Global Labor Strategies

Fighting Doom: The New Politics of Climate Change

[Editor's Note: The following article was written by GLS Co-Founder Brendan Smith for the Labor Network for Sustainability in preparation for the upcoming climate meetings in Cancun.]

I am not an environmentalist. But all I think about these days is the climate crisis.

I admit I have arrived late to the party. Only recently have I begun to realize what others have known for decades: The climate crisis is not, at its core, an environmental issue. In fact it is not an "issue" at all; it is an existential threat to every human and community on the planet. It threatens every job, every economy in the world. It threatens the health of our children. It threatens our food and water supply. Climate change will continue to alter the world our species has known for the past three thousand years.

As an oyster farmer and longtime political activist, the effects of climate change on my life will be neither distant nor impersonal. Rising greenhouse gases and ocean temperatures may well force me to abandon my 60-acre farm within the next forty years. From France to Washington state, oystermen are already seeing massive die-offs of seed oysters and the thinning shells science has long predicted. I can see the storm clouds and they are foretelling doom.

But my political alter ego is oddly less pessimistic. Rather than triggering gloom, the climate crisis has surprisingly stirred up more hope than I have felt in twenty years as a progressive activist. After decades of progressive retreat it is a strange feeling. But I am haunted by the suspicion that this coming crisis may be the first opportunity we have had in generations to radically re-shape the political landscape and build a more just and sustainable society.

The Power of Doom

The modern progressive movement in the U.S. has traditionally grounded its organizing in the politics of identity and altruism. Organize an affected group -- minorities, gays, janitors or women -- and then ask the public at large to support the cause -- prison reform, gay marriage, labor rights, or abortion -- based on some cocktail of good will, liberal guilt, and moral persuasion. This strategy has been effective at times. But we have failed to bring these mini-movements together into a force powerful enough to enact broad-based social reform. It takes a lot of people to change society and our current strategy has left us small in numbers and weak in power.

The highlights of my political life -- as opposed to oystering -- have been marked by winning narrow, often temporary, battles, but perennially losing the larger war. I see the results in every direction I look: growing poverty and unemployment, two wars, the rise of the right, declining unionization, the failure of the Senate's climate legislation and of Copenhagen, the wholesale domination of corporate interests. The list goes on and on. We have lost; it's time to admit our strategy has been too tepid and begin charting anew.

This time can be different. What is so promising about the climate crisis is that because it is not an "issue" experienced by one disenfranchised segment of the population, it opens the opportunity for a new organizing calculus for progressives. Except for nuclear annihilation, humanity has never faced so universal a threat where all our futures are bound inextricably together. This universality provides the mortar of common interest required for movement building. We could literally knock on every door on the planet and find someone -- whether they know it or not -- who has a vital self-interest in averting the climate crisis by joining a movement for sustainability. With all of humanity facing doom, we can finally gather under one banner and count our future members not in the thousands but in the millions, even billions.

But as former White House "Green Jobs Czar" Van Jones told the New Yorker in 2009, "The challenge is making this an everybody movement, so your main icons are Joe Six-Pack, Joe the Plumber, becoming Joe the Solar Guy, or that kid on the street corner putting down his handgun, picking up a caulk gun." The climate crisis is carrying us into uncharted waters and our political strategy needs to be directed toward making the climate movement an "everybody movement."

Let me use a personal example. As an oysterman on Long Island Sound my way of life is threatened by rising greenhouse gases and ocean temperatures. If the climate crisis is not averted my oysters will die and my farm will be shuttered.

Saving my livelihood requires that I politically engage at some level. Normally I would gather together my fellow oyster farmers to lobby state and federal officials and hold a protest or two. Maybe I would find a few coalitions to join. But we would remain small in number, wield little power, and our complaints about job loss would fall on largely unsympathetic ears in the face of so many suffering in so many ways. And what would we even petition our government to do about the problem? Buyouts and unemployment benefits? Re-training classes? Our oysters will still die and we will still lose our farms.

Globalization, Neoliberalism, and Climate Change

As the global economy hurtles toward Great Recession II, the earth hurtles toward climate catastrophe.  Both represent the results of a neoliberal deregulation that has left humanity no means to shape our economies to serve human needs -- not even the need for economic and environmental survival.

How global movements respond to these intertwined environmental and economic crises will be key to our common survival. The politics will surely be complicated.  A case in point is an article in today's New York Times about the United Steelworkers union's WTO complaint against China for providing "illegal clean energy subsidies" to domestic solar, wind and other green industries.

