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We don't have to choose between jobs and climate action

Submitted by x344543 on Sat, 06/27/2015 - 18:21

By John Cartwright - Rabble.Ca, June 24, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Years ago, someone in the global disarmament movement came up with a humorous way to draw attention to a desperately serious topic. The slogan a single atomic bomb can ruin your entire day soon appeared on buttons everywhere, and it came to symbolise the absurdity of the military strategy of mutually assured destruction.

Decades later, another kind of assured destruction looms as climate change dramatically change weather patterns across the world. When Hurricane Sandy swept into the American eastern seaboard, many New Yorkers experienced aspects of devastation that hit like the aforementioned nuclear bomb. Suddenly, climate change was no longer an abstract conversation. People's lives had been affected in a way they never imagined. In New York City, there was a new immediacy to the issue of global warming.

And so, last September, I found myself surrounded by thousands of New York trade unionists as the People's Climate March surged through Manhattan. In the labour rally at the start of the march, the leader of a New York nurses' union described the scene in her hospital emergency room as the victims of Sandy poured in, while her members elsewhere were evacuating patients from hospitals that had lost electricity.

Transit workers saw the subway tunnels flooded for days, janitors were impacted as scores of office buildings shut down, and IBEW electricians worked overtime to repair damaged power lines and transformers. SEIU Local 1199 members were out in force carrying signs that proclaimed "climate change is a health issue." Teachers and Teamsters and City employees shared the street with a message of common concern. It was breathtaking.

Tags: 
green unionism
labor and environment
People's Climate March
green syndicalism
climate change
climate justice

Postcards to Wales

Submitted by x344543 on Sat, 06/27/2015 - 17:55

By Striking Heart - Striking Heart, February 3, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The ways we know each other and ourselves are transformed through collective struggles. Sometimes we manage to exceed and push beyond what is anticipated. The bonds formed between Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners and mining communities in South Wales are one such example. Matthew Warchus’s film Pride got us thinking about what notion of ‘pride’ might be required to combat climate change through a struggle around the conditions of contemporary work. We see that labour struggles of the 20th century were accompanied by a discourse of pride in being a worker – for some, in being a miner. We ask, how might our collective nostalgia for labour movements remembered in terms of the pride to be labour be unsettled by the catastrophic threat posed by our enduring reliance on coal mining?

Juxtaposing reflections on our families’ histories in the Taff Bargoed and Cynon valleys with the contemporary political and economic situation in Australia, we ask whether there is another path for communities that rely on wages/welfare today. What possibilities are arising for our generation, a generation that must challenge catastrophic environmental destruction? Is it possible that we might not need to sacrifice our well-being, our environment and the futures of others to satisfy our immediate material needs and desires?

We propose that we can be proud of mining communities’ battles to defend their livelihoods by clarifying these as struggles for dignity, sustainability and for community control over community interests. These characteristics will be essential in ongoing efforts to put an end to mining. To this we would add that a major battleground for our time is the struggle to collectively work less!

Mining Memories

As two Welsh-Australian women who were children in the 1980s and for whom Sydney is mostly home, there isn’t much we can contribute to a personalised analysis of the battles against pit closures. There are, however, some links to be drawn between the experiences of our ancestors and the conditions we face in contemporary Australia.

We know that in Wales the pits sustained life by providing relatively well-paid jobs, and sites around which strong communities were built and where our families flourished. But they also took life, sometimes quickly and brutally, sometimes by slowly chipping away. Emphysema and other lung conditions affected our grandparents’ and parents’ generation. Many people would not live beyond their fifties due to over-work and poor health and safety conditions. Injuries were commonplace in the hazardous underground mines and for children playing in the towns around the coalfields. Claire’s Dad remembers,

‘There wasn’t much in the way of health and safety! If we were going up the mountain, we used to hitch a ride on the coal trams. There was a rope that winched them up and we’d jump on that. I don’t know how many of us got hurt doing it. We also used to play on the bridge over the train tracks. The game was to be on top of the bridge as the coal train passed, shooting smoke up as it went. We came back covered in soot, black from head to foot.’

Despite some of the horrors and misery of the daily grind, we feel a longing for the courage of those communities that fought against the pit closures. We understand that a way of life was at stake during the struggles in the 1980s. Much of what has been lost in the last few decades relates to the breaking down of that culture, as well as the very real consequences of inter-generational under-employment and poverty. This acknowledged, one of the starkest examples of the contradictions inherent in the fight to keep the pits open is found in many people’s hopes that their children would not have to work in them. ‘No one wanted their children to go down the mines but there weren’t many other options in the Valleys. It was down the pits or to the army,’ says Claire’s Dad. The less common narrative of the struggle to against pit closures is the struggle for better lives, lives extricable from work.

