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We know that the status quo is unsustainable. We know that creating a sustainable world will take a historic struggle against the forces that are perpetuating and aggravating unsustainability. But we also know that around the world millions of people are struggling -- against all odds -- to establish a sustainable world. The mission of the Labor Network for Sustainability is to help American workers organize themselves to participate in that struggle.

Over the past year the LNS newsletter Making a Living on a Living Planet has chronicled the contribution of the labor-climate movement to the movement for sustainability – environmental, economic, and social. In this year-end issue we provide a capsule recap of some of LNS’s highlights in 2022.

These snapshots show that truly “the struggle continues.” You know that in 2023 we will be there with you – and we know you will be there with us – undaunted.

LNS is enlarging the scope of “climate workers,’ such as railroaders and transit workers, to lift-up the importance of investing in the transit workforce to create good jobs for operators and maintenance workers as we transition to clean energy transit systems. This year, our acclaimed Transit Equity Day (TED) included more than 60 cities. You may recall that Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Federal Transit Administrator Nuria Fernandez declared February 4 as Transit Equity Day. We are gearing up TED actions now for 2023!

Here are some ways to get involved for #TransitEquityDay2023:

• For more information, visit www.labor4sustainability.org/transit-equity-2023
• Click HERE to register an event on February 4, 2023
• Click HERE to sponsor Transit Equity Day
• Click HERE to sign up for the Transit Equity Network, a Google group where we’ll plan the events and get you plugged in.
• Email Bakari at bakari@labor4sustainability.org with any questions

LNS is empowering a rising generation of young workers to lead the labor-climate movement into the future. This fall, LNS convened an inaugural Young Workers Convergence that brought together nearly 100 young workers from 23 states (as well as DC and Canada) and more than 50 different worker and environmental organizations to participate in workshops, hear from our union comrades who have successfully built labor power in service of climate justice, share strategies across states and sectors, and build a collective vision for a climate justice movement led by and for workers.  This event ignited an emergent network of young union, climate, and community organizers who are bringing new energy and focus to the climate justice movement. In the coming year, we will grow and support this critical cohort with training, strategy support, and regional convenings across the country.  

Check out this Teen Vogue article Teen Vogue article to learn more about the Young Worker Organizing Project.

In 2022, LNS advised the Green New Deal Network (GNDN) on how to strengthen the pro-labor, climate justice provisions in federal policy proposals. Although Build Back Better (BBB) and the Protect the Right to Organize Act could not get past the Big Coal/Big Oil members in Congress, the coalition and Biden Administration passed the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which provides unprecedented federal funding for new investments in green energy infrastructure. Now our job is to help state and local allies understand and access these new resources to implement just transition policies and programs, spotlight success stories, AND expose green-washing projects that would harm workers and vulnerable communities, and drastically delay progress in curtailing carbon-emissions.

Image Source: Jeremy Francis- stock.adobe.com

LNS is working strategically in key states that are leading the national narrative on climate justice. This year, LNS and Jobs with Justice San Francisco launched California Labor for Climate Jobs, a coalition of labor unions calling for an equitable, worker- and union-led transition to a resilient economy with good jobs based on clean energy and expanded public and social services. The coalition won a $40M Displaced Oil and Gas Workers Fund in the California State Budget, and advocated for support for communities and public jobs that will be impacted as oil and gas phases out across the state. 

LNS also participated as a member of the Los Angeles County and City Just Transition Task Force that released a Just Transition Strategy – a first-ever framework for supporting workers and communities impacted by oil drilling phase-out policies. Essential to making the transition just is the necessary support to transition workers’ skills into jobs of comparable, family sustaining compensation or retirement. The Just Transition Strategy was noted as core to LA City’s Green New Deal laws, and a test-case for Native Nations, environmental justice communities, and workers to begin to envision together an ecologically just and economically sustainable future.

