just transition

By Nick French - Jacobin, September 26, 2023

Today President Joe Biden traveled to Detroit to join members of the United Auto Workers (UAW) on the picket line in their strike against the Big Three automakers. The move was Biden’s strongest signal of support yet, after a number of more equivocal statements about the ongoing contract dispute. He is the first sitting US president in history to walk a picket line.

Biden’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, declared that Biden went to Detroit because he is “deeply pro-worker.” One might doubt Buttigieg’s assessment, given that — despite Biden’s admirably pro-labor National Labor Relations Board — the president intervened to stop railworkers from striking over eminently reasonable demands less than a year ago and has so far been content to fund a transition to electric vehicles (EVs) with little regard for workers. (Buttigieg himself went on to qualify his statement: the president, he says, wants “the auto sector to succeed as well” and is “pushing the parties to get to a win-win deal that does right by workers.”)

In any case, to look at Biden’s decision as simply reflecting his personal commitments is to miss the bigger picture. Biden is looking toward reelection, Michigan is a crucial swing state, and the president and his team almost certainly feel a trip to the UAW picket line will be a boon to his electoral odds. And considering union favorability is at an all-time high and a majority of Americans support the UAW walkout, they’d be right to think so.

By Jane Slaughter, LaShawn English, et. al. - Labor Notes, September 26, 2023

By Jane Slaughter - Labor Notes, September 26, 2023

What can workers seeking to reinvigorate their unions learn from the new spirit in the United Auto Workers?

START WITH WHAT YOU'VE GOT

One lesson is that member power does not have to start from a supermajority; that’s unlikely. UAW members are on strike today, with inspiring levels of rank-and-file energy, because four years ago a small group of activists founded a new reform caucus. That caucus, Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), boldly took advantage of an unexpected opportunity, organized like crazy, and won elections. Its candidates are now leading the union.

If UAWD had not existed and organized hard, this current fight that has potential to change the stakes for the entire labor movement would not be happening. At the top, the UAW would still be a pretty bad business union, intent on negotiating a cheap contract (perhaps with a b.s. strike), and members would be in the dark.

When the Justice Department began investigating the UAW for corruption, a few longtime activists saw the opening. In 2019, they founded UAWD and began a campaign—which seemed quixotic at the time—to change the UAW’s constitution so that members could vote directly for top officers.

Since the union’s founding in the 1930s, convention delegates had chosen the officers. From the 1940s until this year conventions were tightly managed by the aptly named Administration Caucus, founded by Walter Reuther. The process for amending the constitution is byzantine, but in a short time UAWD was approaching its goal of getting the required 15 locals representing 79,000 members on board to call a special convention. Then Covid hit, canceling local union meetings and closing plants.

UAWD rebounded, though, and was soon making its views known to the Justice Department: the way to clear out corruption was to let the members vote. This was the same tack taken by Teamsters for a Democratic Union in the 1980s, when their union was under investigation. TDU rejected the idea of a federal takeover, as many in government had advocated, and said instead: “Let the members decide.” The feds authorized a rank-and-file vote, Ron Carey was elected president with TDU’s support, and he went on to lead a stunningly popular and successful strike in 1997.

By Ronnie Smith, Union Jake, and Adam Keller - Valley Labor Report, September 26, 2023

By Megan Gordon - Pembina Institute, September 25, 2023

The effects of climate change are becoming increasingly clear, and countries are beginning to react. To mitigate further climate change while maintaining economic stability, the demand for lower-carbon energy is growing — and workers in high-emitting sectors must be supported through this transition to a clean energy economy. Governments need to help the regions most impacted by the transition prepare for what is already underway and take proactive steps to avoid stranded assets and stranded workers. Other countries including Germany, Spain, Scotland, New Zealand, the United States and Denmark have already modelled components of successful governance to support the transition to sustainable jobs.

In 2023, Canada produced its first federal Interim Sustainable Jobs Plan. This was followed by the tabling of the Sustainable Jobs Act in June 2023 which outlines an approach to creating a prosperous net-zero future for all Canadians. This act represents the beginning of a framework to ensure that workers and communities are at the table, not on the menu. A variety of labour and environmental organizations have endorsed this act as a promising step to centre workers in the conversation; they maintain, however, that amendments must be made to ensure the implementation lives up to its potential. As echoed in the aftermath of less successful transitions, workers want to see a practical plan so that they can make informed decisions about their future. Workers need to see policies that speak to their concerns, and more than ever they must hear about effective solutions from trusted messengers. Workers need to be on-board for transition to be successful.

An energy transition will indisputably result in socioeconomic changes in Canada. In fact, it already has — workers with skills that are transferable to low-carbon industries are increasingly sought after to support these emerging pathways. Climate regulations and policy decisions represent only one driver of change. In a globalized, rapidly warming, and technologically advancing world, many trends affect jobs and the economy. In addition to climate change, this includes demographic change, human migration, and technological innovation. Proactive and responsive governments can put in place the foundations for stability through transitions that empower worker and community resiliency and ensure those socioeconomic changes are positive. These foundations include key enabling factors and mechanisms for collaboration, accountability, and implementation.