To promote international dialogue on these questions, we thought it might be useful to post a recent paper, entitled "Globalization, Neoliberalism and Climate Change", which was prepared by GLS at the invitation of Professor Liu Cheng of Shanghai Normal University for an international conference this April on "Global Economic Recession vs. Deregulation" jointly organized by the Peking University Law School and the Shanghai Normal University Faculty of Law and Politics and supported by the ILO Beijing Office.  The paper stresses the interest of workers around the world in cooperating to create an alternative to neoliberalism based on making the transition to a green economy.

Globalization, Neoliberalism, and Climate Change: Toward a New Regulatory Regime

For thirty years, global and national economies have been guided by policies of neoliberal deregulation, often known as the "Washington Consensus." Neoliberalism has been disastrous for workers in most countries, pitting workers against each other in a race to the bottom and making it all but impossible to protect working class interests. There is now a growing consensus that the Washington Consensus has been a failure.

There is also a growing global recognition that we are in the midst of an unprecedented climate crisis. Ready or not, that crisis is affecting every nation, every locality, and every worker. Its effects are already serious, and unless decisive global action is taken to counter it, they will soon be catastrophic. Neoliberal deregulation, by dismantling the means for public steering of society to meet social needs, has also made it nearly impossible to correct global climate crisis.

These twin realizations, the failure of neoliberalism and the climate crisis, will define the struggle for the interests of poor and working people for the next century. At the same time, the necessity to counter climate change may provide an opportunity to address the broader problems of neoliberal deregulation.

This article argues that it is only by rolling back neoliberalism that we can protect the rights of workers globally and solve the crisis of climate change. In Part 1 we provide a short history of globalization. In Part 2 we discuss the climate crisis and its effects on workers. In Part 3 describes proposals for a "global green new deal" to create full employment through climate protection. Part 4 argues that a new global and national regulatory regime is necessary both to counter both climate change and the race to the bottom. Part 5 discussions the role of organized labor nationally and globally in bringing about such a transformation.

Unions call for Science-Based Reductions in Greenhouse Gasses

Unions call for Science-Based Reductions in Greenhouse Gasses
[Cross-Posted with the Labor Network for Sustainability and Huffington Post]

Over the past couple of years, the American labor movement has become an enthusiastic supporter of expanding “green jobs” that fight global warming. But policies to reduce carbon emissions scientists say are safe have been a harder pill to swallow.  Now, in a significant breakthrough, three significant unions have come out for the science-based emissions targets called for by the IPCC.

As 250 international union delegates arrived in Copenhagen for the global climate summit, a statement by the Transport Workers Union (TWU) and a joint statement by the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Laborers International Union of North America (LIUNA) called for a 25 to 40 percent reduction on 1990 levels for developed countries by 2020.

Sean Sweeney, director of the the Cornell University Global Labor Institute, who worked with the US labor delegation to be fully engaged in the UN process at the Copenhagen conference, said:

“The statements are a clear sign that U.S. unions want to bring scientific necessity into alignment with job creation and green economic development. Many other unions are also moving in this direction. Engaging with unions overseas has also helped U.S. unions to see support for climate protection is also an act of international solidarity.” 
 
 Unions and targets 

Both union statements gave support to the more limited climate protection measures proposed by President Barack Obama on the eve of the Copenhagen summit.  They also endorsed the climate legislation introduced by Senators Kerry and Boxer. But they argued that reductions to address the climate emergency must go substantially further.  They noted that President Obama’s commitment of 17 percent reduction on 2005 levels is only 4 percent below 1990 levels, which have been widely used as a benchmark in international scientific discussions.

Labor and Climate Change: A Briefing Paper for Activists

by Tim Costello and the Labor Network for Sustainability

["Labor and Climate Change" is a briefing paper that provides activists inside and outside the labor movement a way to understand the interests and concerns of different segments of organized labor in climate change issues.  It was the last major work by Tim Costello, who died in December, 2009.]

This briefing paper provides a strategy for addressing organized labor’s stake in climate change. Its goal is to provide activists inside and outside the labor movement with the information they need to help shape effective, worker friendly climate protection policies and garner support for them from organized labor.

The findings are based primarily on a detailed survey of the climate change record, self-interest, and decision making process of 17 labor organizations.  These unions and federations were selected to reflect the range of industries, occupations, and organizational cultures of the US trade union movement. The results of these surveys were compiled into profiles which include basic information, analysis, contact data, and other relevant information. The complete profiles are over 300 pages. They draw on both available public information and on a series of private conversations with top union officials and other knowledgeable sources.  And we have identified over 400 labor leaders at the local, regional and national level.

Protecting the Climate

[Third in the series “Labor Goes to Copenhagen]

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a UN-sponsored scientific body that was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work, keeping global temperature within 2 degrees C of historic levels requires reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by specific targets.

