This is the third in a series of pieces on Labor and Global Warming.
Given the stereotypes about blue collar workers’ attitudes about the environment, you might presume that the United Steelworkers would be one of the unions least likely to seriously address the problem of global warming. But in fact it pioneered a creative response that includes educating its members, creating a new strategic analysis, building a strategic alliance with environmentalists, developing public policy initiatives, and implementing a practical program of action. It could serve as a model for a broader labor response to global warming.
The 850,000 members of the United Steelworkers form the largest unionized sector in steel, aluminum, copper, pulp and paper, oil, chemical, glass, rubber and tire, and nearly all other North American manufacturing except auto assembly and aerospace. The overwhelming majority work for large multinational corporations that compete globally. A 2005 study of USW District 11 members found that 83 percent worked for companies that employed workers in similar occupations in multiple other countries. According to David Foster, former director of Steelworkers District 11,
An iron miner in Keewatin or Eveleth, MN today might work for US Steel of Pittsburgh, PA, or for Mittal Steel of Rotterdam and London or for Leiwu Steel of Shandong Province in China.
Steelworkers have a long history of environmental concern. In 1948, 20 residents were killed and 6,000 sickened around a zinc mill in Donora, Pennsylvania, 35 miles from Pittsburgh, leading the recently established USW to recognize the close connection between health and safety issues in the plant and environmental issues in the surrounding communities. In 1963 it supported the Clean Air Act and in 1969 held a national legislative conference on air pollution. In 1990 it created an executive board committee on environmental issues and issued a policy statement saying that global warming “may be the single greatest problem we face. Some have compared its possible consequences to the aftermath of nuclear war.” The union cooperated with the Sierra Club and some other environmental organizations to oppose the WTO and demand that trade agreements include enforceable labor and environmental standards – an alliance made famous by the 1999 Battle of Seattle.
Last year, the Steelworkers issued a new environmental statement called “Securing Our Children’s World.” It brought together several themes that will be crucial for any attempt to forge a wider labor response to global warming.
First, it recognizes the reality of global warming. Visible evidence? “The 2005 hurricane season with 27 named storms, including three Category 5 hurricanes, is the worst on record.”
It identifies the human causes of global warming:
Carbon dioxide results from the burning of fuels containing carbon, like petroleum, coal, natural gas or wood. One mile of driving a car, or one-half kilowatt-hour of coal-generated power, releases about a pound of carbon dioxide. Altogether 18 billion tons are released every year.
It recognizes that the US is the largest producer of greenhouse gases, contributing over 25% of the world’s emissions. “Most of the Earth’s population contributes three tons per person to this total; North Americans contribute twenty tons each.”
It recognizes the severity of the problem:
Over the last century, the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has risen by 25 percent. At the present rate, it could double in the next century, triggering massive changes in the global climate.
The Steelworker’s statement notes several dimensions of the union’s concern with global warming.
There is the impact of global warming itself. “We believe the greatest threat to our children’s future may lie in the destruction of that environment. For that reason alone, environment must be an issue for our union.” And of all those threats, “Global warming is the greatest environmental and economic challenge of our generation.”
But there are also economic issues that are of direct concern to unions. For example, there is the competitive disadvantage the countries will face if they don’t address global warming.
The future of manufacturing in the global economy will belong to those nations who solve the problem of the world’s growing shortage of fossil fuels through energy efficiency technology and building redesign, mass transportation systems, and new forms of renewable energy.
There is the opportunity for new jobs created by economic conversion:
Renewable energies like wind and solar power and mass transportation systems can create millions of new jobs. In Germany, for example, 40,000 people are employed directly in its wind energy industry, which consumes more steel there than any other industry, except for automobile manufacturing.
There is the question of good union jobs. “A strategic response to environmental challenges like global warming is key to our union’s long-term survival. The good jobs of the future will be based on principles of environmental sustainability.”
There is the question of how the costs and benefits of efforts to address global warming will be distributed. “The programs to deal with global warming can differ widely. Conservative programs will force these costs off on consumers and taxpayers, while protecting corporate interests. We have no choice but to fight around this vital union issue.”
There is the question of global economic justice.
A planet populated by 6.5 billion human beings, virtually all of whom share our own aspirations for a better life, cannot imagine a future of peace and growing prosperity without also imagining a global economy that lifts 2 billion people out of poverty in a sustainable fashion.
As David Foster explains, in the global economy “The USW has acquired the obligation to speak out for union members not only in North America, but across the world on fundamental issues of wealth, poverty, and the creation of sustainable economies across our ever-shrinking planet.”
Finally, there is the question of corporate power. “Our union faces powerful corporate interests that care more about the next quarter’s profit report while we care about saving our children’s world.”
"Securing Our Children’s Future" holds up as a model the global warming platform of the USW-supported New Democratic Party. It
promotes an alternative with a strong program to cut greenhouse gases by investing in new renewable energies, mass transportation systems and energy efficiency, thereby creating hundreds of thousands of new jobs in Canada. Workers who are adversely affected by the change in energy policy will be protected through well-funded “just transition” programs.
It advocates similar policies for the U.S. not only to combat global warming, but to provide a more secure economic future:
New environmental regulations, enacted through state and national legislation like increased CAFÉ standards (Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency) and RES (Renewable Energy Standards) that mandate increased use of wind, solar, biomass from waste wood and slash, and even landfill methane for generating electricity, and public bonding for mass transportation and clean energy development are critical for rebuilding North America’s manufacturing base. Continuing the Bush Administration policies of ever greater reliance on the shrinking pool of Middle Eastern oil guarantees that more and more manufacturing jobs will leave North America as industry tries to offset the rising costs of energy with the low costs of Third World labor.
It envisions massive, job-creating public investment linking environmental protection and good jobs. “Imagine a twenty-first century Clean Energy Authority whose mission is to bring renewable energy to our communities, much as the Tennessee Valley Authority and the Bonneville Power Administration brought electrification to millions of Americans during the 1930’s and 40’s with their hydroelectric projects.”
If American labor wants to chart a new path on global warming, it has a splendid model right in its own midst.
Our next post in the series Labor and Global Warming will look at the Blue-Green Alliance initiated last year by the Steelworkers and the Sierra Club to promote this vision.
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