Donald Trump, significantly behind in the polls, appears to be laying the groundwork for illegally attempting to remain in office if he loses the election. Labor organizations around the country are mobilizing to preserve democracy against Trump’s threat of a coup.

On September 25 AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka stated, that the AFL-CIO “categorically rejects all threats to the peaceful transition of power.” America’s workers “stand ready to do our part” to ensure that Trump’s defeat is “followed by his removal from office.” America’s workers “stand ready to do our part to ensure his defeat in this election is followed by his removal from office.”

At the local level unions are already organizing. The Rochester Labor Council, AFL-CIO, passed a resolution October 8 that calls on all labor organizations “to prepare for and enact a general strike of all working people, if necessary, to ensure a Constitutionally mandated peaceful transition of power as a result of the 2020 Presidential Elections.” The Seattle Education Association passed a resolution calling for post-election meetings for members to consider “work actions” in the event of interference with the elections. The American Postal Workers Union in Detroit called on its members to pledge that:

• We will vote.
• We will refuse to accept election results until all the votes are counted.
• We will nonviolently take to the streets if a coup is attempted.
• If we need to, we will shut down this country to protect the integrity of the democratic process.^[15] 

The Service Employees International Union and the Communications Workers of America are participating in Protect the Results, which has already organized actions in 233 locations for 5 p.m. local time on November 4 to “activate their members and take coordinated action” if “Donald Trump loses the election and refuses to concede.” 

To learn more about opposing a Trump coup see “Social Self-Defense Against a Trump Coup” and “How Workers Can Help Defeat a Trump Coup”  by LNS research and policy director Jeremy Brecher.

Above: At its Aug. 26 launch, CFCA showcased this poignant portrayal of how slow government response to Hurricane Maria left thousands of Puerto Rican residents displaced in Central Florida. Watch the video »

by Judy Asman

If you’ve been paying attention to news about Florida, the so-called “Sunshine State” may appear to fall short in the areas of public safety and economic empowerment. This past summer alone, mainstream media focused on the state’s long history of election woes ^[1] (usually a trending topic come election time), reckless decision-making by its Governor, who lifted COVID restrictions despite the growing number of cases and fatalities^[2], and Disney World layoffs to the tune of 6,700 non-union employees^[3], which were announced practically in the same breath as the $150 million price tag on Disney’s Orlando-based 2020 NBA Bubble^[4]. 

Despite these reported misgivings, a bright spot shines over Central Florida, where a brewing resilience movement has resulted in Central Florida Climate Action–20 union locals and civil rights, faith-based and environmental justice organizations aimed at empowering and sustaining neighborhoods gravely impacted by heat stress, disaster inequity, job loss and climate displacement.

At its August 26 launch, featuring Sara Nelson, President of the American Flight Attendants-CWA, Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Leah Pennimen of Soul Fire Farm, CFCA showcased this poignant portrayal of how slow government response to Hurricane Maria left thousands of Puerto Rican residents displaced in Central Florida, while highlighting the power of people coming together to support those affected. 

Carlos Torrealba, climate justice coordinator for Central Florida Jobs with Justice, expects climate displacement to lead to an area of greater demand for this new coalition. “Our objective will be to hold the state and local governments accountable to supporting our communities,” he says.

Read the full story »

Judy Asman is the Communications and Information Director at the Labor Network for Sustainability and Managing Editor of Making a Living on a Living Planet.

Above: Rhiana Gunn-Wright - Director of Climate Policy, Roosevelt Institute helped kick off the Sept. 22, 2020 Climate Jobs and Just Transition Summit at the Opening Lightning Around with powerful remarks about climate justice.   

Climate Jobs NY is a coalition of labor unions representing 2.6 million working men and women united to combat climate change and reverse inequality. CJNY aims to demonstrate that we do not have to choose between a healthy planet and good jobs. This fall CJNY held a Climate Jobs and Just Transition Summit, which you can watch in its entirety here.

Some Highlights

Sharing the progress of the LNS-convened Just Transition Listening Project, noting that we are hopeful but "woefully" far away from achieving a vision of a just transition to an ecologically sustainable and just economy, LNS Executive Director Michael Leon Guerrero joined Eddie Bautista, Executive Director, NYC Environmental Justice Alliance, John Murphy, International Representative, United Association and Samantha Smith,  Director, Just Transition Centre for "Securing an Effective and Just Transition," hosted by J. Mijin Cha, Assistant Professor, Occidental College. Watch it here.

Elizabeth Bunn, LNS National Policy Director and Maryland State Director emphasized why public transportation funding is urgently needed on a concurrent session chaired by JP Patafio, Transport Workers Union 100 Vice President. "Strong Unions, Sustainable Transport," also featured Alana Dave, Public Transit, International Transport Workers’ Federation, Micah Mitrosky, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 569, and Michael Yee, Director, Educational and Cultural Trust Fund of the Electrical Industry, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 3. Watch it here.

LNS Board Directors Who Spoke

LNS Board Directors John Harrity, Chair and Founding Member of the Board, CT Roundtable on Climate and Jobs and Cynthia Phinney, President, Maine AFL-CIO joined Pat Devaney, Secretary-Treasurer, Illinois AFL-CIO and Monserrat Garibay, Secretary-Treasurer, Texas AFL-CIO on the concurrent session Maine, Texas, Illinois, Connecticut: Building Climate Jobs Organizations State by State, chaired by Mike Fishman - Climate Jobs National Resource Center, Former Secretary-Treasurer, Service Employees International Union. Watch it here.

Watch "Young Workers and Just Transition," which took place on Aug. 26.

Aug. 26 the Labor Network for Sustainability and friends hosted "Young Workers and Just Transition," the fourth in a series of webinars as part of the Just Transition Listening Project.

Moderated by Climate Justice Alliance Policy Coordinator, Anthony Rogers -Wright, the panel featured young workers in the labor and climate justice movements: 

• Celina Barron, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 11 RENEW
• Eboni Preston, Greening for Youth; Georgia NAACP, Labor and Industry Chair
• Judy Twedt, United Auto Workers, Local 4121
• Ryan Pollock, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 520
• Yolian Ogbu, This is Zero Hour

Watch this event now to glean insight into the challenges these young movement leaders face when initiating dialog around transitioning to a sustainable economy that offers equitable and just opportunities for future workers. Also learn about LNS' Young Worker Project and to hear what's next.

Above: From the This is Zero Hour Facebook page. Eighteen-year-old Zero Hour founder Jamie Margolin recently published her book, "Youth to Power: Your Voice and How to Use It," which is intended to serve as "the ultimate guide to being a young activist.⁣" The book, along with "Zero Hour's Getting to The Roots of Climate Change" have educated young people on topics not usually included in their school curricula. 

What rights are granted by the First Amendment? The Second?

Odds are, the average high school student could give a halfway decent answer to those questions. Ask a student what their rights in the workplace are though, and you might be met with confusion. 

Why is it that some rights are prioritized in our education over others? Why might we learn of our right to bear arms from a young age, but never learn that employer retaliation for union organizing activity is illegal? 

The answer may be what education scholar Elliot Eisner calls the “null curriculum”–everything schools intentionally or unintentionally do not teach. What is left out of a curriculum, Eisner argues, is just as important as what is included. Rights in the workplace? They’re mostly in the null curriculum, and business groups have lobbied to keep them that way. That’s one reason rates of unionization have fallen despite rising worker desire for union representation.

Recently, youth environmental groups have begun to center labor concerns in their organizing. For example, the platform of Zero Hour includes “the transition of fossil fuel workers to clean, healthy, living wage jobs based on local sustainable economies and community.” The Sunrise Movement, too, uplifts workers rights as central to their organizing.

The labor movement is pushing to get worker rights education into the schools too. The American Labor Studies Center provides a wide range of resources, including teaching tools such as “Collective Bargaining for High School Students,” and Labor Day specific lesson plans developed by the American Federation of Teachers. A first-of-its kind labor history education law passed in Wisconsin in 2009, and a similar bill passed the Connecticut Legislature in 2015.

Leo Blain is Social Media and Online Community Manager for the Labor Network for Sustainability

Above: Solidarity tweet by Rep. Rashida Tlaib on the lawsuit against the federal government for failing to invoke the Defense Production Act, filed by the highly revered LNS ally Center for Biological Diversity.

On October 8, labor unions representing healthcare workers, teachers, transit operators and millions of other frontline workers joined with environmental groups to sue the federal government over its failure to provide adequate reusable respirators, N95 masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment to these essential workers. 

The lawsuit demands that Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf act immediately to ensure the manufacture and distribution of PPE. These agencies failed to respond to an August petition that demanded emergency action, violating federal law. The agencies have refused to properly manage PPE production and distribution, leaving states and industry to compete and frontline workers short of supplies. 

This is part of an unprecedented effort led by the Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS) to build power among labor unions and environmental groups to fight together in this COVID crisis—and against the greater climate emergency. The environmental community has given its legal and campaigning muscle to fight like hell shoulder-to-shoulder with frontline and essential workers to confront this horrendous crisis. The exploitation of frontline workers is the same type of abuse that government and corporations inflict on the environment and climate.

Plaintiffs include labor unions representing over 15 million workers:

• American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO)
• Amalgamated Transit Union
• American Federation of Teachers
• Association of Flight Attendants-CWA
• Communications Workers of America
• Service Employees International Union
• Transport Workers Union of America
• United Food and Commercial Workers International Union
• United Steelworker

Here are key links for the lawsuit:

• Social Media Toolkit
• Press Release
• Landing Page
• Complaint

Photo: The main U.S. Post Office in Eugene, Oregon, was designed by Gilbert Stanley Underwood and completed in 1939, and the building is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The lobby features two 1942-43 murals by Portland artist Carl Morris. Wikimedia.

We use it to write our loved ones, we use it to vote, we use it to get our medications–it's just there, and we count on it to do what we need without fuss or bother. But with President Trump and his Republican allies fighting to hamstring and eventually destroy it, the US Postal Service needs support from all who benefit from it. The US Postal Service Is a National Asset: Don't Trash It, a new study from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, makes clear "the national interest in a robust postal service." It describes its "historical contribution to the nation's economic development." And it points out the role of the Postal Service in making a more just and equal society "for those chronically excluded from the benefits of economic growth, including those in isolated, low-income rural areas, regions devastated by deindustrialization, and racially segregated urban communities." This national asset is an asset for each of us. The US Postal Service Is a National Asset: Don't Trash It will give you the facts you need to fight for it.

by Leo Blain

#Giving Tuesday, happening December 1, is an opportunity for people to use their individual power of generosity to support the communities that are important to them. Whether you’ve just discovered one of our Just Transition Listening Project webinars or have been with us since we first started working to bridge the labor and environmental movements more than a dozen years ago, we’re glad you’re a part of the LNS community!

The support of our individual community members helps us to work towards a more ecologically sustainable and economically just future for all. On December 1, we hope you’ll join with other members in our network in supporting LNS by joining our organization or making a donation. Thank you and please stay tuned for more!

How and Why We Formed LNS

by Joe Uehlein

We formed the Labor Network for Sustainability as a vehicle through which we could press for bold climate action in ways that address labor concerns without sacrificing what science is telling us is necessary, and what’s needed to address income inequality and worker power. LNS was founded on the belief that the crises of income inequality, climate change can and must be addressed at the same time, and in so doing we will advance the goals of both movements and offer the best hope for averting climate catastrophe. 

We started by conducting the first ever power structure analysis of the American labor movement with a special focus on climate and sustainability; and on how labor changes on big social issues like civil rights, immigration, trade and globalization, war, and single payer health care ~ all issues where labor morphed from a conservative posture to a more progressive posture. 

We published articles and studies that raise questions that challenge existing assumptions. And we threw down big on disruptive strategies like blocking the Keystone Pipeline with non-violent civil disobedience. 

Major themes and strategies emerged:

• Climate change is the real job killer; not the answers.
• Just Transition is a bedrock principle, not an add-on.
• Keep the science front and center in our work.
• Be a network, not a coalition.
• And to focus on bottom up organizing couple with top-down strategies.

We build bridges to bring together these two great movements, labor and the environment, that made great gains when they worked together, but each time progress was made working together, something would happen that would drive them apart. We address these pitfalls and fault-lines head-on. 

We conduct workshops for labor organizations on climate change, and for environmental organizations on the history, structure, function and culture of the labor movement; so that deeper relationships can be cultivated. We held to our belief that if we are to win on climate, labor must be a central player.

The mission of LNS is to engage workers and communities in building a transition to a society that is ecologically sustainable and economically just. 

We are now at a critical juncture facing manifold crises and the demand on our work and on our team is greater than it ever has been. We are deeply grateful for your support. 

Remarks by Joe Uehlein at the September 18, 2020 Labor Day Fundraiser for the Labor Network for Sustainability. Watch the video »