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.

Social Networking: Is Malcolm Gladwell Right That It's Useless for Social Change?

[This article is dedicated to the late Tim Costello, who taught us so much about social movements and organization. Original Posted on HuffingtonPost.com

An article called "Small Change: Why the revolution will not be tweeted" by Malcolm Gladwell in the October 4, 2010 New Yorker poses an important question: What if anything is the potential contribution of web-based "social networking" to social movements and social change? The article's answer, drawing primarily on an account of the civil rights movement, is that social movements that are strong enough to impose change on powerful social forces require both strong ties among participants and hierarchical organizations - the opposite of the weak ties and unstructured equality provided by social networking websites.

Gladwell deserves credit for kicking off a discussion of this question, but that discussion needs to go far beyond the answers he provides, both in conceptual clarity and in historical perspective. This is a modest contribution to that discussion.

For starters, a bit of conceptual clarification. Social networking websites are not a form of organization at all; they are a means of communication. Comparing Twitter to the NAACP is like comparing a telephone to a PTA; they are not the same kind of thing, they don't perform the same kind of functions, and therefore their effectiveness or otherwise simply can't be compared.

There are other category problems as well. "Small Change" counterposes "networks" and "hierarchies." It conflates "strong ties" with "hierarchical" organizations. It denies that strong ties can occur as part of networks. These three conceptual presuppositions, which underlie the article's concrete historical analysis, deserve some serious reconsideration.

Economists and social scientists have traditionally divided organizations into "markets" and "hierarchies." Both coordinate multiple players, but in different ways. Markets are based on decentralized exchanges that lead to coordination by "feedback" from past transactions. (People raise or lower their prices based on how much demand there has been for what they are selling, leading in theory to the production of the right amount of different kinds of stuff.) Hierarchies -- for example armies and corporations -- are based on a centralized control structure that plans coordinated activity and then commands subordinates to implement their assigned pieces of it.

More recently, some interpreters have pointed out that there is a third form, which they have dubbed "networks." Networks coordinate by means of the sharing of information and voluntary mutual adjustment among participants. They are different from markets because their planning is proactive and based on knowledge of other participants' intentions and capabilities, rather than on feedback from past transactions. They are different from hierarchies because their decision-making is decentralized and voluntary rather than centralized and authoritative.

How do the historical experiences of the civil rights movement analyzed in "Small Change" look in the light of such a clarified set of categories? There has been a vast amount of historical research on the history of the civil rights movement over the past few years. Two points stand out. First, the visible actions like marches, sit-ins, and bus boycotts rested on a deep foundation of culture, social linkages, and accumulated experience of struggle in Black communities in the South. These connections, stretching over generations and diverse spheres of life, were the mulch from which the civil rights movement emerged -- or, perhaps more aptly, became visible to others on the outside.

These linkages can be appropriately described as local community networks -- means of coordinating action based in information sharing rather than on either on a market or a command hierarchy.

Far from being able to command the action of these local networks, national civil rights leaders and organizations were largely dependent on them. In general, local leaders made the decision of whether, for example, to bring Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) into town, and they were generally able to veto strategic decisions they did not agree with. They used the national leadership and organizations for their own purposes at least as much as the other way around. This picture represents anything but a hierarchy in which national leaders and organizations (or even local ones) were able to command participation the way it is done in an army, a corporation, or a similar "hierarchical organization."

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.

Tim's Brother Sean Costello Remembers Tim's Early Yearts

      Most of you know my brother, Tim, as a writer, trucker, fisherman, political activist, neighbor, and friend.  You probably don’t know much about his childhood and early years, so I will talk briefly about our parents, growing up in Boston and Dedham, and some early experiences that shaped Tim’s thinking about economics, history, and labor.

      Tom Costello, our father, was born in Hyde Park in 1911, the youngest of six children.  His parents were Irish immigrants from Galway who met in Boston.  Our grandfather, Alexander Costello, was a groundskeeper on a large estate in Milton.  Tom and his friends had a great time playing on the estate grounds.  Most of his friends were children of the other Irish immigrants who settled in the Hyde Park neighborhood called Corriganville.  Many of the men worked on neighboring estates or in local factories.  The women worked as maids and household helpers.

      Claire MacPhee, our mother was also born in Hyde Park in 1916, the third of six children.  Her parents came from Prince Edward Island, Canada.  They met in Boston and moved to Hyde Park where her father, Jim, worked as a machinist for the Sturtevant Corporation which eventually was bought by Westinghouse, where he worked until his retirement.

      Tom graduated from Hyde Park High School an 1928 and went to work for the New Haven Railroad in the Readville car shops located on the Boston-Dedham line.  The Readville shops were the main repair facility for the northern end of the railroad.  At their peak they employed about 4000 workers – plumbers, electricians, carpenters, painters, upholsterers and welders.  Tom became a welder and a member of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, Local #102.  He was active in the Union from the start.  He became President and served for many years.  The President and other officers were full-time welders dealing with grievances and other problems as they happened.  This was a no-frills operation; no expense accounts, no business lunches, no fancy offices.  In fact, the office was in our house.

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.

IN MEMORY OF TIM COSTELLO

Tim Costello, architect of innovative strategies for the labor movement and founder of Global Labor Strategies, died December 4 of pancreatic cancer at age 64.

Along with GLS, Tim's friends and colleagues are developing this memorial page as a tribute to Tim.

All who knew Tim and his work are invited to contribute to this page.

Tim in Beijing March 2008

How to Contribute to Tim's Memorial Page

Post your thoughts, memories and reflections to the GLS Blog:  Send an email to Brendan Smith (brendan (at) brendan-smith.org). Paste the title of your post in the subject line of your email and your text in the body of the email. If you want to post pictures, simply attach them to your email.

Comment on others' blog posts: Click on the title of a specific post if you would like to comment on someone else's post.  Scroll down and write in the comments box.

For donation information see Tim's Boston Globe obituary below.

Tim's Boston Globe Obituary

COSTELLO, Tim Of Cambridge, formerly of Rockport, died December 4 at age 64 of pancreatic cancer. Husband of Susanne Rasmussen of Cambridge, MA; father of Pia Costello of Cambridge, MA and Gillian Costello of Brooklyn, NY; grandfather of Evan and Cathryn Sherman of Brooklyn, NY; brother of Sean Costello of Belmont, MA; and a friend to many. Founder and partner in Global Labor Strategies, lifelong labor activist, and author of many articles and books on issues involving labor, globalization, and the environment. Memorial Service is planned for a later date. In lieu of flowers, donations in Tim's memory may be made to: VNA Care Network & Hospice, Development Office, 5 Federal Street, Danvers, MA 01923-3687.  12/06/09 Original link available here.

Tim's Family Obituary

Tim Costello, an architect of innovative strategies for the labor movement and the author of numerous articles and books on labor and globalization, died at home on December 4, 2009.  The cause was pancreatic cancer.

Tim August, 2009

Mr. Costello was born in Boston on June 13, 1945 to Thomas and Claire (MacPhee) Costello, and raised in Dedham, MA.  As a teenager he worked with his father as a construction laborer and learned from him the value of worker organization, often typing the correspondence of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, the union for which his father served as president for many years.

As a young man, Mr. Costello went to work as a fuel oil delivery driver and became active in the Teamster’s union and the union reform movement.  Always an avid reader and writer, he set up an office in the back of his truck where he spent many hours in self-education.  He also studied at Goddard College in Vermont, the New School in New York, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston, from which he graduated.  He gradually came to be recognized in the Boston area as an unusual combination of worker and intellectual.  In his book Taking History to Heart, James Green described Mr. Costello as “`Cosmic’ Tim, who seemed to have trucked everywhere and read everything.”

Tim Costello, an architect of innovative strategies for the labor movement and the author of numerous articles and books on labor and globalization, died at home on December 4, 2009.  The cause was pancreatic cancer.

Tim August, 2009

Mr. Costello was born in Boston on June 13, 1945 to Thomas and Claire (MacPhee) Costello, and raised in Dedham, MA.  As a teenager he worked with his father as a construction laborer and learned from him the value of worker organization, often typing the correspondence of the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, the union for which his father served as president for many years.

As a young man, Mr. Costello went to work as a fuel oil delivery driver and became active in the Teamster’s union and the union reform movement.  Always an avid reader and writer, he set up an office in the back of his truck where he spent many hours in self-education.  He also studied at Goddard College in Vermont, the New School in New York, and the University of Massachusetts-Boston, from which he graduated.  He gradually came to be recognized in the Boston area as an unusual combination of worker and intellectual.  In his book Taking History to Heart, James Green described Mr. Costello as “`Cosmic’ Tim, who seemed to have trucked everywhere and read everything.”

New York Times' Article on Tim's Life and Work

Tim Costello, Trucker-Author Who Fought Globalization, Dies at 64 

By STEVEN GREENHOUSE

Published: December 26, 2009

Tim Costello, a truck driver who became a labor advocate and theorist, the co-author of four books and the founder of an organization that fought globalization, died Dec. 4 at his home in Cambridge, Mass. He was 64.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said his brother, Sean.

Mr. Costello was hailed by many academics and labor advocates as a bona fide worker-intellectual. A genial, mustached native of Boston, he drove fuel-delivery trucks, worked as a lobsterman, founded a group that battled against the fast-growing use of temporary workers and developed close links with labor advocates in China, Italy and Mexico.

His most notable book was “Globalization From Below: The Power of Solidarity” (2000), written with Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith, which became a primer for labor advocates who argued that globalization was destroying jobs and reducing wages in the United States while exploiting workers in Asia.

The Nation Magazine Honors Tim as a "blue-collar intellectual, truck-driving internationalist"

KEEP ON TRUCKIN': Tim Costello, the blue-collar intellectual, truck-driving internationalist and globally respected author who died in December at 64 (from pancreatic cancer), fully embraced the anti-corporate globalization slogan: "Another World Is Possible." Costello was the energetic founder of groups such as the Campaign on Contingent Work, the North American Alliance for Fair Employment and Global Labor Strategies, and he wrote (with Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith) groundbreaking books like Global Village or Global Pillage (1994) and Globalization From Below (2000), which forged newer and deeper understandings of the importance of international solidarity on economic and social issues.

Costello delighted in the late '90s renewal of activism around globalization, and he celebrated the new tools available to organizers. In one of his last articles for The Nation ("Social Movements 2.0," January 15, 2009), he wrote with Brecher and Smith that the "online universe is not simply another place for people to congregate, circulate a petition, debate politics or mail out a newsletter.... Instead, the web is increasingly looking like the invention of the printing press, which radically changed the lives of even those who could not read, by spurring the Protestant reformation and scientific revolution." That was classic Costello: rooted in the old struggle between privilege and the cooperative commonwealth, yet ever at the ready to employ new technologies, adopt smarter tactics and build broader coalitions.   JOHN NICHOLS

Memorial Video of Tim by Jason Pramas

A video scrapbook of footage from a few moments in the work life of noted American labor activist and scholar Tim Costello (6/13/1945-12/4/2009). Produced by Jason Pramas for the Tim Costello Memorial event held at the Main Library of the Cambridge Public Library in Cambridge, MA, USA on February 1, 2010. Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 2009 Jason Pramas.

Memories of Tim from Jason Pramas on Vimeo.