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Since 1889, May Day has also been celebrated around the world as International Workers Day. It originated as a commemoration of the U.S. general strike for an eight-hour day and the Haymarket Martyrs who were hanged on trumped-up charges for helping to lead the strike. While many U.S. unions came to abjure what they considered a radical event, in 1970 Memorial Day eve was established by the AFL-CIO as Workers Memorial Day, to recognize workers who died or suffered from exposures to hazards at work. In May Day 2006 immigrant workers (who often celebrated May Day in their home countries) chose the day for a National Day of Action to protest legislation repressing immigrants’ rights; demonstrations spread to more than 40 states, with 650,000 marching in Los Angeles and 400,00 in New York. May Day marches for immigrant rights continue in dozens of cities and states.

In the U.S. and worldwide we see growing threats to life on our Earth. At the same time we experience growing inequality, injustice, and degradation of work. The code word “Mayday” is used around the world to signal a life-threatening emergency. We are indeed facing both an emergency for climate and an emergency for workers.

The Labor Network for Sustainability is dedicated to bringing together protection of the climate, of workers, and of all people who suffer discrimination and injustice. We send you May Day greetings in honor of this day which draws together our life on earth and our life as workers  -- and as an emergency warning about the threats we face that we can only overcome together.

Image Source: UTLA Tweet, 3/26/2023

After a three-day solidarity strike supporting school service workers who belong to SEIU local 99, educators in the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) won a tentative contract agreement that provides a 21% raise. It also included many of the UTLA’s “bargaining for the common good” objectives, including smaller classes, expanding housing for low-income families, special programs for Black students, and curriculum on climate change.

The tentative settlement includes an unprecedented program for “Healthy Green Public Schools,” which may be the most far-reaching climate and environment demands ever negotiated by a US union. It includes a Climate Curriculum Implementation Task Force which will provide recommendations for:

• The development and implementation of curricula that infuses climate literacy with a racial justice lens and addresses historic disparities.
• The creation, expansion, and maintenance of outdoor education space, programs, and green space.
•  The creation of instructional partnerships and opportunities for youth to obtain internships and apprenticeships for green jobs.
• Career Technical Education (CTE) opportunities in fields that support green energy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
• The installation of solar panels on district facilities using unionized contractors.
•  Increasing the number of electric buses in the district’s fleet using unionized contractors.
• Partnership with LA Metro to extend no-cost public transportation for students.
• The installation of water filtration stations and the removal of detectable levels of lead from school drinking water fountains tested at 5 ppb of lead or higher.
• Exploration of stormwater collection on district land.
• Increased installation of universal electric vehicle (EV) chargers on school campuses for charging passenger vehicles.
• Partnerships with outside organizations in order to streamline and or defray costs of school greening.
• Climate champion at each school with a $1,800 annual stipend.
• Health and Nutrition Task Force.
   
   

For the tentative settlement see: https://mailchi.mp/utla/20230418 

In a new article titled, “Educators Are Standing Up for Healthy Green Schools and a Livable Climate This Earth Week,” two union educators describe how “students, educators, parents, school staff, and community members” around the U.S. are “taking action to demand healthy, green schools.”

The authors are Todd E. Vachon, Ph.D. Director of the Labor Education Action Research Network (LEARN) in the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers and a long-time LNS activist and Ayesha T. Qazi-Lampert, a member of the Chicago Teachers Union Climate Justice Committee.

In the article they describe how educators in locals like the Chicago Teachers Union, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers, the New Jersey Education Association in Atlantic County, and New York’s United Federation of Teachers passed resolutions “demanding action plans from their districts for green, healthy, fully-resourced community schools, prioritizing racial justice and disadvantaged communities.”

They recount how the Seattle Education Association is fighting to expand on their recent victory of a nearly $20 million bond levy to make green, healthy retrofits to Seattle public schools, creating good union jobs and pathways to those jobs for students. How Minneapolis educators are fighting against the nearby Hennepin Energy Recovery Center, which creates large amounts of toxic air pollution and carbon emissions by burning garbage within a low-income community of color. How Philadelphia teachers made plans to teach lessons on the climate crisis and climate justice to their students on Earth Day, And how members of the Oakland Education Association planned to participate in a community cleanup with the Alameda Labor Council.