The global trade union movement has committed itself to the IPPC’s science-based targets.  In its statement to the Copenhagen negotiations, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 170 million workers in trade unions around the world, said,

“We reaffirm the commitment of the global trade union movement to achieving an agreement that will limit the global temperature to raise no more than 2 degrees C. . . .  trade unions urge Governments at the UNFCCC [climate change negotiations] in Copenhagen to follow the IPCC scenario for reducing global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 85% lower than their 1990 levels by the year 2050 and emphasize the need for interim targets for this to be achieved, including a corresponding reduction of at least 25-40% by developed countries by 2020 below 1990 levels.”

A Just Transition

[This is the second in a series of posts as representatives of trade unions around the world head off to Copenhagen.  It is cross-posted with the Labor Network for Sustainability]

At the core of global labor’s strategy for climate protection is the idea of a “just transition” to a low-carbon economy.

A just transition means that the burden of change that benefits everyone will not be placed disproportionately on a few.  It means that those most vulnerable to change will be protected.  It means that the process of change will increase social justice for workers, women, the poor, and all oppressed groups. 

Such a just transition is essential to produce the “broad and sustainable political consensus” necessary to make climate protection policy work in the long run.

The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), which represents 170 million workers in unions all over the world, campaigned for language embodying the just transition principle in the negotiating text of the Copenhagen agreement.  Such language was submitted by Argentina and proposed as part of the “shared vision” by the Chair of the negotiations in May.  It read:

An economic transition is needed that shifts global economic growth patterns towards a low emission economy based on more sustainable production and consumption, promoting sustainable lifestyles and climate-resilient development while ensuring a just transition of the workforce.

Since then this language has been “bracketed,” meaning that at least one government has questioned or opposed it.  Unions around the world have been lobbying their governments to keep it in.

Global Warming and Global Labor

[This is the first in a series of posts as representatives of trade unions around the world head off to Copenhagen.  It is sross-posted with the Labor Network for Sustainability]

While world leaders play the “blame game” for their failure to negotiate a binding climate agreement in Copenhagen, trade unions from around the world, almost unnoticed, have forged their own common approach to climate protection.

Unions in different countries and industries inevitably have different interests.  But remarkably they have been able to come together as a unified force around the necessity for protecting the climate, protecting workers, and protecting the world’s poor.

As world leaders assemble in Copenhagen for the global climate conference, they will be joined by a global labor delegation of 250 trade unionists from around the world demanding a just transition to an environmentally and socially sustainable global economy.

According to Guy Ryder, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation  (ITUC) which represents unions from around the world,

The science shows clearly that the longer we wait, the higher the human, environmental and economic costs will be.  We need governments to make ambitious commitments which will set in stone the core elements of a treaty that must be completed as a matter of urgency.  This means legally-binding targets on emissions and longer-term financing to assist developing countries to adapt, as well as ‘just transition’ strategies to deal with the social and employment dimensions.

Not all unions and federations agree with the ITUC position on every issue.  The Solidarity union in Poland and the AFL-CIO in the US have different positions on the issue of emission reduction targets, for example.  But they have not tried to block the ITUC’s overall approach.

World Leaders Fiddle While the World Burns: Time for a New Climate Strategy

Obama’s climate czar Carol Browner said last week there will be no U.S. climate protection legislation before the Copenhagen conference and that she doesn’t know if a global agreement on binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions can be made in Copenhagen.  She added that she had hope for progress because the world's top leaders recognize global warming is a problem.  

As the torturous Copenhagen negotiations and the already-inadequate U.S. climate protection legislation falter, the earth is being imperiled by a failure of its political systems.  We know what needs to be done to halt global warming; we have the technology and resources to halt it; we know the consequences of not doing what we know must be done.  If the “world’s top leaders” recognize that “global warming is a problem” and do nothing about it, they are part of the problem, not part of the solution.

While the earth burns, the “world’s top leaders” are standing around pointing the finger at each other like a bunch of arsonists trying to distract the world’s attention from their handiwork.  The U.S. attacks China for its growing carbon emissions.  China, backed by 130 other third world countries, justly attacks the developed countries for their failure to take responsibility for their damage to the planet’s atmosphere – but then continue their plans to build new climate-destroying coal-fired power plants week by week.  The EU piously condemns the U.S. position, but doesn’t care enough to take the Americans on.   

The failure of current climate protection strategies tells us that the current strategy of lobbying governments to fix global warming will not work.

In the past, the failure of establishments to solve problems that they and their people recognize has often led to the emergence of radical movements demanding real change.  Remember, for example, how betrayed government promises for racial equality and nuclear disarmament helped spawn the civil rights, ban-the-bomb, and new left movements of the 1960s.  

