Composite Graphic: Taylor Mayes, Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs. Image copyright Stephen F. Somerstein via Getty Images

by Judy Asman

After several rewarding months of organizing, planning and outreach, the Labor Network for Sustainability and cherished partners of the Transit Equity Network are excited to invite you to the Community Hearing on Transit Equity: A National Conversation. This week, please join riders and workers from around the U.S. as they share testimonies about the role public transit plays in their lives–especially as public transit faces threats to its own survival in a COVID-19 era.

The Hearing will be livestreamed and viewable on our website, here. No need to register to watch.

What about the Transit Equity Day actions?

They are still taking place in cities around the country! In keeping with our Transit Equity Day tradition–where we honor Rosa Parks on February 4, her birthday, and declare transit equity as a civil right, we are pleased to announce there are COVID-safe actions happening around the country. Some are virtual so you can join from anywhere! View the actions.

Learn More and Uplift

Keep up-to-date with what is happening for Transit Equity Day and Community Hearing here. And please be sure to amp, amp, amp! Here's our social media toolkit » 

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

After many months of Republican stonewalling the HEROES Act, in December, Congress finally passed a totally inadequate bill to address the hardship of people hit by the COVID-19 depression. Now newly elected president Joe Biden is proposing new legislation–aptly dubbed the Rescue Act. While nothing is perfect, but the Rescue Act includes much of what has been advocated to reduce hardship since the stymieing of the HEROES Act.

The proposal includes:

• $1,400 checks–including adult dependents and mixed status households. 

• $400/week supplemental unemployment insurance through September.

• 14 Weeks Paid Sick and Family & Medical Leave.

• $15/hour min wage.

• $3,000 child tax credit

• Eviction moratorium through September with more state and local aid.

• Substantial state and local aid, funding to re-open schools safely, and expanded SNAP and WIC benefits. 

• Funding for vaccine production and equitable distribution, free vaccinations, and protections for essential workers. 

See a summary of Biden’s proposal »

The December relief package will start to expire in mid-March–leaving millions of people to lose their unemployment insurance and other relief. Republicans in the Senate, while no longer the majority, are in a powerful position to block or gut the Rescue package.

It’s time for Congress to hear from those who need rescue!

The Biden administration is preparing its Build Back Better program. The initial focus will undoubtedly be on recovery–from both the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis. But Build Back Better opens the possibility for major commitments both to climate protection and to protection of worker rights and racial justice. 

Groups concerned about climate, labor, and justice have been working diligently to develop ideas and plans for this promising moment. Here are some we encourage the Biden administration and Congress to study as they prepare:

• The Green New Deal Network has laid out the THRIVE agenda, “a vision to revive our economy while addressing these interlocking crises of climate change, racial injustice, public health, and economic inequity with a plan to create dignified jobs for millions of unemployed workers and support a better life for the millions more who remain vulnerable.”
• The Evergreen Action Plan, originally initiated by Washington governor Jay Inslee, provides detailed plans for a national mobilization for worker-friendly climate policy. It has now laid out a detailed plan for what each federal agency can do to mobilize for climate protection.
• The Build Back Fossil Free Coalition proposes a set of executive actions that the Biden administration can take immediately to protect and invest in the Black, Indigenous, Brown, and working-class communities; end the era of fossil fuel production, reject fossil fuel projects, and eliminate giveaways to oil, gas, and coal corporations; and launch a national climate mobilization to Build Back Fossil Free, delivering jobs, justice, and opportunity for all.
• The Center for Biological Diversity has just issue a report laying out 50 critical environmental protections the Biden administration can implement without action by Congress.

As the world struggles to avert the worst effects of global warming, workers around the world are seeking ways to make a just transition to a climate safe world. The Just Transition Listening Project's forum on “Workers and Just Transition: A Global View” presents an array of trade unionists and other experts from Spain, South Africa, the US, and elsewhere, along with just transition leaders from the international labor movement. The Just Transition Listening Project is a collaborative effort of the Labor Network for Sustainability and partners, which spent the better part of 2020 listening to more than 100 workers and community leaders on their experiences in the struggle for the transition to jobs in a regenerative economy. A report of these interviews is due out in the coming weeks.

Watch the recording »

by Leo Blain

“Good morning, and welcome to what I hope will be a series of dialogues between union leaders and youth climate activists.”  

Sharan Burrow's introduction to the recent panel Unions and Youth Together–A Just Transition for Climate Ambition was music to the ears of those of us in the movement for a Just Transition.

On Wednesday, December 9, 2020, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), for which Burrow is General Secretary, hosted a conversation between youth climate activists and national and international trade union leaders from Australia, Belgium Germany, India, Ireland, the Philippines, and the European Union. In the United States, meaningful collaboration and conversation between trade unions and youth climate formations is a relatively new phenomena. The Unions and Youth Together panel highlighted the immediate need for deep collaboration between the labor movement and the youth climate movement, and affirmed that the goals of labor bodies and youth climate groups are compatible and increasingly identical. 

Every panelist agreed with Burrow's declaration that, “All jobs must be climate-friendly jobs…we have to transition [to a renewable energy economy].”  

Determining how that transition could be achieved in the United States is a challenge that we at the Labor Network for Sustainability have been focused on for years. The youth climate activists and labor leaders featured in the Unions and Youth Together panel offered a multitude of ideas on achieving Just Transition that would prioritize both workers and the environment.  

You can watch Unions and Youth Together here to hear the panelists thoughts on what we’ll need to achieve a just transition, and how the labor movement and youth climate movement can (and will) collaborate on a deeper level in the future. 

Leo is a Content Producer for the Labor Network for Sustainability.

Congressional candidate Mike Siegal may have lost the 2020 congressional election in Texas’ 10th district, but this video shows why he won the support of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 520 and the Texas AFL-CIO with his campaign for a Green New Deal.

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 »