They conclude:  “You can join the Educators Climate Action Network to learn more and get involved. Together we can save the world, one school at a time.”

For full article:  www.commondreams.org/opinion/earth-day-education-green-new-deal

Image Source: www.brandonforchicago.com

In a surprise victory, Brandon Johnson, formerly an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, has just won election as Chicago’s mayor. He ran in part on a program for a “Chicago Green New Deal” which includes:

Support a Just Transition

• Protect frontline workers and community members
•  Create a Just Transition Fund

Implement a Green New Deal for Air

• Pass a Cumulative Impact Assessment Ordinance

Implement a Green New Deal for Water

• Implement a fast, equitable, and just replacement of lead service lines
• Improve stormwater management systems to prevent flooded streets

Implement a Green New Deal for Housing

• Support a just transition for buildings to a clean energy future
• Work with diverse stakeholders to pass a Clean and Healthy Buildings Ordinance

Implement a Green New Deal for Education

• Retrofit school buildings to be green schools, rooted in equity
• Make sure CPS curriculum addresses climate justice
• Focus on students developing core skills from STEM to technical training that will power us through the clean energy transition

Green New Deal for Public Transportation

• Create a comprehensive approach to electrification of the CTA
• Prioritize interagency collaboration so city planning centers transit accessibility and increases ridership

Utility Justice

• Center community input in the Com Ed franchise agreement, ensuring Chicagoans get the best deal possible
• Protect low-income households from ComEd’s shutoffs
• Explore municipalization of ComEd
• Ensure our electrical supply is decarbonized by 2040

Source:

www.brandonforchicago.com/issues/environmental-justice

Image Source: bulentbaris: stock.adobe.com

According to a new study by the nonprofit Energy Futures Initiative, the Inflation Reduction Act passed last summer will create 1.5 million climate and energy security jobs by 2030 – seven years from now. Over 100,000 will be in manufacturing, with 60,000 coming from battery production alone. Nearly 600,000 jobs will be created in the construction sector, for example constructing electrical transmission lines. The electric utility sector will gain 190,000 jobs. 

For the full report:

https://energyfuturesinitiative.org/reports/jobs-emissions-and-economic-growth-what-the-inflation-reduction-act-means-for-working-families-jobs-emissions-and-economic-growth/

By Diego Valerio

Powershift is a network that mobilize the collective power of young people to mitigate climate change and create a just, clean energy future and resilient, thriving communities for all. In April a Powershift Convergence brought together thousands of climate and social justice activists in Bvlbancha/New Orleans. Diego Valerio, a first-year apprentice in IBEW Local 716 in Houston, Texas who has been organizing worker-led campaigns with the Texas Climate Jobs Project and who has been active with the Labor Network for Sustainability’s Young Worker Project, provides theses reflections on the Convergence:

I attended the latest Powershift Convergence alongside other union workers, LNS staff, and other allies to discuss and learn about the intersection of labor, youth, and environmental justice organizing with resilience in the Gulf South. Workers from the building trades and educator unions facilitated programming to center the idea that prioritizing the well-being of workers is essential when considering a green transition, and to uplift the need for a just transition.

Participants from organized labor encouraged other participants to think more concretely about ensuring that those who are most vulnerable to job losses or other detrimental impacts are supported, particularly through adequate training and education to transition workers into green jobs. They also advocated that the jobs created in the green transition are unionized, and to create social safety nets for those who are unable to transition to new opportunities.

Those at the bottom are often the ones who face the most significant challenges and consequences, and their involvement and empowerment can generate a greater impact. At Powershift I had the opportunity to interact with many inspiring individuals whose passion and commitment to making a positive impact left a lasting impression on me. I am grateful for these experiences and am determined to contribute to the movement in any way I can going forward.

Conventional wisdom often holds that the interest of workers in jobs and the interest of environmentalists in preserving nature are diametrically opposed, and that they inevitably lead to conflict between environmental advocates and organized labor. A small but growing Labor-Climate Movement, however, is challenging that frame. It is trying to draw the labor movement into the fight for climate protection while persuading the climate movement that it must take a stand for workers and social justice.