Tags: 
green unionism
mining
mine workers
just transition
labor and environment
green syndicalism
Wales

Green Capitalism: the God That Failed

Submitted by x332349 on Mon, 06/01/2015 - 00:00

By Richard Smith - World Economics Association - 2015

This book is a collection of five essays that deal with the prime threat to human life on Earth: the tendency of global capitalist economic development to develop us to death, to drive us off the cliff to ecological collapse. It begins with a review of the origins of this economic dynamic in the transition to capitalism in England and Europe and with an analysis of the ecological implications of capitalist economics as revealed in the work of its founding theorist – Adam Smith. I argue that, once installed, the requirements of reproduction under capitalism – the pressure of competition, the imperative need to innovate and develop the forces of production to beat the competition, the need to constantly grow production and expand the market and so on, induced an expansive logic that has driven economic development and overdevelopment, down to the present day.

In successive essays I explicate and criticize the two leading mainstream approaches to dealing with the ecological consequences of this over-developmental dynamic – décroisance or “degrowth”, and “green capitalism”. I show that the theorists and proponents of no-growth or de-growth – like Herman Daly or Tim Jackson – are correct in arguing that infinite economic growth is not possible on a finite planet, but that they’re wrong to imagine that capitalism can be refashioned as a kind of “steady state” economy, let alone actually “degrow” without precipitating economic collapse. There are further problems with this model, which I also investigate. I show that the theorists and proponents of “green capitalism” such as Paul Hawkin, Lester Brown and Frances Cairncross are wrong to think that tech miracles, “dematerialization”, new efficiencies, recycling and the like, will permit us to grow the global economy – more or less forever – without consuming and polluting ourselves to death. I show that while we’re all better off with organic groceries, energy-efficient light bulbs and so on, such developments do not fundamentally reverse the eco-suicidal tendencies of capitalist development, because in any capitalist economy the environment has to be subordinated to maximizing growth and sales, or companies can’t survive in the marketplace. Yet infinite growth, even green growth, is impossible on a finite planet.

In the final essays I argue that since capitalism can only drive us to ecological collapse, we have no choice but to try to cashier this system and replace it with an entirely different economy and mode of life based on: minimizing not maximizing resource consumption; public ownership of most, though not necessarily all, of the economy; large-scale economic planning and international coordination; and a global “contraction and convergence” between the North and the South around a lower but hopefully satisfactory level of material consumption for all the world’s peoples. Whether we can pull off such a transition is another question. We may very well fail to overthrow capitalism and replace it with a viable alternative. That may be our fate. But around the world, in thousands of locations, people are organizing and fighting against corporate power, against land grabs, against extreme extraction, against the incessant commodification of our lives. Here and there, as in Greece and China, ruling classes are on the defensive. All these fights have a common demand: bottom-up democracy, popular power. In this lies our best hope. This little book is intended as more ammunition for that fight.

Read the report (Link).

Tags: 
Richard Smith
green capitalism
ecosocialism
System Change not Climate Change (SCnCC)
geoengineering
greenwashing
cap-and-trade
green unionism
labor and environment
climate change
socialism
capitalism
green economics
Karl Marx
Anthropocene
metabolic rift
publications
books

EcoUnionist News #29

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 02/06/2015 - 23:18

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 5, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

  • Register now for the Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment Conferences: Richmond, California (March 14, 2015) and Olympia, Washington (March 21, 2015) - railroadconference.org
  • The end of conductors? - Featuring Ron Kaminkow, MSNBC, January 29, 2015
  • Labor Landscape Analysis - By Joe Uehline, Labor Network for Sustainability, February 4, 2015

USW Refinery Workers Strike News:

Carbon Bubble:

Green Jobs and Just Transition:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
Ron Kaminkow
Railroad Workers United (RWU)
railroad workers
crude-by-rail
refineries
oil workers
Big Oil
Shell
Tesoro
Chevron
United Steelworkers of America (USW)
strikes
labor and environment
just transition
American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)
Koch Brothers
health and safety
nuclear power
exports

Tony Mazzocchi's Spirit Haunts Big Oil Again

Submitted by x344543 on Fri, 02/06/2015 - 20:17

By Steve Early - CounterPunch and Beyon Chron, February 4, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

Twelve years ago, America’s leading advocate of occupational health and environmental safety succumbed to pancreatic cancer.

In the U.S., where the influence of organized labor has long been contracting, the death of a former trade union official is often little noted. Yet Tony Mazzocchi was no ordinary labor leader. His passing from the scene, at age 76, was widely recognized and correctly mourned as a great loss for the entire union movement.

As a top strategist for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW), Mazzocchi pioneered alliances between workers concerned about job safety and health hazards and communities exposed to industrial pollution generated by companies like Shell, Chevron, and Mobil.

In 1973, members of the OCAW (who are now part of the United Steel Workers) conducted a national contract campaign and four-month strike at Shell Oil over workplace safety rights and protections. As Mazzocchi’s biographer, Les Leopold notes, “the strike helped build a stronger anti-corporate movement” because OCAW members learned “that you can’t win these fights alone.” To win—or even just battle Big Oil to a draw—workers had to join forces with the very same environmental organizations long demonized by the industry as the enemy of labor and management alike.

Tags: 
green unionism
United Steelworkers of America (USW)
Shell
Tesoro
Chevron
Big Oil
oil workers
health and safety
strikes
Tony Mazzocchi
labor and environment
Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (OCAW)

Chevron and big ag are irrigating crops with oil wastewater: Oil company says the ‘recycled’ waste is perfectly safe. When have we heard that before?

Submitted by x344543 on Thu, 02/05/2015 - 17:22

By Marc Norton - 48 Hills Online, February 3, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

In this ad, Chevron brags about sending oil wastewater to farmersThe San Francisco Chronicle ran a major investigative story on Sunday outlining how nasty waste from the oil industry winds up in Central Valley aquifers.

The story by David R. Baker detailed how state regulators have allowed oil companies in California, particularly in Kern County, to pump wastewater containing “a blend of briny water, hydrocarbons and trace chemicals” into underground water supplies, potentially contaminating water that could be used for drinking and irrigation

But if people in the Bay Area think that this is an issue only for farmers and residents in the hinterlands where oil production takes place, they need to think again.

The toxic effects of the disposal of oil production wastewater may be as near to you as the supermarket or your corner grocery. Here’s why: It’s an open secret that the big corporate agriculture landlords in Kern County are irrigating their crops with wastewater from oil production supplied to them by Chevron.

Do you eat potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, onions or bell peppers?  Do you like almonds or pistachios?  How about oranges, grapes or pomegranates?  Put a little honey in your tea?

Eat any wheat products?

These are all crops that are grown in Kern County, in the southern part of the San Joaquin Valley.

Do you eat beef?  Eggs?  Got milk?  These are also big Kern County agricultural products.

There is a lot of cotton grown in Kern County.  Do you wear any cotton clothes?

And they grow roses.  Makes a nice gift for your sweetie, don’t you think?

In total, Kern County produces over $3.5 billion worth of agricultural products every year, much of it irrigated by wastewater from Chevron’s oil well wells.

Chevron insists that that recycled water is safe, and in fact brags about how wastewater from oil development helps agriculture.

But farmers who live and work in the area aren’t so sure. And given the history of the oil and chemical industry’s environmental safety claims, there’s reason for at least concern.

Tags: 
fracking
labor and environment
green unionism
Central Valley
California
Chevron
agribusiness
health and safety

EcoUnionist News #28

Submitted by x344543 on Wed, 02/04/2015 - 19:32

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 5, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

  • Register now for the Future of Railroads: Safety, Workers, Community & the Environment Conferences: Richmond, California (March 14, 2015) and Olympia, Washington (March 22, 2015) - railroadconference.org

USW Refinery Workers Strike News:

Crude by Rail:

Carbon Bubble:

Green Jobs and Just Transition:

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
Eco Unionist News
green unionism
labor and environment
United Steelworkers of America (USW)
USW Local 5
Chevron
Shell
Tesoro
Valero
ExxonMobil
oil workers
health and safety
National Nurses United
carbon bubble
just transition
La Via Campesina
Naomi Klein
movement politics
crude-by-rail
Railroad Workers United (RWU)
railroad workers

EcoUnionist News #27 (Refinery Workers Strike Edition)

Submitted by x344543 on Mon, 02/02/2015 - 18:10

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, February 2, 2015

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s. The IWW is not affiliated with the United Steelworkers Union.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Announcement from the United Steel Workers:

(As of Midnight, January 31, 2015) the oil industry rejected the union’s last national proposal. Based on the lack of progress and respect at the table, I regret to report that strike action has been initiated at nine locations nationally beginning at midnight tonight.

One of the locations selected for strike is the Tesoro Golden Eagle Refinery (Martinez, California). A few minutes (later) the union offered Tesoro a safe and orderly shutdown, which the company has accepted. The bargaining committee will be communicating the details of the shutdown to the bargaining unit as they become available.

In the mean time, everyone should report to work as scheduled until notified by your bargaining committee otherwise. We know this is a stressful time for all our members. Please continue to stay focused and perform your duties as safely as possible.

All other locations have been offered a 24 hour rolling extension.

We can expect more locations to be targeted very soon if we don’t see substantial progress in the very near future. Everyone should clear out their personal belongings in preparation for a strike at all locations.

