Above: Six feet apart but together in spirit: Scranton educators tell Sen. Pat Toomey to pass the HEROES Act. “Pat Toomey and the rest of the Republicans who control the U.S. Senate need to step up and pass the HEROES Act,” says Arthur Steinberg, president of AFT Pennsylvania. “It has been nearly two months since the House passed the act, which would provide $3.2 billion in education funding to Pennsylvania. It’s long past time for the Senate to do likewise in order to ensure safe reopening of schools this fall.” Photo credit: American Federation of Teachers.

As U.S. Senators vacationed in July, they were met by a wave of organized protest demanding that they stop stalling and address the needs of workers in an upcoming stimulus package. A July 8 Day of Action organized by the Labor Network for Sustainability and dozens of other labor and environmental groups presented an “F” report card to Senators in their home districts.

LNS Senior Strategic Advisor/Organizer Mike Cavanugh told the Maine Beacon, Senators “clearly are failing, and we need them to do their job. ... I just think there’s been a growing recognition on the part of many of the environmental groups that there’s definitely a common cause with the labor movement,” Cavanaugh said. “And this is a moment that sort of crystallizes that the climate crisis and the inequality crisis are converging right now in 2020.”

Evidently Senators are at least trying to give the impression they are listening: As soon as they returned to Washington, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell reversed his previous stand and announced that Senate Republicans would move on stimulus legislation. But it is not yet clear that they will address the pressing needs of working people, including:

• Providing nurses, healthcare workers, transit workers, food service workers, domestic workers and other essential workers with the personal protective equipment they need to do their jobs safely and to protect us in the process
• Supporting essential workers with hazard pay and paid medical leave in line with the risks they are taking to provide health care and essential services
• Enacting emergency OSHA standards to ensure workplace safety
• Guaranteeing that every person in America gets unemployment insurance benefits, direct cash payments, SNAP, rental assistance and other support to survive the economic crisis
• Investing in states, tribes and local governments in desperate need of funding for schools and essential services like health, housing and food assistance
• Funding public education so teachers, students and parents can safely return to school and work
• Ensuring the health and economic well-being of all Black and Brown people living in America, who have been disproportionately hurt and killed by the virus
• Protecting public health by funding increased Covid-19 testing and contact tracing
• Providing funding for a functioning postal service
• Providing funding to ensure that every vote will count in November
• Passing legislation in line with the Movement for Black Lives demands to reinvest in a shared vision of community safety, infrastructure, and recovery that does not rely on the police

Above: Watch the video in English or in Spanish.

As part of the campaign for Personal Protective Equipment and proper public health standards for workers, on July 14 the Labor Network for Sustainability launched “In Memoriam,” a new video honoring essential workers who have lost their lives after exposure to COVID-19.

LNS member, actor, activist, and founder of Fire Drill Fridays Jane Fonda, who envisioned “In Memoriam” after being extremely moved at our March 26 meeting of labor and environmental leaders, introduced the video as part of a program that also included LNS Executive Director Michael Leon Guerrero and LNS members Maria Castañeda, Secretary-Treasurer of 1199 Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers East; Debby Szeredy, Executive Vice President of the American Postal Workers Union; Monique Dale, widow of APWU member Richard Dale; Leonard Roseus, son of deceased 1199SEIU member Dr. Yves Roseus, and other family members and colleagues of fallen workers, including guest to the event Yohanny Arias, daughter of Elena Caceres, a UNITE HERE Local 100 member.

Greenpeace and the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health also collaborated to host this live tribute and call-to-action.

The watchword for the program was labor heroine Mother Jones’ appeal to “Pray for the dead, fight like hell for the living.” Watch and share the "In Memoriam" video.

On May 7, 50 workers at Allan Bros fruit packing factory in Naches, Washington, walked off the job demanding hazard pay, paid time off, health protection measures, and greater transparency about coronavirus threats. Ten days later the strike had spread to six Yakima Valley fruit packing houses.

Edgar Franks, political director of Familias Unidas por la Justicia and a member of the Board of Labor Network for Sustainability, is helping support the strikes. Franks said workers at the individual plants were leading the strikes. “Worker committees from each of the fruit packing houses met” to “discuss strategies and also to encourage each other.”

Franks says weak emergency rules for agriculture have broader consequences for Yakima. "If we're looking to have a healthy, productive economy, it depends on a healthy and viable workforce. If there is nothing being done to protect these workers, it has the potential to crash the whole economy, along with causing a health crisis."