Todd E. Vachon's Clean Air and Good Jobs is perhaps the first book to take a deep dive into the history, goals, and strategy of the Labor-Climate Movement. It combines scholarly research, extensive interviews, and the author's own participation and observation in the movement to provide what is at once an accessible introduction and an in-depth account of the individuals and organizations that are creating a "just transition" alternative to the disastrous "jobs vs. environment" dichotomy.  

If you want to know more about the labor-climate movement – its past, present, and future -- read Clean Air and Good Jobs!

Proud disclosure statement: Todd E. Vachon is not only Assistant Professor of Labor Studies and Employment Relations and Director of the Labor Education Action Research Network at Rutgers University, but also a longtime LNS stalwart.

The Labor Network for Sustainability recently endorsed the call of Railroad Workers United for public ownership of American railroads. A video panel on railroad nationalization sponsored by Solutionary Rail included LNS Transit Organizer Bakari Height.

To view the panel:

https://vimeo.com/805720230?embedded=true&source=video_title&owner=2580527

How are workers around the world viewing climate change and its impact on their jobs, their labor conditions, and their industries? For a quick, revealing glimpse at the answer, take a look at the 15-minute video Talking Union, Talking Climate. It provides a dialogue among workers in California, Norway, and Nigeria about labor conditions in the fossil fuel industry, the shift to a green economy, and what a just transition might be.

The video was made by Vivian Price, a former union electrician, now professor and researcher on labor and climate change and a co-author of the LNS report Workers and Communities in Transition: Report of the Just Transition Listening Project.   The three workers are Charlie Sandoval, United Steelworkers, California, Kristian Enoksen,Industri Energi, Norway, Orike Didi, PENGASSAN, Nigeria.

To view Talking Union, Talking Climate: www.youtube.com/watch?v=pGd04LPuIeY

At a recent panel on Working Class Environmentalism at UMass Amherst, organizers from the building trades, education, and human service sectors discussed how the labor movement can organize workers around both immediate workplace issues and bigger-picture problems like the global climate crisis, and how unions can address those problems at the bargaining table and beyond.

Panelist Amy Calandrella, an Operating Engineer with IUOE Local 98 in Western Massachusetts and a member of the LNS Young Workers Organizing Committee, describes LNS as "people who are still holding on to the idea that life should be fun.”

To view the panel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Dq36Ctjc-Q

Image Source: Diter- stock.adobe.com

True Transition, an organization composed of fossil fuel workers, recently released their “American Oil and Gas Workers Survey.” It provides the answers given by 1649 oil and gas workers to 38 questions about their jobs and work lives. Among their findings:

Job Security

• Over half of the survey respondents have lost their jobs at least once previously to 2020, evidence that the oil and gas industry has already been systematically reducing its workforce.
• More than half of the survey respondents lost their jobs in 2020.
• Workers expressed anxiety about not being able to do anything else outside of the oil and gas industry and a preference for work that utilized existing competencies.
   

Safety and Working Conditions

•  Just under half of survey respondents believe that their company’s safety program was explicitly or implicitly designed to shift liability of an accident onto the worker.
• A third of survey respondents indicated that they had been ordered to engage in unsafe working practices that were in direct violation of established safety practices.
• Crew sizes are shrinking with more work expected of each worker. Smaller upstream operators appear to be under staffed intentionally to save money.
• Newer, younger hires are not being trained adequately.
   

For “Sidetracked: The Results of the American Oil & Gas Worker Survey:" www.truetransition.org/_files/ugd/0ad80c_fcf73b358e4746448e1b9a3c299bda5d.pdf

Workers are rising up and taking cities back from capitalists and corporations. Unions are negotiating for benefits for the community and not just members, emerging from behind the fortress. This moment of labor insurgency in the aftermath of the pandemic, which laid bare the disposability of the working class, has echoes in historical struggles to make cities more livable and democratic.

This is the premise for the upcoming May Day conference on Municipalism and Labor, featuring Bianca Cunningham of Bargaining for the Common Good, Claudia Jimenez of Richmond Progressive Alliance, Rand Wilson of Somerville Stands Together, and labor historian Shelton Stromquist. 

Don’t miss out on this timely and essential discussion on May 1, at 1:00-2:00 PM PT/4:00-5:00 PM ET.  Learn more and register today: www.municipalism.org

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: