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According to the leading environmental publication Grist, “In 2023, organized labor became core to the climate movement.” The year was “marked by symbiosis between the labor and climate movements.” Workers across industries and geographies loudly declared that “a world in which their safety and well-being are disregarded” is “dangerous to them and to others in a time of energy transition.”

This issue of Making a Living on a Living Planet portrays many aspects of this growing “symbiosis.” For example, the annual LNS-initiated Transit Equity Day is bringing together transit workers, transit riders, and community activists in dozens of cities around the country to fight for the public transit that will simultaneously cut greenhouse gas emissions and open economic opportunity to economically deprived communities. The LNS Young Workers Project is helping young workers find a common voice in the labor and climate movements – and beyond – for a future that can give them hope both for the environment and for the economy they will inherit. The LNS-convened Educators Climate Action Network is bringing together educators to work with students and community groups to win green schools and climate education.

World leaders may be fiddling while the earth burns, but our movements ain’t fiddling around.

By Bakari Height, LNS Transit Organizer

Transit Equity Day is around the corner, and the Transit Equity Network has already been hard at work preparing for a week’s (and possibly month’s) worth of events!

This year, we are focusing on a unified ask for all participants to inform your networks on Congressman Hank Johnson’s long-awaited “Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act”.  The bill would earmark federal transit funding for operations, which would cover labor costs, extend service in underserved areas, and go towards investing in cleaner energy sources.  We have materials, including sample op-eds, available on our Organizing Toolkit here if you’d like to participate.

Our annual livestream will be held on Monday, February 5th at 3 PM EST on the Transit Equity Network and LNS YouTube channels.  We will feature many organizers from labor unions, green groups, as well as local organizers who are doing the work to make sure equity is included in any transit decision. Join in on the conversation, and please subscribe and share this live amongst your networks!

Also, please register your actions here! The importance of registering your actions is showing how far we have come from Rosa Parks’s day where your only methods of organizing were civil disobedience and sit-ins.  Show your support and register your action—it could even be a public meeting on transportation!

Please email bakari@labor4sustainability.org for more information or to answer any questions.

We will also be featuring discussions including our "Disability in Transit" panel on Wednesday, February 7th at 3 PM EST.  To register for this webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUuc-2vrTktHdRFcngkVoW14qt34Lb-K2_7

According to the leading environmental publication Grist, “In 2023, organized labor became core to the climate movement.” 

2023 was marked by symbiosis between the labor and climate movements. Workers across industries and geographies loudly declared that a world in which their safety and well-being are disregarded is even more dangerous to them and to others in a time of energy transition and climate crisis. After decades of hesitancy, several major unions recognized an urgent need to organize those who will do the hard work of decarbonizing the nation’s economy.”

The article by Katie Myers, Grist Climate Solutions Fellow, noted that, as public opinion and public policy have shifted in favor of organized labor, “calls for a just transition rattled union halls and corporate offices” as “organized labor enjoyed one of its most active years in recent memory” and “environmental organizations, long uncertain about where unions stood, found new allies.

The article describes numerous examples of union fights for climate protection. The reality of a warming world was a central concern for UPS, Amazon, and airport workers who demanded protection from extreme heat. And the UAW made a just transition a key demand in their strike against the auto Big Three. At the same time, “Environmental organizations became vocally supportive of labor this year, with Sierra Club, Greenpeace, and others supporting the UAW’s calls for a just EV transition.” 

The article quotes J. Mijin Cha, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz and a co-author of the LNS report “Workers and Communities in Transition”: “The UAW strike showed the vision a lot of people have been looking for.” 

For the full article: https://grist.org/labor/in-2023-organized-labor-became-core-to-the-climate-movement/

For the LNS report "Workers and Communities in Transition": https://www.labor4sustainability.org/jtlp-2021/

Varshini Prakash, executive director of the Sunrise Movement, says of Power Lines:

The climate movement needs the labor movement to win a just transition. Power Lines is an essential how-to manual for organizers looking for the most creative, visionary, and practical strategies to bridge our movements.

And Frances Fox Piven, author of Challenging Authority: How Ordinary People Change America, says:

This is a book that could brighten your life and stiffen your spine. These experienced and wise organizers search the world we share for the stories of movement uprisings that could spark something big enough to save us yet.

Power Lines is edited by Jeff Ordower and Lindsay Zafir and published by The New Press.

