Global Labor Strategies: Labor Assembly on the Climate Crisis

Global warming is becoming a huge issue – perhaps the greatest single threat facing humanity. It is forcing escalating reconsideration on every institution, from government to business, to religion. How has the labor movement in the U.S. and around the world responded, and what challenges does the issue of global warming present for it in the future? The North American Labor Assembly on Climate Crisis, sponsored by the Global Labor Institute of Cornell University May 7-8, provided a unique opportunity to find out.

The conference was attended by more than 200 trade unionists from North America and 50 more from the rest of the world, visiting New York for a UN conference on global warming. The presence of so many trade unionists from countries where the labor movement has been far more involved in addressing global warming was particularly significant for U.S. trade unionists.

While of course it is difficult to fairly summarize an entire conference, a number of themes echoed repeatedly. (Many of them are noted in the “Conference Statement” appended below.)

First, there was a widespread consensus that the “climate debate” is largely settled. Both scientific and public opinion accept that global warming is real, that it is largely caused by human activity, that the steps necessary to limit it are known and technologically attainable, and that taking those steps is essential to human well-being and even survival.

There was also a sense that this is a critical time for labor in relation to the issue of global warming. Working people are already being devastated by the effects of climate change – there were plenty of references to Katrina and the heat waves that have killed thousands in Europe. Further, the policies and practices necessary to reduce global warming and mitigate its effects will impact every worker, every job, every bargaining unit, every contract, and every set of work practices. Finally, the policy issues around dealing with global warming will affect working people in every their lives – from the price of gasoline to the insurability of their homes to the type of jobs available. If labor is not at the table when those policies are set, it will be unable to play its historic role as the defender of the interests of working people.

Perhaps more surprisingly, there was a strong sense that the issue of global warming provides opportunities for labor. The policies necessary to deal with global warming are likely to open a wide range of new jobs – from the manufacturing of wind turbines to the retrofitting of buildings to reduce energy consumption. The need of workers to affect the policies that will in turn affect them provides a basis for unions to appeal both to workers already in unions and to those they are trying to organize. And the issue of global warming provides an opportunity for labor to show that, working with its allies, it can be a force for progressive social change that is in the interest of all workers and indeed of society as a whole.

It was also acknowledged that responding to global warming can be a divisive issue for unions. While new jobs may be created for some workers, others are likely to be hard hit by new regulations and policies. Limitations on the use of coal, for example, are likely to hit miners particularly hard. For that reason, there was wide agreement that labor must insist that plans for addressing global warming include provisions for a “just transition” that does not put the cost of combating global warming on the backs of those workers who happen to be in the adversely affected occupations.

Global warming raises other justice issues as well. Trade unionists from outside the U.S., and some from the U.S. as well, emphasized the necessity that policies addressing global warming not be made at the expense of the poor in underdeveloped countries around the world. And representatives from the environmental justice movement pointed out how much of current pollution in the U.S. is concentrated in communities of color, and how essential it is that such communities be at the table when policies and plans for new energy systems are established.

A major focus of the conference was on the emerging “blue-green alliances.” The best known in the U.S. and Canada – the alliance between the Steelworkers union and the Sierra Club – was well represented at the conference, with many delegates from both organizations. But there were less familiar examples as well. A union representative from the Netherlands described how two union federations and four major environmental organizations there had joined together to draft what may well be the most progressive anti-global warming legislation in the world – now under consideration by the Dutch government.

Representatives from the West Coast Longshoremen and the Teamsters described a successful alliance of unions and environmentalists who are successfully combating severe pollution produced in the Port of Los Angeles. They forced steamships to burn less polluting fuels and to turn off their engines in port; pressure from the coalition of unions and environmental and community groups prompted shippers to offer to buy new, less polluting trucks for the mostly immigrant Latino owner-operator truck drivers in the port; and the environmental and community groups are sticking with the unions who rejected the short term solution of new trucks to pressure the companies to go further and restructure work relations in the port so that truck drivers can have regular jobs and the employers will be responsible for maintaining a low-pollution trucking fleet.

There was plenty of information presented about policies for addressing global warming. A keynote address by climate change specialist Dr. Robert Socolow of the Princeton University Carbon Mitigation Initiative, for example, laid out the main areas in which the release of carbon into the atmosphere could be reduced. He argued that the pluses and minuses of various policy choices, such as carbon caps, trades taxes, and subsidies, usually depend on the specifics. He estimated that in order to stabilize greenhouse gasses worldwide the U.S. would require a 60-80 percent reduction. He stressed that the world’s two billion poor people could meet their basic energy needs without significantly increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The broad policy issues of global warming were addressed in workshops on carbon trading; North-South conflict and cooperation; negotiations for the next global greenhouse gas agreement; environmental and safety issues for coal and nuclear energy; biofuels; sustainable agriculture; and regulation, taxation, and public investment.

Several workshops explored the ways in which particular pro-environment industries might create new jobs. One pursued the idea of creating green jobs through an industrial policy designed to promote reindustrialization. Another examined mass transit and smart urban growth as ways to reduce sprawl, cut greenhouse gasses, and provide new jobs. Others looked at energy efficient building; fuel efficient transportation; and labor education and membership involvement around the climate crisis.

Specific concerns of labor in relation to global warming policy were also addressed. One workshop focused on organizing in the renewable energy sector. Another examined the relation of unions to “green business.” Others looked at how jobs, work styles, and working hours might change in a low-carbon future; sustainability bargaining and “green reps”; and the role of the labor movement in addressing the climate crisis.

