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The latest report from the climate scientists of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) finds, "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” Global temperatures have risen more since 1970 than in any half century since before the last ice age, more than 100,000 years ago. Severe heatwaves that occurred once every fifty years are now occurring five times as often. Its “code red for humanity.”

Climate change is taking a heavy toll on workers. More than a quarter of Americans suffered from the effects of extreme heat in the summer of 2020, including nausea, cramps, fainting, confusion, and decreased ability to focus–and the toll is no doubt even heavier in 2021’s dreadful summer heat, which reached 116F in Portland, Oregon, leading to the death of farm workers and others from heat exposure.

LNS is dedicated to giving working people the means to respond effectively to the threat of climate change–and to the opportunity it provides to rebuild our economy on a climate-safe, worker-friendly basis. We specialize in bringing together “unlikely bedfellows” who discover that they share common interests in protecting the climate. This issue of Making a Living on a Living Planet features an Op-Ed by Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Ramon Cruz, president of the Sierra Club, calling on Congress to provide “transformative resources to fund a just transition that addresses public schools, climate and good jobs.” And it includes an update on federal infrastructure legislation–focused in particular on the new support offered for one of the keys to climate protection–public transit.

How can infrastructure and other climate-protecting policies be made worker-friendly? LNS is focusing on how to include provisions for a “just transition” that will provide good jobs and guaranteed livelihoods for workers affected by climate policy and climate change. We are launching a series of webinars growing out of our Just Transition Listening Project, which gathered the experience of more than a hundred union, community, and other leaders on how to ensure that the transition to a climate-safe economy is a just transition. And our Canadian allies, the fossil-fuel workers organized in the group Iron+Earth, are opening negotiations with the Canadian government on just transition legislation. And at its recent Convention, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance (APALA), featured an agitating and inspired opening keynote by labor and environmental justice activist Pamela Tau Lee, who called for an APALA vision-led model for just transition.

LNS also published my latest Strike! commentary, “How to Protect Workers by Protecting the Climate,” and published by PM Press, my latest book Common Preservation in a Time of Mutual Struggle. Effective response to the climate crisis is not just something for government or business leaders. Our communities and workplaces can only be saved if people organize themselves to save them. But how can that happen? Common Preservation describes scores of examples of people transforming themselves from isolation and powerlessness to cooperative action for mutual benefit–what it calls “common preservation.”

Common preservation is what LNS is all about.

In solidarity,

Jeremy Brecher

Above: AFT President Randi Weingarten by Marc Nozell. Creative Commons 2.0. Sierra Club President Ramon Cruz, Twitter. 

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Ramon Cruz, president of the Sierra Club, recently wrote a joint Op-Ed, which appeared in the New York Daily News, urging Congress to pass the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan. 

To truly tackle the crises of our crumbling schools and the add-on crises posed by climate change and persisting inequality, Congress must continue working to pass a reconciliation package that includes transformative resources to fund a just transition that addresses public schools, climate and good jobs, as well as other critical measures to support these efforts, the Op-Ed says.

Weingarten and Cruz cite “How to Build Back Better,” a report by the Sierra Club, outlining how the THRIVE (Transform, Heal and Renew by Investing in a Vibrant Economy) Agenda can generate “15 million new jobs in 10 years” by “upgrading our infrastructure for clean water, transportation, renewable energy and energy efficiency.” This would include “restoring our lands and investing in regenerative agriculture, supporting care for children and the elderly, providing essential services and manufacturing the goods needed for all of the above.” THRIVE aims to address “the inter-related crises of climate change, racial injustice, public health and economic inequity.”

How will that affect workers? Referencing the Labor Network for Sustainability's "Workers and Communities in Transition: A Report of the Just Transition Listening Project," Weingarten and Cruz uplift that “a climate-safe economy must ensure that workers who lose their jobs in fossil fuels and other industries must not be treated as stranded assets.” As the economy changes and the workforce for the extractive industries from the 20th century contract, “the only way to help workers in these industries find their way out of imminent financial stress is to rally behind a large-scale just transition.”

Read the Op-Ed here. 

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nation's authoritative climate science body, states, "It is unequivocal that human influence has warmed the atmosphere, ocean and land.” It finds that global temperatures have risen more since 1970 than in any half century since before the last ice age, more than 100,000 years ago. Severe heatwaves that occurred once every 50 years are now occurring five times as often. It’s “code red for humanity.”