Image Source: Rachel- stock.adobe.com 

In Jackson, Mississippi, our on-the ground organizer Joshua Dedmond is actively working on emergency response for water distribution and recovery from the extreme flooding that overwhelmed the city’s antiquated water filtration system. Our goal is to fortify the Justice for Jackson coalition in opposing the Governor’s push to privatize management of Jackson's municipal water supply. Success for Jackson will mean strong democratic engagement and public accountability in overhauling the city's utility infrastructure to ensure equitable access, distribution, and pricing of safe drinking water for all residents, as well as fair labor practices, wages, and good jobs for the community in rebuilding its water system for a sustainable future.

These climate change challenges are not unique to Jackson, Mississippi. Chronic underinvestment and systemic racism, and the compounding threats of sea level rise and flooding are endemic throughout the Gulf States, especially in BIPOC communities. For the coming year, LNS is planning a southern strategy to build more power and political leverage for frontline environmental justice organizing by engaging and enlisting impacted workers and their unions in demands for building climate resilient infrastructure and communities.

By Oren Kadosh, LNS Legal and Policy Researcher

For the past several months, LNS has had the privilege of convening the monthly meetings of a newly formed Educators Climate Action Network (ECAN), formed by union educators across the United States in both the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and the National Education Association (NEA). ECAN’s monthly meetings have thus far each been composed of ECAN members or outside experts coming to present on a primary topic of discussion chosen in advance. Monthly meetings have focused on topics such as climate justice demands in bargaining, climate justice curriculums and education standards in schools, and the building and retrofitting of green, healthy public schools. There have been richly informative presentations and discussions at each meeting and an impressive repository of resources has already been assembled on each meeting topic. 

While this space has been fruitful, and while the creation of space for solidarity and collective learning is a prerequisite for movement building, there is also a desire among members to construct the network further into an organized body for exercising power. ECAN members are now starting to act where they are, organizing for action such as: getting interdisciplinary school curriculum and cross-cutting educational standards on climate justice passed into law at local and State levels; turning their schools into solar powered “resilience hubs” capable of providing power and cooling to community members during climate emergencies and related weather events; and bringing community members into their contract bargaining committees while incorporating community-informed green retrofitting of schools as major contract bargaining demands, beyond exclusively their own demands as workers. LNS will continue to support the development of this exciting formation. If you wish to be involved, please visit bit.ly/LNSECAN to sign up, as well as share the link and our flyer with your fellow union educators!

 In May, the Center for Global Work and Employment, Labor Education Action Research Network (LEARN) and Center for Environmental Justice at Colorado State University sponsored a virtual discussion on the Just Transition Listening Project (JTLP)’s 2021 report Workers and Communities in Transition. You can watch the recording online on LEARN-TV.

In 2022, the Labor Network for Sustainability helped build solidarity between environmentalists and Santa Ana, CA factory workers who stood up to their employer, Kingspan’s, so-called ‘green’ manufacturing processes that pollute indoor air and the local watershed. Kingspan factory workers are organizing to demand safe working conditions, including addressing unhealthy levels of PM2.5 pollution inside the workplace that they measured in collaboration with UC Irvine pollution scientist Dr. Shahir Masri.The workers also blew the whistle on Kingspan for misrepresenting its daily operations and water pollution clean-up efforts to the CalEPA. Also, in October 2021, a majority of Kingspan’s Santa Ana workers delivered a petition to managers demanding a fair process to decide whether to form a union.

The Labor Network for Sustainability hosted a Zoom teach-in with these workers, Dr. Shahir Masri, and environmental, community, and Labor allies to build solidarity and momentum for this campaign. Following the teach-in, 45 local and national environmental groups signed onto a letter demanding that the Green Building Community stop partnering with Kingspan until the international building materials company cleans up its act. This action was part of a larger campaign mounting pressure on Kingspan in what is truly a modern day David and Goliath story– one with true economic, environmental, and worker justice at its core.

For updates on this campaign, follow @CleanUpKingspan on Twitter.

The Labor Network for Sustainability was proud to welcome Larry Williams Jr. as its new Executive Director in 2022. Commenting on his appointment, LNS’ new Executive Larry Williams said:

It is a deep honor to join the leadership of LNS, the preeminent labor-climate organization, and their Board, Staff and leadership at a time when our mission is at its most critical. I’m ready to get to the work of building a powerful and progressive labor-climate movement ready to define and build a Just Transition from the bottom up.

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: