just transition

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 13, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 12, 2023

By Jake Johnson - Common Dreams, December 7, 2023

Workers at Volkswagen's only U.S. plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee announced Thursday that they're launching a public organizing committee with the goal of joining the United Auto Workers, which is aiming to expand its membership to include employees at more than a dozen nonunion car companies after winning historic contracts at the Big Three.

In less than a week, more than 1,000 workers at the Volkswagen plant signed union authorization cards, giving the nascent union drive more than 30% support so far at the Chattanooga location.

The UAW narrowly failed to organize the plant in 2014 and 2019. But leaders of the new unionization push expressed confidence that the outcome would be different this time around as the newly emboldened UAW puts special emphasis on the South, where the unionization rate is significantly lower than in the rest of the country.

"People are standing up like never before," said Steve Cochran, a lead organizer of the Chattanooga union drive. "There are a lot of young workers in the plant now and this generation wants respect. They're not okay with mistreatment by management. They see what's happening at Starbucks and Amazon. They know that standing up to join the union is how you win fair treatment, fair pay, and a better life."

Organizers pointed to the $184 billion in profits that Volkswagen Group has brought in over the past decade while workers' wages have stagnated or declined.

By Luis Feliz Leon - Labor Notes, December 7, 2023

Today workers at Volkswagen's Chattanooga, Tennessee, assembly plant announced their third bid to unionize plant-wide with the Auto Workers (UAW).

Riding the momentum of its strike of the Big 3 automakers, the UAW now wants to double its numbers in the auto industry by adding 150,000 workers at companies that have long avoided unionization. Thirteen non-union automakers are on notice: Honda, Toyota, Hyundai, Nissan, Subaru, Mazda, Mercedes, Volvo, BMW, Volkswagen, and electric vehicle producers Rivian, Tesla, and Lucid.

The union says it has been inundated with calls and online sign-ups by workers at these firms. The Volkswagen drive is the first to go public, after 1,000 workers signed union cards.

The UAW’s two previous attempts to organize the full Chattanooga plant fell short narrowly. In 2014, workers lost by 86 votes. In 2019, the union came even closer, losing by just 57 votes with 93 percent turnout. There were 1,700 workers at the plant then. Some 3,800 workers today build the Atlas and Cross Sport SUVs, as well as the electric ID.4.

In 2015 a smaller group of skilled trades workers won their election by a vote of 108 to 44, joining UAW Local 42, which had formed as a minority union following the 2014 loss. But the company refused to negotiate with the smaller unit, delaying in the courts. The UAW quietly jettisoned the effort, filing instead for the full unit in 2019.

After the 2019 defeat, workers kept the flame of organizing alive, meeting regularly and running a petition for the right to use their paid time off outside the company's annual weeklong maintenance shutdown.

By Union Jake, Isabella Escalona, Amy Stager, David Story, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 7, 2023

By Union Jake, David Story, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 5, 2023

By Union Jake and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 4, 2023

By Union Jake, David Story, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, December 4, 2023

By Alex Nieves - Politico, December 4, 2023

One of California’s most powerful unions is not loosening its grip on oil jobs.

Despite the Biden administration and California lawmakers pouring billions of dollars into new climate-friendly industries like electric vehicles, hydrogen and building electrification, a key player in state politics is still defending fossil fuel interests that provide thousands of well-paying jobs.

President Joe Biden’s investment in clean energy sectors through a pair of massive spending bills — which promise lucrative tax credits for projects that pay union wages — was supposed to speed up the labor transition away from oil and gas. That hasn’t happened in deep-blue California, home to the country’s most ambitious climate policies — and most influential labor unions.

“We believe we’re still going to be working in the oil and gas space for the foreseeable future,” said Chris Hannan, president of the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California, which represents nearly 500,000 members across dozens of local unions, from pipefitting to electrical work.

Unions’ longstanding — and well-founded — distrust of the renewable energy industry as a reliable source of labor-friendly jobs is slowing the “just transition” that Biden, Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democratic leaders around the country have pushed.

With federal officials trying to get clean energy funding out as fast as possible ahead of the 2024 election, and California politicians cracking down on the fossil fuel industry, unions’ reluctance to relinquish fossil fuel jobs undermines Democrats’ aggressive climate targets, according to a lawmaker who serves both a union- and oil-rich area of the state.

While the union embrace of fossil fuels is unique to California — one of the few blue states with significant oil production — the struggle highlights a larger question over how states can quickly build massive amounts of clean energy infrastructure without undercutting labor.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, December 2023

In October this year, California Labor for Climate Jobs (CLCJ) launched as a new, state-wide coalition of fourteen California labor unions with express intent to promote a worker-led transition to a just and climate-safe economy. As a coalition of unions, CLCJ is uniquely pro-worker and pro-climate, and represents teachers, oil workers, utility workers, domestic workers, healthcare workers, city, county and state employees, farmworkers, janitors, autoworkers and more. CLCJ unions include a broad array of workers who are experiencing the impact of climate change. 

“As a home childcare provider in Fairfield, I have worked through power outages, extreme heat, and hazardous smoke that endangered me and the kids I care for,” said Allison Davis, a member of United Domestic Workers. “We are calling for strong smoke and heat standards, disaster insurance and rights for workers in disaster zones so that these conditions don’t become the new normal for workers.”

Climate also impacts airport workers, for example, who clean airplane cabins between flights, toiling in tight spaces with no air conditioning, which increases their vulnerability to illness and death in extreme heat. And at the same time, oil workers face job loss as climate policies move to phase out the fossil fuel sector and shift to renewable energy. With 2023 as the hottest summer on record, the region’s first-ever National Weather Service tropical storm watch, and billions of dollars lost annually to floods and wildfires, more action is needed in Sacramento to reach the state’s climate goals and protect workers.

 This fall, CLCJ released the California Worker Climate Bill of Rights, calling on legislators to enact policy solutions that will protect workers from climate hazards such as extreme heat, fires, smoke and floods that have endangered the livelihood and health of a broad cross section of California workers. Members in the coalition have pledged to stand in solidarity with each other as they fight for a worker-led transition to be able to make a living on a healthy, living planet. 

LA Times Coverage by Sammy Roth: https://calaborforclimatejobs.org/boiling-point-can-climate-activists-and-labor-unions-find-common-ground/ 

For more on California Labor for Climate Jobs: https://calaborforclimatejobs.org/

For the California Worker Climate Bill of Rights: California Worker Climate Bill of Rights