The complicity of governments and the corporations and investors for whom they are so often speaking to halt the destruction of our biosphere may similarly help spawn a new climate protection movement: a convergence of those in the environmental, labor, food, globalization, anti-poverty, peace, student, and other movements who grasp urgency and believe radical action as the only way forward.

We have learned a great deal more about the science of climate change and what must be done to halt it.  But we have barely begun to discuss what kind of political change is necessary to do what must be done.  Here are some principles to discuss for an alternative climate protection strategy:

1.  Existing institutions, specifically states and markets, have decisively proven themselves unable to halt the plunge toward destruction of the biosphere.  

2.  National and world political systems are as dysfunctional for survival today as feudal principalities were for protecting their people in the face of capitalism and the modern nation state.

3.  States are not legitimate if they allow their terrain or their institutions to be used to destroy the global environment.  They have no right to govern.  They are climate outlaws whose authority it is not only our right but our obligation to challenge.

Unions Need to Sever All Ties with Anti-Climate Bill Groups

Under escalating pressure from activists, Nike, the utility giant Pacific Gas & Electric Company, and others have publicly resigned from the US Chamber of Commerce over its opposition to climate protection policies. It's time for labor unions to follow suit by cutting all ties with groups opposing climate legislation like the Chamber-funded Energy Citizen's Alliance.

The AFL-CIO's newly elected president Richard Trumka recently told an audience at the "Jobs, Justice, and Climate" conference: "The AFL-CIO and all the unions in North America are strongly on board the global campaign to reduce carbon emissions and stabilize climate change. Working together with environmental organizations we hope to reverse practices that put our very survival at risk."

So why have some labor unions thrown their support behind the Energy Citizens Alliance, a nationwide front-group lobbying against climate mitigation legislation and funded by the likes of the Chamber of Commerce and American Petroleum Institute?

According to Energy Citizen's website, the group's objective is to force "Congress to reject climate change policies that could raise energy costs and eliminate American jobs." They opposed the Waxman-Markey climate bill and are now furiously lobbying against the Senate version, claiming it will have "negative effects for families, small businesses, farmers and truckers--but the fact remains that all Americans that drive or fly will feel the impact."

Besides the Chamber and API, the alliance's membership includes Laborers' Local 341, Building and Construction Trades Council of South Central Alaska, and the Pipefitters' United Association Local 375. The rest of the membership reads like a "who's who" of the most anti-union and anti-environmental lobbies in the country, including: the National Association of Manufactures, Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, and the American Conservative Union.

Even worse, at least one AFL-CIO state president has become a spokesman for the alliance. At a recent Energy Citizens rally in Alaska, organized to demand that "Senators Mark Begich and Lisa Murkowski to reject costly climate change policies", Vince Beltrami, president of the Alaska AFL-CIO, warned the crowd that one-third of Alaska's workers owe their jobs to the oil industry, and that climate legislation "will cost jobs in the long term." Energy Citizens is sponsoring 20 similar rallies around the country to aid efforts to defeat any and all climate legislation.

AFL-CIO Convention: Solidarity with Van Jones?

The attack that drove “green jobs czar” Van Jones from the White House this week is an attack on labor and on workers’ best hope for good jobs.  If labor wants to promote green jobs, labor should embrace Van Jones - publicly, loudly, and fast - at the upcoming AFL-CIO Convention.

Van Jones is a proven friend of labor, who has fought to see that green jobs are good jobs with labor rights and fair labor standards.   If ever there was a time for that old labor slogan “An injury to one is an injury to all” it is the injury that has been done to Van Jones.  For it is an injury to every American worker who hopes that the crisis in our economy can be addressed by putting people to work building a new green economy.

As founder of Green for All and author of the best-seller The Green Collar Economy, Van Jones put the issue of green jobs on the political map. Eager to catch the green jobs wave, the Obama administration brought Van Jones in as “special advisor for green jobs” at the Council on Environmental Quality.  But last month Glenn Beck’s Fox News’ show began dredging up calumnies from Jones’s past - all information which admittedly had long been publicly available on the web.  (Yes, that’s the Glenn Beck who said “This president has exposed himself as a guy over and over and over again who has a deep-seated hatred for white people.”)  This Sunday Jones self-sacrificingly resigned to avoid becoming a distraction for the Obama administration.

The campaign against Jones is the tip of the wedge for a far broader campaign against organized labor, protection of the environment, and green jobs.

Credit for starting the campaign that drove Van Jones from office is claimed by Phil Kerpen, Policy Director of Americans for Prosperity.  What’s their agenda?