For bargaining updates call 888-429-4217

Jim Payne, Secretary-Treasurer, USW Local 5

Strike News:

Appeal for Solidarity from a Rank and File Member:

If you have time we would like to start calling and emailing people of the community as well as emailing Kory Judd Chevron Richmond refinery Manager to let them know how you feel about the current actions of Chevron. Here is a list of people to call or email at the bottom. Please be professional when voicing your opinions. Let Kory Judd know how you feel about his lies about safety of the community Chevron will lose the trust of the community again if they run with replacement workers.

Chevron will be running with replacement workers that are fraudulently qualified and do not know the plants or the emergency procedures used to keep the plants from blowing up.

Tesoro has accepted an offer from USW workers to shut down their refinery safely during the strike. Why is Chevron not doing the right thing again? They are not putting safety first, they are putting PROFITS first again.

If USW workers go on strike the community will be at risk with the replacement workers. The Chevron fire department will lose their coverage because chevron relies on volunteer firefighters who are USW workers. They cannot put a fire out without them and will be risking the community again by not having adequate coverage. They will be putting the lives of the community at risk and when a fire breaks out and are expecting Richmond Fire and surrounding agencies to respond to put it out.

All this in the name of profits and unfair bargaining practices!

TELL THEM YOU WANT ANSWERS!!!!

Thank you

Robert watts (a concerned rank & file USW member)

  • Kory Judd Chevron Richmond Refinery Manger - KDJU@chevron.com
  • Mayor Tom Butt - 510-412-6503
  • City of Richmond Fire department - 510-307-0848
  • Public Information Officer/Media Relations, Richomnd Police, Sergeant N. Abetkov - desk line: 510-620-6851 media line - 510-621-1751 or Andrea Baily of Community Engagement - 510-242-5405

Other News of Interest:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

Tags: 
green unionism
Eco Unionist News
United Steelworkers of America (USW)
Chevron
Shell
Tesoro
refineries
oil workers
health and safety
labor and environment
Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS)

Labor Network for Sustainability Calls for Support for Oil Strikers

Submitted by x332349 on Mon, 02/02/2015 - 15:53

By Joe Uehline - Labor Network for Sustainability, February 2, 2015

Labor Network for Sustainability Calls for Support for Oil Strikers The Labor Network for Sustainability today called for environmentalists and other allies of organized labor to support oil refinery workers who went on strike this week.

Joe Uehlein, Executive Director of LNS, said, “Oil refinery workers are in the front line of protecting our communities against the environmental hazards of the oil industry. Their skill and experience is critical for preventing devastating explosions, spills, and releases. The oil companies ar

e creating conditions that make it impossible for refinery workers to protect us. Their strike is about making conditions that are safe and healthy for workers and communities. They deserve the support of environmentalists and everyone concerned about the rights and wellbeing of working people.”

Oil producers have slashed spending because of the falling price of oil. The result has been devastating for workers on the job. According to Steelworkers International Vice-President Gary Beevers, head of the Steelworkers National Oil Bargaining Program, “This work stoppage is about onerous overtime; unsafe staffing levels; dangerous conditions the industry continues to ignore; the daily occurrences of fires, emissions, leaks and explosions that threaten local communities without the industry doing much about it; the industry’s refusal to make opportunities for workers in the trade crafts; the flagrant contracting out that impacts health and safety on the job; and the erosion of our workplace, where qualified and experienced union workers are replaced by contractors when they leave or retire,” Beevers added.

That does not mean that oil companies lack the money to provide safe and decent working conditions. Refiners’ shares on the Standard & Poor’s 500 have more than doubled since the beginning of 2012. According to LNS Executive Director Uehlein, “It is critical that environmentalists support the rights and needs of working people, just as it is essential that workers support the need for a clean, healthy environment. As we work to protect the earth from climate change, it is particularly important that we advocate for the needs of workers in fossil fuel industries whose wellbeing must not be sacrificed to the necessity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

The Labor Network for Sustainability (www.labor4sustainability.org) is dedicated to engaging trade unionists, workers, and their allies to support economic, social, and environmental sustainability.

Contact: Joe Uehlein, Labor Network for Sustainability: joeuehlein@mac.com

A just transition for all: Can the past inform the future?

Submitted by x332349 on Thu, 01/01/2015 - 17:57

By various - International Labour Office, 2015

2015 is a decisive year for global agreements on Sustainable Development and climate change. The ILO calls for a just transition for all towards a greener and more socially sustainable economy. This Journal is focussing on drawing lessons from a few transition experiences in order to analyse how successfully (or not) these processes were managed in the past and how future transitions might be handled in a just manner. Challenges such as policy coherence, consultations and participation by all relevant stakeholders are addressed and lessons learned on these issues are highlighted in the Journal.

Read the report (Link).

Tags: 
International Labour Organisation (ILO)
green unionism
just transition
labor and environment
green jobs
jobs
climate change
COP21
International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC)
Paris Climate Agreement
Ruhr Valley
Germany
fisherfolk
Europe
Africa
France
South America
neoliberalism
globalization
publications
reports

Pages

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