green unionism

By staff - Trades Union Congress, July 7, 2022

• Funding already allocated covers just 3% of retrofits needed by schools, as energy bills rise by 93%
• Unions hit back at government suggestions that existing funding for retrofits will be cut
• It is “irresponsible” not to use existing technology so that schools will have more money for education and lower emissions, says TUC

Making UK school buildings energy efficient and fit for the future is a win-win, according to a new report published today (Thursday) by the TUC.

The report looks at the current spending on schools through the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS), and estimates how much more investment is needed.

By D'Arcy Briggs - Spring, July 7, 2022

Low-wage workers have been hit hardest by the pandemic, they were the first to lose their jobs and most likely to get COVID. A new survey shows that workers in the most precarious jobs, who are disproportionately racialized, are directly dealing with the impacts of the worsening climate crisis. Spring Magazine spoke with Jen Kostuchuk of Worker Solidarity Network about the links between climate justice and workers’ rights.

Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the Worker Solidarity Network

I’m a settler from Treaty 1 territory, currently working on Lekwungen territory. My experience as a worker in the hospitality industry motivated me to engage with and advocate alongside workers in food service. I’m currently filling the Worker Solidarity Network’s (WSN) climate and labour project coordinator position. WSN is a community-centered organization that fights for worker justice. Through organizing, mutual aid, and legal advocacy, our goal is to support workers through labour injustices and build worker power. 

Given the dual pandemics of Covid-19 and climate change, how have workers been affected?

Between being overworked and understaffed, lay-offs, and termination, workers have been affected in ways that lead to deep vulnerability. But disproportionately, COVID-19 and climate change have hurt essential, low-wage workers in highly gendered and racialized sectors. Many workers in industries like hospitality, retail, and food service, bear the brunt of stolen wages, normalized discrimination, sexual harassment, and harsh working conditions like cooks standing in front of hot grills during heatwaves. 

At the height of the pandemic, I heard from folks whose employers told them to ignore COVID protocols if a customer “wanted it a certain way.” I also heard from food and beverage servers who were asked to remove their masks before customers entered a tip. So in some cases, it’s clear that workers were risking their own health and safety to avoid jeopardizing their income. 

The pandemic fostered an environment where we saw first hand that low-wage workers were deemed essential yet not treated that way. At the same time, we know that the pandemic provided an opportunity to build momentum to expose our most broken systems through mobilizing together for racial, gender, and environmental justice. 

By Federico Pacheco - La Via Campesina, July 6, 2022

European Coordination Via Campesina calls for solidarity with the workers of the company Sudaphi, part of the Premium Foods Solutions group, located in the province of Inezgane Ait Melloul in Souss Massa, Morocco. Sudaphi specializes in the processing and export of tomato-based products. It produces the Sud’n’Sol and Sunblush Tomatoes brands and sells its products to supermarkets and food processors in Europe.

In December 2021, Sudaphi unilaterally announced that it was subjecting all of its incumbent staff to a new written contract that threatens workers’ job security and their transfer to production sites far from their homes, without consulting the company’s employees or their elected representatives. Workers under the new Sudaphi contract have been protesting these changes outside the company’s gates since May 26.

A staff delegate affiliated with the National Federation of the Agricultural Sector (FNSA-UMT) was dismissed by Sudaphi on 27 May 2022. Two other delegates were sanctioned with 8-day layoffs and 3 members were forced to change positions. Sudaphi’s abusive practices represent a violation of the right to free association and collective bargaining. The delegate has organized a sit-in in front of Sudaphi’s offices in Inezgane Ait Melloul since his dismissal over a month ago. The FNSA demands respect for trade union rights and a serious and responsible dialogue with its regional authorities for a settlement of this collective dispute.

By Gabriela Calugay-Casuga - Rabble, July 4, 2022

The Canadian Union of Postal Workers (CUPW) claims that Canada Post is placing an undue burden on Rural and Suburban Mail Carriers (RSMCs) that is also harming the environment. As Canadians from coast to coast are feeling the pinch at the pumps, RSMCs are paying out of their own pockets to do their delivery routes. RSMC vehicles are left out of Canada Post’s plan to move their fleet to electric, which means that there is no end in sight. 

