an estimated 19,000 to 35,000 jobs could be created in Texas alone to mitigate such leaks. Specifically, the report suggests a significant workforce would need to be created to measure and detect methane leaks, decommission orphaned wells, replace components that leak gas, install flare systems in storage tanks, plug abandoned wells and more.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By Bob Muehlenkamp - Third Act, May 1, 2023

On May Day we celebrate worker solidarity in the continuing struggle for fair wages, dignity, and social justice. As part of the climate justice movement, we in Third Act connect climate action with the struggle to create better jobs, change our obscene economic inequality, and fight for racial and gender justice. We know we can’t solve these crises separately or one at a time. We need intersectional solutions. So on this May Day we stand in solidarity with workers in our common struggles.

The history of May Day shows just how common these struggles are.

In the spring of 1886, workers went on strike at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company. On May 3rd, as the police protected strike-breakers, they shot and killed one striker and injured others. To protest this police brutality unions held a mass meeting the next day in Haymarket Square in Chicago. After the rally someone, never identified, threw a bomb. Police opened fire on the crowd, injuring 60; 7 police were killed. Three years later, in 1889, unions declared May 1st as May Day, to commemorate the strike and the Haymarket Affair.

Thirteen years later, in 1902, J. P. Morgan (yes, the founder of Chase Bank), in order to stop competition and create a monopoly, and to prevent workers from organizing unions, merged six farm machine companies into International Harvester. By the 1970s, IH was the fourth largest U. S. corporation.

Workers fought for another 39 years to organize a union at IH in 1941. They fought for the next 50 years to make their jobs secure and pay a living wage They went on strike for over 100 days in 1950, 63 days in 1958, 42 days in 1967, l15 days in 1973, 42 days days in 1976, 172 days in 1979, and, 101 years after police killed a striker at Mccormick, 163 days in 1987. That’s how workers and their unions built a middle class against J. P. Morgan’s monopoly. J. P. Morgan and International Harvester didn’t change. They couldn’t. Workers and their union forced them to pay a living wage.

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, April 26, 2023

By Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, May 1, 2023

By Olivia Rosane - Common Dreams, May 1, 2023

Marches from South Korea to Italy called for higher wages and targeted anti-worker policies.

Workers from Japan to France took to the street on Monday for the largest May Day demonstrations since Covid-19 restrictions pushed people inside three years ago.

Marchers expressed frustration with both their nations' policies—such as French President Emmanuel Macron's raising of the retirement age in March—and global issues like the rising cost of living and the climate crisis.

"The price of everything has increased except for our wages. Increase our minimum wages!" one activist speaking in Seoul told the crowd, as TheAssociated Pressreported. "Reduce our working hours!"

South Korea's protests were the largest in the nation since the pandemic, with organizers predicting 30,000 people each would attend the two biggest rallies planned for the nation's capital alone, Al Jazeerareported.

By Amanda Kiger - Global Justice Ecology Project, May 1, 2023

By Hazel Graham - Extinction Rebellion Trade Unions, April 30, 2023

By Allen Hicks - Electrical Trades Union, April 30, 2023