For more information: https://thenewpress.com/books/power-lines 

By Veronica Wilson, LNS California Organizer

Kingspan Campaign Update: Environmental Groups Stand with Workers Calling out Greenwashing

Workers calling out greenwashing inspired 26 environmental and environmental justice groups to call for an investigation into Kingspan’s marketing claims. LNS moderated a call last month, inviting allies to hear directly about safety violations and exposure to toxic materials at Kingspan plants in California. Now local and national organizations—including the California Green New Deal Coalition, Communities for a Better Environment, Center on Race Poverty and the Environment, Physicians for Social Responsibility - Los Angeles, Greenpeace USA, 350.org, Food and Water Watch, among others—have issued a public letter calling on SCS Global Services to investigate the claims made by insulation manufacturer Kingspan in an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) for its star product, QuadCore insulated metal panels. You can help spread the word and watch for more actions with workers calling out greenwashing—follow and like #CleanupKingspan today!

A just-published article by Todd E. Vachon, “Climate Justice for All: Pursuing a Just Transition in the Education Sector”—published in the American Federation of Teachers journal The American Educator—lays out in detail “what educators can do—and many already are doing—through their unions to promote climate justice and equity in their schools and communities.” 

Vachon is an assistant professor of labor studies and employment relations at Rutgers University, the director of the Labor Education Action Research Network, and the author of Clean Air and Good Jobs: U.S. Labor and the Struggle for Climate Justice. He is also a co-author of the Labor Network for Sustainability report “Workers and Communities in Transition”.

Vachon argues that “the world is in the midst of two simultaneous and interconnected crises: a crisis of ecology and a crisis of inequality.” But “the good news is that there is an important role that students, educators, our local unions, and community allies can play in addressing the dual crises of climate change and inequality.” Confronting the climate crisis offers “a potential pathway for making some of the important changes in our economy that are needed to recenter the lives and well-being of people.” Such a “just transition” offers “a vision of economic democracy, including public investments to account for the full social costs and benefits of environmental and economic policies to create the most just—not necessarily the most profitable—outcome for all.”

Educators can start by promoting “green and healthy schools” that involve “installing renewable energy generation and storage systems, renovating existing school buildings to improve efficiencies, constructing new green buildings, securing strong labor standards, ensuring an open and democratic process for all stakeholders, and requiring local and preferential hiring to ensure that local communities and displaced workers benefit from the jobs that are created in the process.” 

Forging a just transition in education with healthy green schools and social and economic justice requires “grassroots organizing and power building,” such as “forming local union climate justice committees, building strong partnerships with students and community groups, bargaining for the common good, and holding decision makers accountable.” The cross-union Educators Climate Action Network, convened by the Labor Network for Sustainability, brings together over 100 union educators from across the country to tackle climate change and promote climate justice in education. 

Vachon ends with a challenge and an invitation: “Perhaps your local union will be the next to take bold climate action and become a part of the solution by helping to forge your own local Green New Deal and joining the national effort.”

Link to the article: https://www.aft.org/ae/winter2023-2024/vachon 

Link to ECAN: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/ecan/

Link to LNS Just Transition Listening Project report: https://www.labor4sustainability.org/jtlp-2021/ 

The National Climate Assessment, issued every four years based on the work of scientists and other experts, is generally considered the US’ most authoritative report on how global warming is affecting the country. The recently issued fifth assessment puts environmental justice front and center, emphasizing that low-income families and communities of color have historically borne the brunt of the nation’s environmental harms while benefiting least from environmental regulation.

The report includes a chapter on “social systems and justice,” noting that societal factors, including historic racism, have shaped the climate reality experienced by many low-income families and communities of color today. The report notes as an example:

Areas that were historically redlined—a practice in which lenders avoided providing services to communities, often based on their racial or ethnic makeup—continue to be deprived of equitable access to environmental amenities like urban green spaces that reduce exposure to climate impacts. These neighborhoods can be as much as 12 degrees Fahrenheit hotter during a heatwave than nearby wealthier neighborhoods.

Maria Lopez-Nunez, deputy director of the New Jersey-based social justice advocacy group Ironbound Community Corporation in Newark, and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council, says the Fifth Assessment is going to go a long way to “helping the climate assessment feel a lot more relevant to the average person.”