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By Teddy Ostrow and Barry Eidlin - Jacobin, September 25, 2023

On Friday, September 22, United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain announced that the union would be expanding its “stand-up strike” against the Big Three automakers to thirty-eight parts distribution centers owned by General Motors (GM) or Stellantis. The five thousand workers at those sites are joining the thirteen thousand autoworkers at three assembly plants who walked out when the strike began on September 15.

The UAW’s strategy — striking all of the Big Three at once, but escalating gradually by beginning at a few worksites and calling out more over time to ramp up pressure — is unprecedented in the union’s history. The strike represents a dramatic departure from the union’s recent history in other ways as well, with leadership actively working to involve members in the contract campaign, and President Fain declaring that the union is fighting “for the good of the entire working class.” The leadership’s new approach is due in large part to the election of Fain and other officers associated with Unite All Workers for Democracy (UAWD), a union reform caucus that earlier this year swept out the corrupt old guard that had dominated UAW for over seventy years. 

Jacobin contributor Teddy Ostrow recently sat down with Barry Eidlin, associate professor of sociology at McGill University, to talk about the stand-up strike’s precedents in the 1936–37 sit-downs, the long history of efforts to reform the UAW, and the current strike’s implications for the broader labor movement in the United States and Canada.

By Talia Baroncelli and Frank Hammer - The Analysis News, September 25, 2023

By Isabela Escalona - In These Times, September 25, 2023

On the morning of Friday, September 22, workers at General Motors’ Hudson Parts Distribution Center calmly put away their equipment, gathered their personal belongings and stepped off the job. They’d been selected as a part of the United Auto Workers’ second wave of stand-up strikes against the ​“Big Three” automakers (Ford, GM and Stellantis). 

A line of cars formed exiting the parking lot, filled with workers wearing red UAW shirts. Truck drivers along the industrial road sounded their horns in solidarity. 

The Hudson, Wis., facility, located just over 20 miles from Minnesota’s Twin Cities, last went on strike for 44 days in 2019 as a part of a national UAW strike against GM. Kenny Carrier, a GM worker for 27 years and a rank-and-file leader in his UAW Local 722, reflects that there were many demands that were not won in the 2019 strike, but the new national leadership of the UAW makes him more optimistic this time around. 

Several workers say that while they hope this strike won’t go as long as the 2019 strike, they’re willing to strike for however long it takes. Workers are already contributing to a shed of firewood on the picket line in case the strike continues through the colder months. 

By Maia McDonald - In These Times, September 25, 2023

BOLINGBROOK, ILL. — Mary Greene, a second-generation General Motors worker who’s been at GM’s Chicago Parts Distribution Center since 2013, jumps up to cheer and dance with her ​“UAW — On Strike” sign as cars and freight trucks drive by. Greene tries to say, ​“Thank you!” or lift her hand in acknowledgment to every passing supporter who raises  fist or honks in solidarity.

This Sunday, on a winding stretch of Remington Blvd. opposite  quiet pond surrounded by factories and warehouses, a handful of members of United Auto Workers Local 2114 picketed. Workers at the Bolingbrook warehouse have been on strike since Friday after being among the more than 5,000 United Auto Workers members at 38 parts distribution centers tapped by UAW President Shawn Fain to walk off the job in the union’s fight for a new contract with better pay, increased retiree benefits and other demands.

The UAW’s ​“stand-up strike” strategy involves union leaders selecting small numbers of local unions to strike at a time, as opposed to calling for a nationwide strike as they work toward a new contract with ​“The Big Three” auto manufacturers — Ford, General Motors and Stellantis.

Greene,  parts technician who also walked out alongside her coworkers in 2019 during the nationwide General Motors strike, when 46,000 GM autoworkers struck for over a month, says that this time around, she’s hoping for a better, quicker outcome.

By Jane Slaughter - Labor Notes, September 25, 2023

The Auto Workers announced encouraging progress in their negotiations with Ford and General Motors September 22, including an end to one of the many concessionary tiers in the union’s contract.

In 2015 workers at Chrysler (now Stellantis) voted down a tentative agreement 2 to 1 because it continued an onerous two-tier wage system—and even introduced new tiers. UAW President Dennis Williams (later jailed for corruption) was pissed. At a meeting of local officials called to present that deal, Williams spluttered, “Ending two-tier is bullshit.”

The UAW still has other tiers to address, but it looks like Williams was wrong. Both Ford and GM have agreed to put workers at certain parts plants back on the same wage scale as assembly plant workers.

The UAW rewarded Ford for the bargaining progress by extending its strike at GM and Stellantis but not at Ford. It’s the first time in recent history the union has played the three rivals against each other with its strike strategy; in the past it bargained at one company, usually without a strike or with just a brief one, and then extended that “pattern” to the other two.