Commenting on the report, John Costa, International President
of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), the largest union representing transit workers in North America, said:

This report cements the urgent cries that we have been hearing throughout the past several years for transformative change and a Green New Deal that needs to include things such as heavily expanding and investing in our public transit systems and putting forward measures that eases workers into a just transition. Anything less could be disastrous and leave millions behind in a worst-case scenario.”

Read the statement.

Hundreds of people died during the West Coast heatwave this June, which reached 116F in Portland, Ore. Farm and other workers died on the job. 

A new study reveals that more than a quarter of Americans suffered from the effects of extreme heat in the summer of 2020, including nausea, cramps, fainting, confusion, and decreased ability to focus. The health impact is likely to be even greater in the blistering summer of 2021. Heat is now the biggest weather-related killer of Americans. Those most at risk were women, low-income households, and Hispanics/Latinos.

If climate change continues unabated, by 2050 nearly 60% of people who work outdoors–such as construction workers, emergency responders and farmworkers–could experience at least one week of workdays when extreme heat makes it too dangerous to work. Nearly one in five will face a month of days too hot to work.

Heat-related injuries at work are severely undercounted by official agencies. In California, for example, the occupational safety division counts about 60 heat-related injuries annually. But a new study says the number is actually closer to 24,800. On days between 90F and 95F, the rate of workplace accidents in California increases 7%. It’s not just those who work outside–manufacturing workers and others who work in hot inside environments also suffer an increased level of accidents.

For more on heat at work:

• The Guardian, "Study reveals effects of extreme heat on tens of millions of Americans"
• IOP Science: “Compounding hazards and intersecting vulnerabilities: experiences and responses to extreme heat during COVID-19” 
• The Guardian: "Too hot to work: the dire impact of extreme heat on outdoor US jobs"
• Union of Concerned Scientists full report “Too Hot to Work” 
• Short video conveying the topline findings of the report
• The Guardian: "US workplace injuries caused by heat severely undercounted, study shows"
• IZA, Institute of Labor Economics: “Temperature, Workplace Safety, and Labor Market Inequality”
• For a detailed eye-witness account of the impact of the heatwave on essential workers in the Pacific Northwest see the revealing article “Front-Line Workers Weren’t Protected During Pacific Northwest Heat Wave”
• For action and legislation addressing heat at work: this piece by Public Citizen 

Preliminary results from a survey by LNS’s Young Workers Listening Project provides a startling picture of what young workers think about climate and labor. According to a just-released article in The Forge,

More than 92 percent of our survey respondents stated that they are concerned about how climate change will impact their future and 87 percent stated that they believe addressing climate change offers opportunities for good paying jobs. All of our interviewees shared the ways that climate change impacts their working conditions: they dispose of huge amounts of waste everyday, they work in extreme heat and inclement weather, they construct pipelines and Amazon warehouses when they know the communities they live in need better roads and more affordable housing. Many also shared experiences of attempting to reduce waste in their industries, make their unions more democratic, bargain on climate issues in contract negotiations, and respond to the ways climate change is impacting their industries and communities. 

The survey, which is on-going, already has more than 300 respondents. 

The article, titled “From Climate Strikes to the Union Hall,” is written by three activists in the Young Worker Committee of the Labor Network for Sustainability, Teresa-Marie Oller , Travis Epes , and Maria Brescia-Weiler. The article concludes:

Through the YWLP, we are finding we don’t need to build a bridge between the labor and climate movements; young people are the living bridge. We just need to provide the space, support, and resources to allow them to serve as powerful, transformative voices within the labor movement. 

Use this social media toolkit to share this article and to link to articles by other young workers in the full feature by The Forge.

by Judy Asman

A "place-based just transition" is possible to empower Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, says Pamela Tau Lee, founder of the Chinese Pacific Association and the Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), who was the opening keynote at the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance's 16th Convention.

During her keynote, Tau Lee, said: 

“At your 2019 Convention, APALA passed a resolution in support of the Green New Deal and most recently the Principles of Liberation. You also call for a just transition that prioritizes Indigenous sovereignty–oh this is so powerful.” 

Tau Lee believes APALA is an environmental justice organization and  feels “APALA is poised to make a major leadership role on climate change by crafting an Asian American, Native Hawai‘ian, Pacific Islander perspective for a national just transition. An APALA vision-led set of principles and practices that address a needed shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy for all. A just transition that draws on a rich legacy of sustainable traditional and cultural practices. A just transition that is place-based to include our communities–like Boston Chinatown."

Boston Chinatown, Tau Lee described, "is vulnerable to extreme heat and flooding with the highest level of particulate air pollution in the state. Most of Chinatown could be underground by 2050." She summarized how the Chinese Progressive Association in that area is "planning for a community-owned energy microgrid to reduce emissions and bring electric power to those most impacted by environmental injustice" and emphasized the importance of a collective voice to ensure climate issues in these communities "are uplifted and addressed and that Green New Deal infrastructure projects provide good paying union opportunities for community residents." 

• Read the full article
• Watch Tau Lee’s full opening keynote here.
• Follow the APALA on Facebook to learn more about its 16th Biennial Convention.

Photo: By Lorie Shaull. Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic.

To protect against catastrophic global warming, the United States is preparing to rapidly reduce the burning of fossil fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas. As we transition to a climate safe economy, many people ask, “What about the workers who will lose their jobs in fossil fuels and other polluting industries?”

The new commentary “How to Protect Workers by Protecting the Climate” by Jeremy Brecher of the Labor Network for Sustainability spells out practical ways to

• Protect individual workers
• Protect communities
• Create jobs
• Pay for a just transition

The Commentary argues that, “Protecting workers and communities is an integral part of protecting the climate that must be built into climate policy from the start” and describes many historical and current examples at local, state, and national levels that do so.

Read “How to Protect Workers by Protecting the Climate.”

The fossil-fuel workers organization Iron+Earth has announced that Canada’s Minister of Natural Resources has invited energy workers to consult on Just Transition legislation.

In response, Iron+Earth issued a statement calling for urgent and effective action:

Fossil fuel industry workers have the knowledge and expertise to build Canada’s net-zero future that will support our families and communities - if they get the training they need. We’re pleased to hear Minister O’Regan say that fossil fuel industry workers will have a central role in the consultations for Just Transition legislation. Now it’s time to put those words into action. We’ll be watching to ensure fossil fuel industry and Indigenous workers have a seat at the table to ensure the legislation meets their needs and leaves no one behind.

According to a new poll commissioned by Iron+Earth, Canadian fossil fuel workers are eager to participate in the transition to a net-zero economy:

• 69% are interested in switching to a career in the net-zero economy
• 88% of fossil fuel industry workers are interested in skills training and development for jobs in the net-zero economy
• 80% of fossil fuel industry workers support a National Upskilling Initiative to rapidly upskill fossil fuel industry and Indigenous workers for net-zero economy jobs

Get additional details here. For more background, see "Canadian Workers Pushing ‘Just Transition Act,'" the Labor Network for Sustainability's Making a Living on a Living Planet #52, July/August 2021. 

A new Labor Network for Sustainability background paper asks “Can Carbon Capture Save Our Climate – and Our Jobs?”

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate what role carbon capture should play in our efforts to protect the climate–and ourselves–from devastating climate change while also protecting those who might be adversely affected by those efforts. It presents the history of carbon capture efforts; their objectives; their current effectiveness; and their potential role in future climate protection.

The Labor Network for Sustainability is dedicated to developing strategies for climate protection for workers and their communities. We’ve been involved with the issue of carbon capture for more than a decade, promoting discussions within the labor movement and publishing evaluations of climate protection strategies.

We believe that the use of carbon capture should be determined by scientific evaluation of its effectiveness in meeting the targets and timetables necessary to protect the climate and of its full costs and benefits for workers and society. Those include health, safety, environmental, employment, waste disposal, and other social costs and benefits.

The paper concludes that carbon capture should be used if and only if it provides a means of protecting the climate that is more beneficial to society than other means, such as renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Wonder how people who feel isolated and powerless can sometimes join together to form social movements and engage in collective action? Wonder how people who are at each other’s throats can sometimes come to recognize and act on their common interests? How can we use social movements and collective action to address today’s global problems of climate destruction, oppression, and inequality? Those are the questions addressed in Jeremy Brecher's latest book Common Preservation in a Time of Mutual Destruction, foreword by Todd Vachon.

Organizing a union to exercise power for common interests is “common preservation.” So is joining with others around the world to halt climate destruction. Common preservation is shifting from a strategy of meeting individual needs individually to meeting individual needs through collective action. It’s what we need for our survival and well-being today.

Listen to an in-depth interview on common preservation with Brecher on KOPN radio. Order the book here. 

She began her work in the labor movement as an intern at United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 in Maryland and joined the Labor Network for Sustainability team in 2020 to provide support and research assistance throughout the Just Transition Listening Project.

She continues her work with the LNS as Project Manager of the Young Worker Listening Project.

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