Sierra Club president Carl Pope noted that Washington is “still the capitol of trivial pursuits,” with action on energy issues stalled even in the new Congress. But he noted that there has been rapid change in public opinion in the past two years and even more radical change in the past six months. Cities and states are moving fast to address global warming, and at this point they are more important than Congress. He urged unions to see that they are involved in coalitions and at the table to affect policy decisions at these levels.

Senator Bernie Sanders, who had made a special stop in New York to address the conference, noted that “this is the issue of our time” and that “young people see this as the issue of their generation.” He pointed out the growing class gap in the U.S., and maintained that “fixing global warming” could produce “millions of good paying jobs.” Global warming is “not a technical or a scientific issue” but “a political issue,” he observed, and by addressing it “we can cleanse the soul of this country.”

Conference Statement:

Background

The North American Labor Assembly on Climate Crisis met in New York City on May 7th and 8th, 2007. The meeting was sponsored by 10 international unions and attended by more than 200 trade unionists from the U.S., Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean region, as well as 50 trade unionists situated in other regions of the world. Representatives from environmental community, and women’s organizations also participated in the conference.

The Assembly is one of a series of international gatherings that began with the First Global Trade Union Assembly on Labour and the Environment in Nairobi, Kenya, in January 2006. In April 2006 Sao Paulo hosted the first ever Trade Union Regional Conference on Labour and the Environment for unions in Latin America, and in July 2006 another Regional Conference took place in Johannesburg, South Africa. These events were co-hosted by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC) and organized by the Sustainlabour Foundation.

Consistent with the practice of these previous meetings, the North American Assembly adopted a non-binding statement, as follows:

Conference Statement

1. We are trade unions from many national and local unions from North America and additional countries. We join with unions all over the world in urging determined action to address the climate crisis, a crisis that threatens life on our planet as we know it.

2. Given the severe nature of the climate crisis, we urge governments, both individually and collectively, to take decisive measures to control and then seriously reduce greenhouse gas emissions to levels that provide the best hope of achieving climate stabilization and ecological balance.

3. We recognize that global warming is a global problem. Therefore all countries, as well as regional and local authorities, must assume responsibility for reducing emissions, with those countries with the highest per capita emissions levels showing the way forward. However, we believe the level of reductions needed require countries to create a framework of mutual assistance, including technological cooperation and capacity building.

4. Unions have long maintained that climate stabilization can only be accomplished if economic and social life is structured around the notion of sustainable development and fair trade. For unions, sustainable development requires a commitment to decent work, meaningful worker participation in important decisions affecting the workplace and economic life in general, and a universally recognized system of enforceable workers rights like that expressed in the ILO’s Core Labour Standards and various conventions. It also includes the right to refuse dangerous work and access to information.

5. Along with unions around the world, we embrace the concept of “just transition” whereby no worker should suffer economic hardship or insecurity as a result of the changes required to address climate crisis or other environmental challenges. All proposed actions on the part of governments and employers must similarly recognize and act on the “just transition” principle and the need of workers for job or livelihood security.

6. To reach the target of an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, we demand that employers step up their efforts to reduce their own emissions and to partner with union representatives and community leaders in efforts small and large to seriously address global warming.

7. In line with conclusions reached by the Stern Review, we also recognize that any economic and social costs incurred in efforts to control greenhouse gas emissions will be minor in comparison with the economic and social costs of continuing to do little or nothing about global warming. Inaction is a far greater threat to workers and communities than is taking decisive action now and in the years ahead.

8. We see the struggle against global warming as an opportunity to put a stop to unsustainable patterns of production and consumption, and to create new and well paying “green” jobs in renewable energy, the construction trades, public transportation, sustainable farming, and much-needed manufacturing. This conclusion is backed by major studies like those commissioned by the Apollo Alliance, Redefining Progress, Renewable Energy Policy Project and Union of Concerned Scientists in the U.S. and the European Trade Union Confederation.

9. We recognize the immediate threat climate change poses to the people living in the poorest areas of the world. In turn, this poverty makes its own contribution to global warming as workers and communities are forced to work and produce in ways that are dangerous, unhealthy and unsustainable. This Assembly therefore recognizes that actions against global warming are therefore also actions against global poverty, unsafe working conditions, and economic precariousness faced my hundreds of millions of workers, a disproportionate number of whom are women.

10. International agencies and institutions, like the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, must therefore stop pushing policies (such as the privatization of public services) that undercut the kind of worker and social protections necessary to relieve and alleviate poverty and paralyze efforts to address the climate crisis. Specifically, we call on the World Bank, and all multilateral development banks and export credit agencies, to halt all loans for fossil fuel projects that result in unsustainable logging.

11. In the effort to play our part in the struggle to restrict greenhouse gas emissions, we encourage the greatest possible trade union unity and coordinated practical action. This will require ongoing education and mobilization around climate crisis and other pressing environmental issues, and connecting these at all times to the need for workers rights, decent work, environmental standards, and for sustainable communities.

12. As part of the NAFTA and CAFTA zone, unions in North America can work to develop a common approach to climate crisis and sustainable development, taking into account the points on sustainable development articulated in the Labor Platform for the Americas formally presented by the trade unions of the hemisphere to the fourth Summit of the Americas at Mar del Plata in 2005.

13. Finally, this Assembly recognizes the potential of “blue-green” alliances at the local, regional, national and global levels. These alliances between unions, environmental, and community organizations must be grounded in the understanding that the fate of workers, communities, and the biosphere are inseparable from each other. We reject the notion that we must choose between jobs and environmental protection. We commit ourselves to work wholeheartedly for both, and will strive to achieve durable and effective forms of solidarity and cohesion.