As the thousands of RSMCs continue to shoulder the burden of gas, they struggle to serve the more than 8,000 routes they cover. In 2021, over six million Canadian residents, or 17.8 per cent of the population, lived in rural areas, according to Statistics Canada. Including relief employees, there are more than 11,000 RSMCs who cover 8,129 routes, according to CUPW National President Jan Simpson. 

Amidst rising gas prices, CUPW members launched a petition urging the government to act on the high gas prices. 

“The members who initiated the petition tell us that the additional cost for gas cuts into their earnings, and that some of them have to consider changing jobs because they can’t afford to keep delivering the mail,” Simpson said in an email to rabble.ca. “It’s an extra burden on top of the costs of maintenance and insurance to keep their own vehicles on the road for work.” 

According to a press release by CUPW, RSMCs are currently compensated for their mileage up to the CRA cap for non-taxable automobile allowances for 2022, which is 61 cents per kilometer up to 5000 kilometers. The release says that this cap was set in December 2021, which means it is based on 2021 inflation figures. 

The tax-exempt per-kilometer allowance limit is reviewed annually against inflation to ensure that it continues to roughly reflect the average costs involved in business driving. Any changes to cost components that arise during a year will typically be reflected in the limit that applies in the following year.

Simpson said that RSMCs collectively drive more than four million kilometers daily. She calculated that at an average consumption of 13 liters per 100km, that would be more than 62,000 liters of fuel used daily.

“This burden does not belong on the individual worker,” Simpson said. 

The large amount of fuel used by RSMCs falls under Canada Post’s Scope 3 emissions, which means they are not considered direct emissions caused by Canada Post. Scope 3 is supposed to be for emissions by contractors and suppliers that Canada Post does not have control over. Simpson said, Canada Post makes the routes, and tracks the distances for compensation. 

CUPW said in their press release that RSMC emissions should be included in Scope 1 which encompasses emissions that Canada Post is directly responsible for. 

Due to the classification of RSMC vehicle emissions, the more than 11,000 RSMCs are left out of Canada Post’s plan to move to electric vehicles. This means Canada Post RSMCs will continue to use tens of thousands of liters of fuel daily. This not only maintains the cost burden on workers, it also means that Canada Post will not truly have net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. 

Simpson said that the burden of responsibility should shift from the worker to the corporation. 

“If Canada Post Corporation were responsible for equipping RSMCs with vehicles and fuel, then the workers wouldn’t have to worry about the cost of the gas they need to do their job,” Simpson said. “It would also bring the RSMCs’ emissions into CPC’s scope 1 emissions, which would increase their incentive to electrify more of the delivery fleet. Or there may be other solutions we could find to make Canada Post responsible for rising fuel costs, which would also increase their incentive to improve fuel economy and emissions.”

By Morgan Ody, Andoni García Arriola, and Antonio Onorati - La Via Campesina, July 4, 2022

The European Commission concluded negotiations on a free trade deal with New Zealand on Thursday 30th of June. The European Commission is talking about a deal that “contains unprecedented sustainability provisions and that takes into account the interests of EU producers of sensitive agricultural products”.

But for the European Coordination of Via Campesina (ECVC), the voice of peasant’s farmers in Europe, this deal is still based on the obsolete trade paradigm, in which agricultural products are used in exchange with other commodities, disregarding the climate crisis and the income crisis European farmers are facing. With this additional free trade agreement the Commission loses all credibility in its proposals for the European Green Deal and the F2F by continuing to prioritize the agro-export business and the elites that benefit from it over the necessary changes that farmers, citizens and the planet need.

It is well known that New Zealand has much lower production costs than Europe for some animal products, such as milk, sheep and beef meat, which tend to depress world market prices. Opening new markets with New Zealand will impact even more the agricultural price crisis and farmers’ income crisis in Europe. Furthermore, New Zealand does not apply environmental, animal welfare and climate standards in the same way as European farmers do.

“How can such an agreement that includes sensitive agricultural products which can be sustainably and agroecologically produced in our territories be compatible with the Paris Agreement? Today, such kinds of agreements do not make any sense anymore” says Andoni García Arriola member of the coordinating committee of ECVC. “Agricultural trade should be considered as a sensitive sector and dealt separately from other trade commodities. The priority should be the construction of market regulation mechanisms that allow farmers everywhere in the world to get a fair income for producing for local sustainable food systems.”

“In the context of the current international food crisis and in order to reach the Farm to Fork objectives the EU should instead be engaging at an international level to promote a new Global Multilateral Framework for Executing International Trade, based on Peoples’ Food Sovereignty principles and per the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP)”, says Morgan Ody, General coordinator of the peasant international movement La Via Campesina. For more information on La Via Campesina’s position, you can read this statement following the WTO negotiations here.

By Matthew Hull - Bright Green, July 3, 2022

A quiet revolution is underway. Across two weeks and through three days of industrial action by the RMT trade union, the British public may have rediscovered what it feels like to take the side of organised workers against a recalcitrant UK government.

Amid soaring bills and prices, and with the Tory government steadfastly refusing to put people’s lives before profits, it is easy to understand why sympathy for striking workers is growing.

Of course it would be easy to overstate this case. Trade unionism never left these shores, and the power of militant unions like the RMT has been built up over years of hard organising work.

Equally, it would be presumptuous in the extreme to argue that one still-ongoing dispute could undo decades of neoliberal policies designed to mute and muzzle trade unions.

Nevertheless, something is taking hold. Polls revealed that striking railway workers have the undisputed support of a majority of people in the UK, should they opt for further industrial action. What’s more, that support has grown with every media performance by the RMT’s general secretary Mick Lynch, whose directness and refusal to pander to the nonsense so typical of broadcast media has proved a winning combination.

This progress is precious, and it is our responsibility as trade unionists and the broader Left to preserve and expand it.

For Greens and environmentalists, the response to the RMT strikes so far has an additional, special resonance.

In June, hundreds of environmental justice campaigners joined RMT members on picket lines, raised money for their national dispute fund, and made their public support for the strikes impossible to ignore. This included many Greens across England and Wales, led by the party’s Trade Union Group. The Greens were the only UK parliamentary party to be unambiguously supportive of the RMT’s actions.

Defending and expanding national and municipal railway networks is centrally important to winning a just transition to a zero-carbon economy. Without massively increasing our capacity to move around using collective and sustainable modes of transport, the work of the environmental justice movement is over before it has begun.

In this process, protecting jobs and improving the pay, conditions and security of workers on our railways is key. There can be no just and fair transition to a zero-carbon world without worker empowerment.

Environmental justice campaigners and Greens should take this insight and apply it to workers’ struggles across all
sectors.

By Jeremy Brecher - Labor Network for Sustainability, July 2022

People are acting at the local and state level to create jobs, reduce greenhouse gas pollution, and equalize transportation by expanding and electrifying public transit, electrifying cars and trucks, and making it safe to walk and bike. It’s a crucial part of building the Green New Deal from Below.

More than a quarter of greenhouse gases [GHGs) emitted in the US come from transportation – more than from electricity or any other source.[1] Pollution from vehicles causes a significant excess in disease and death in poor communities. Lack of transportation helps keep people in poor communities poor.

Proposals for a Green New Deal include many ways to reduce the climate, health, and inequality effects of a GHG-intensive transportation system. “Transit Oriented Development” (TOD), “smart growth,” and other forms of metropolitan planning reduce climate-and-health threatening emissions while providing more equal access to transportation. Switching from private vehicles to public transit reduces GHG emissions by more than half and substantially reduces the pollution that causes asthma and other devastating health effects in poor communities. Changing from fossil fuel to electric vehicles also greatly reduces emissions. Expanded public transit fights poverty and inequality by providing improved access to good jobs. And expansion of transit itself almost always creates a substantial number of good, often union jobs. Every $1 billion invested in public transit creates more than 50,000 jobs.[2]

Plans for a Green New Deal generally include substantial federal resources to help transform our transportation system.[3] The 2021 “bipartisan” Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided $20 billion over the next five years for transit projects. But meanwhile, efforts at the community, local, and state level have already started creating jobs reducing transportation pollution – models of what we have called a Green New Deal from Below.[4]

These Green New Deal from Below programs are often characterized by multiple objectives – for example, protecting the global climate, improving local health, providing jobs, and countering inequality. And they often pursue concrete ways to realize multiple goals, such as “transit-oriented development” that builds housing near transit to simultaneously shift travel from cars to public transit and to expand access to jobs and urban amenities for people in low-income communities.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, July 2022

The Rhode Island legislature has just required that 100 percent of electricity sold in the state comes from renewable sources such as wind and solar by 2033. That’s sooner than any other state in the country.

According to the Boston Globe, “Labor and environmental groups have joined together in the Climate Jobs Rhode Island coalition” which is advocating for a “just transition to a pro-worker and pro-climate green economy” in Rhode Island.

Patrick Crowley, secretary-treasurer of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO and Co-Chair of Climate Jobs Rhode Island said,

 We’re hoping that by demonstrating that the labor movement and the environmental movement can work together, that other states—my sister and brother labor organizations across the country—can look at this as an example for how to get things done in a big way.

“If we continue down this path, we will show the labor and environmental communities across the country that this is how it’s done,” Crowley said. “If you want to get it done, you do it the Rhode Island way.”

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, July 2022

Local initiatives around the country are advancing the goals of the Green New Deal and Build Back Better. A good example is the Bridgeport Carbon Free & Healthy Schools campaign. The campaign was launched May 14 at Bridgeport Public Schools’ Volunteer Day, where members of the building trades, teachers, parents, and students worked to make improvements to a Bridgeport school.

An opinion article in the Connecticut Post by Bridgeport superintendent of schools Michael Testani explained why these groups have joined to fight for Carbon Free and Healthy Schools:

The climate crisis and extreme weather events contribute directly to the well-being of our faculty, staff and students. We’ve seen the impact of the climate crisis on Bridgeport when floods from Tropical Storm Irene in 2011 and Hurricane Sandy in 2012 revealed the city’s vulnerabilities and damaged homes, businesses and public school buildings.

We can conduct energy audits and get students involved through an apprenticeship program so they can assist in the modernization of their own schools. We can expand our rooftop solar initiative, build solar carports, install fuel cells, address the battery shortage in some of our schools, upgrade the boiler systems, provide EV charging stations, and invest in small-scale wind demonstration projects.

Not only are these projects good for the environment, they are good for the city’s budget. Renewable energy and energy efficiency projects will save the city and the district money that can be reinvested in after-school and summer programs, in addition to the recruitment and hiring of highly qualified teachers.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, July 2022

On May 31, autoworkers and teachers rallied in Washington, DC to call on states, local governments, and school districts around the country to electrify the nation’s school bus fleet with union-built, climate-safe, pollution-free electric school buses.

AFT President Randi Weingarten called the rollout a “win-win-win” for children’s health, for the climate and for the economy. “We need to make sure these electric buses are made in America at unionized factories. We need to ensure that students and drivers are protected from environmental hazards. We need to address the climate crisis.”

UAW President Ray Curry said he wants to see electric buses not only in a handful of cities but in every school district in the country—for “a future that all of us can thrive in.” The workers who build these vehicles need a voice on the job, he said, so that each bus will be built to union standards.

The UAW represents workers at two of the largest bus manufacturers in the nation, Thomas Built in North Carolina and IC Bus in Oklahoma. As a result of the federal infrastructure bill, Thomas Built and IC Bus plan on significantly increasing their hiring to meet the demand for electric school buses. Thomas Built Buses, for example, will supply hundreds of electric school buses to Montgomery County, MD, which will provide the largest single deployment of electric school buses in North America.

You can rewatch the AFT-UAW press conference and rally here.