Workers at the apple packing shed that sparked a wave of strikes in central Washington went back to work on Monday with a written agreement recognizing their workers' committee. According to Agustin Lopez, a leader of the movement who's worked in the valley since the mid-1980s, "The most important thing to us is that the company is recognizing our committee as the representative of all the workers. Under the agreement we will continue negotiating for salary increases, better working conditions, and health protections. The agreement means that our rights as workers are respected.” Source »

Above: On July, 20, 2020, Amalgamated Transit Union Local 85, Pittsburgh, stood in solidarity with fellow unions and community activists at the #StrikeforBlackLives rally to demand racial and economic justice. Source: ATU International.

On July 21, the Labor Network for Sustainability joined more than fifty unions, civil rights organizations, environmental groups, and others in the first Strike for Black Lives. Lead organizers of the action were the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the Movement for Black Lives (M4BL).

Unions participating included:

• Service Employees International Union
• International Brotherhood of Teamsters
• American Federation of Teachers
• United Farm Workers
• United Food and Commercial Workers
• Communication Workers of America
• National Domestic Workers Alliance
• Amalgamated Transit Union
• Fight for $15 and a Union
• UNITE HERE
• New York State Nurses Association

SEIU president Mary Kay Henry and M4BL national field director Karissa Lewis explained “Why We’re Striking”:

The current pandemic of Covid-19 and the generational pandemic of violence against Black lives have brought some truths into sharp relief. As tens of millions of people have worked without personal protective equipment or paid sick time, it has become clear to us all: Workers, those we have recently taken to calling "essential," are the cornerstone of our social and economic well-being. These are disproportionately Black and brown workers.  As we enter further and further into an economic depression, it's become clear that for so many communities, it is time to take action that pushes elected officials and CEOs to dismantle racism and white supremacy in the workplace. Our fights for racial, economic, health care, gender, climate, and immigration justice are all connected. We are connected, as well. 

Labor Network for Sustainability Research and Policy Director and labor historian Jeremy Brecher wrote:

Not only is a huge union putting its muscle behind Black Lives Matter, but also promoting workers workplace power as a vehicle for political action through an enlarged concept of strikes and general strikes. With climate such a "clear and present danger" to Black people, and so many Black trade unionists concerned about it, the Strike for Black Lives calls attention to climate change as a threat to Black people—and to the cooperation between Black people, labor, and allies that is already under way to fight it.

Watch the Strike for Black Lives livestream.

“Just Transition” has become one of the most common—and most controversial—themes in the Labor-Climate movement. On July 22, the Labor Network for Sustainability helped illuminate the idea with a webinar on "Just Transition: Love It, Hate It - You’ve Heard the Term, Now Hear the Story." It featured some of those who first originated and campaigned for a Just Transition for workers and communities. Watch and learn the backstory for this essential building block for a climate-safe, worker-friendly, socially-just future.

Photo Credit: Jason Weingart.

Todd E. Vachon, faculty coordinator of the Labor Education Action Research Network (LEARN) in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and an active trade unionist and member of the Labor Network for Sustainability, recently wrote an article in the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Warning that “The Pandemic May Be a Preview of Our Climate Future.”

Todd says,

Vital government agencies have been defunded, understaffed or put under the charge of industry hacks who do not believe in the missions of the agencies they are tasked with running. The production of vital healthcare equipment has been outsourced in pursuit of cheaper labor and lax environmental regulations. And perhaps worst of all, the Trump administration has refused to use all the tools at its disposal to protect American lives. These ideologically driven actions have left the federal government incapable of marshaling the health and safety equipment needed to help critically ill Americans and protect the courageous first responders and healthcare workers trying to save them.

He calls for a Green Stimulus and an Emergency Green New Deal (EGND) “to not only get our economy back up and running after the COVID-19 crisis but also to reduce the risk of climate-related disasters and to increase our general preparedness for all disasters.” He says “such an effort would strengthen the social safety net, decouple health insurance from employment, and create millions of family-sustaining green jobs while accelerating a just transition away from fossil fuels and toward renewable energy.”

Read Todd’s entire piece »

The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis has recently released a report on “Solving the Climate Crisis” calling for a federal heat safety standard.

It recommends that Congress should direct the Secretary of Labor to establish a standard on prevention of occupational exposure to excessive heat and require employers to implement a workplace excessive heat prevention plan to protect employees from heat-related injuries and illnesses.

Standards and requirements should consider: (1) exposure limits that trigger action to protect employees from heat-related illness; (2) hydration; (3) scheduled and paid rest breaks in shaded or climate-controlled spaces; (4) employer and supervisor training; and (5) emergency medical response planning.