For a summary of the National Climate Assessment: https://insideclimatenews.org/news/14112023/biden-national-climate-asssessment-environmental-justiice/

For the full text of the National Climate Assessment: https://nca2023.globalchange.gov 

It’s not every day that workers get to tell representatives of Congress how federal programs affect their work lives. But that’s just what happened when union members working on clean energy projects in Illinois, Maine, and New York spoke about the impact of federal climate investments in their communities to the Clean Energy Workers Roundtable hosted by the House Sustainable Energy and Environment Coalition (SEEC).

Kilton Webb, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 567 told the Roundtable how his union is training clean energy workers in Maine: 

I’m in my final year as an apprentice, and after five years, I have put in 8,000 work hours on commercial, industrial, and solar fields. The work is hard, but rewarding because I am part of this new clean energy industry that is doing great things for the state of Maine. It’s also exciting because of the potential of having more union jobs ready for the next generation of workers. Students who were in middle and high school when I started my journey of becoming an electrician are now apprentices that I work with and teach every day.

To watch the Roundtable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91Tl4MbrboM 

For the press release on the Roundtable: https://seec.house.gov/media/press-releases/seec-celebrates-climate-workers-advancing-americas-clean-energy-future.

A new report from the Climate Jobs at Cornell University’s ILR School called Building an Equitable, Diverse, and Unionized Clean Energy Economy: What We Can Learn from Apprenticeship Readiness, includes policy recommendations and case studies from California, Illinois, and New York. 

To read the full report: https://ecommons.cornell.edu/items/e147af32-44aa-4c3f-a2a2-cdd87f549d29 

Watch the report launch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-u2M2UJhpw

Photo credit Chad Davis

“Bargaining for the Common Good” has become a crucial strategy for organized labor and a key means of forging broad coalitions for mutual support. For the past decade, unions and allies in Minnesota have developed powerful union and community alignments that have won victories at the bargaining table, in the community, and in the legislature. 

In March, the union contracts are expiring for tens of thousands of Minnesota workers, and these allies are organizing in advance to align their demands and narratives. 

You can watch a recorded webinar on “Minnesota Community and Labor Escalations”  presenting an insider's look at what it took to build this alignment over the last few decades, and what’s possible in this spring’s escalation. Speakers include Greg Nammacher, President of SEIU Local 26 Jennifer Arnold, Co-Director of Inquilinxs Unidxs por Justicia Veronica Mendez Moore, Co-Director of CTUL Marcia Howard, First Vice President of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers and Educational Support Professionals JaNaé Bates, Director of Communications of ISAIAH Phillip Cryan, Executive Vice President, SEIU Healthcare MN & IA. 

To see the webinar: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9OgwFgCukA 

To read the January, 2024 report “Aligning for Power: A Case Study of Bargaining for the Common Good in Minnesota”: https://georgetown.app.box.com/s/kxsmj8lkmpriwxsp6jthw387k43kdh7z 

A January 18 podcast interview with labor historian Jeremy Brecher, editor of LNS’ Making a Living on a Living Planet, delved into strategic issues for the labor and climate movements.

Noting the 52nd anniversary of Brecher’s labor history Strike!, interviewer Scott Parken asked what is the source of the power of strikes.

Brecher: A basic theme of Strike! and a great deal of the rest of what I’ve written over the years is that, as the old Industrial Workers of the World (aka the “Wobblies”) song said, “They’ve taken untold millions that they never toiled to earn, but without our brain and muscle, not a single wheel can turn.” [That indicates the] underlying power of the strike, and of all ways in which people withdraw their cooperation and withdraw their support from whatever the power centers or the people or the oppressive forces that they’re confronting. 

Parkin also asked, how has the politics of workers and climate changed in recent years?

Brecher: My first answer is not enough has changed, but it has changed. I think the biggest change of all is something that we’ve just seen, which was the UAW, in the context of the new leadership and the strike against the Big Three took on the idea of just transition to a climate safe economy as a central part, not only of its advocacy for what the government should do, but it’s demands for what the industry should do.

For the full podcast: https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/01/18/jeremy-brecher-on-how-labor-and-climate-movements-build-power-from-below/

Our Mission

To be a relentless force for urgent, science-based climate action by building a powerful labor-climate movement to secure an ecologically sustainable and economically just future where everyone can make a living on a living planet.

Making a Living on a Living Planet is published by the Labor Network for Sustainability: