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These are just small indicators of the magnitude of the climate emergency we face. And yet, where is the emergency response on the part of governments, corporations -- and of our labor movement?

The answer is, nowhere.

A recent report by the Energy Institute found that, despite endless conferences, speeches, resolutions, and agreements to reduce climate destruction, global greenhouse gas emissions increased last year. And they are expected to rise further in the year ahead.

It is time for those who have so far been contemplating climate destruction with indifference to stop, look, and listen. Climate change is not about something far away and long in the future. It is not about something that is only happening to someone else. This is about us and our children.

It is time in particular for those of us in the labor movement to take a fresh look at what climate change means for our movement and for us as individuals and workers. What is benignly referred to as "the climate issue" is destroying the very basis of our existence -- as individuals and as a movement. Too many unions are dug in on policies that do not challenge -- or even exacerbate -- the expanding extraction and burning of fossil fuels. But there are other, better options for workers and organized labor. We at the Labor Network for Sustainability are dedicated to helping our labor movement to explore them.

In this issue of Making a Living on a Living Planet you can read about some of the things that unions, workers, and their allies are doing to fight climate change -- and to do so in ways that also create good jobs and reverse inequality and injustice. You'll see how 340,000 union truck drivers just forced UPS to provide air conditioning in their trucks and worksites to protect them from devastating heat. How the Boston Green New Deal is simultaneously protecting the climate and providing good jobs through its youth jobs corp and its program to provide free, sustainably-grown food for all public school students through a worker-owned coop in a low-income community. How the government of Canada is promoting a "Sustainability Jobs Act" to create sustainable jobs and support workers and communities. And how climate justice advocates in Appalachia and the Gulf South have joined together to fight the fossil fuel industry's threats to their regions.

Rather than hiding our eyes from the climate threat, let's open our eyes to what we can do to fight it.

Image Source: @UEUnion on Twitter, June 28, 2023

In what may be the first strike in US history to demand green jobs, 1400 striking members of UE Locals 506 and 618 who build locomotives for Wabtec in Erie, PA are demanding that their employers start producing green locomotives. Their proposals grow out of UE's "Green Locomotive Project," which aims to "build the worker and community power necessary to compel the railroads to upgrade their locomotive stock and adopt green technology, and to ensure that new technologies lead to jobs at existing union factories." A recent report  from the University of Massachusetts Amherst finds that building such locomotives would create between 2,600 and 4,300 jobs in the Lawrence Park plant, as well as three to five thousand additional jobs in Erie County. 

For more on the strike: Wabtec Workers Walk Out for Grievance Strikes and Green Locomotives | Labor Notes

For background on the Green Locomotive Project: The Filthy Emissions of Railroad Locomotives—and the Rail Unions Sounding the Alarm | The American Prospect

To contribute to the strike solidarity fund: https://actionnetwork.org/fundraising/support-ue-members-striking-for-green-jobs

 Image Source: vladischern- stock.adobe.com

Half of the US population has faced an extreme weather alert between May 1 and June 15. On June 21, more than 51 million Americans were facing extreme weather alerts, a third of them living in federally-designated disadvantaged areas.

Source: Union of Concerned Scientists, “Danger Season 2023”

 Image Source: @Teamsters on Twitter, Jun 13, 2023

On June 14, the Teamsters and UPS agreed to tentative language to equip UPS vehicles with air conditioning systems, new heat shields, and additional fans, according to a union statement. The agreement will cover the 340,000 UPS workers who are members of the Teamsters union.

 NBC News reports that temperature readings taken by workers in UPS trucks in Arizona and Florida have shown temperatures above 150 degrees. At least 145 UPS employees have been hospitalized for heat illnesses since 2015. 

“Folks are super excited” about the heat agreement, said Zakk Luttrell, a UPS driver and union shop steward in Norman, Okla. “It’s not just about what’s cost effective and efficient anymore, it’s about keeping people alive.”

 Meanwhile, 97% of UPS employees voting authorized a strike to start August 1. Such a strike would be the largest against a single employer in US history.

Image Source: JuYochi- stock.adobe.com

As temperatures in Texas soar above 100 degrees, Governor Greg Abbott has just signed a law that will make it illegal for any Texas city to require employers to allow construction workers get water breaks, even in extreme heat. The law nullifies ordinances in Austin and Dallas that require 10-minute breaks every four hours so that construction workers can drink water and protect themselves from the sun. 

 At least 42 Texas workers died from environmental heat exposure between 2011 and 2021 according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the highest number of any state. Six out of 10 Texas construction workers are Latino.

Cityscape of Boston. Image Source: @rabbit75_cav, Canva Stock

What happens when the principles of the Green New Deal are applied at a local level? The Boston Green New Deal, led by mayor Michelle Wu, may be the most comprehensive example so far. A new Commentary by LNS newsletter editor Jeremy Brecher provides an overview of its first year, including programs for transit, school construction, protection of neighborhoods from flooding, worker rights, affordable housing, and many other initiatives. According to Mayor Wu,

 City government is where a Green New Deal means doubling the number of street trees, so we are absorbing storm water, cleaning our air, and bringing beauty to our communities. It means converting our school bus fleet of about 300 diesel buses and another 400 fuel buses over to electric, which will not only get harmful pollution out of the lungs of our kids and out of our neighborhoods, but also tap into mobile charging stations that large electric buses can become in times of power outages.

 We can each be a proof point for how big change can happen day by day. And we can create the momentum for state and federal government to really show that we can put forward big changes that deliver immediate impact.

For more, read "The Green New Deal in the Cities – Part 1: Boston”

Image Source: DD Images- stock.adobe.com

The government of Canada has just introduced in Parliament the “Canadian Sustainable Jobs Act.” According to the government, the Act will “facilitate and promote the creation of sustainable jobs and support workers and communities in Canada in line as the world advances toward a net-zero future.” It will “put workers and communities at the center of federal policy and decision-making by establishing a framework for accountability, a governance structure and engagement mechanisms to guide effective federal action.”

 To hit the ground running, a Sustainable Jobs Interim Action Plan includes:

• Establish the Sustainable Jobs Secretariat
• Create a Sustainable Jobs Partnership Council
• Develop economic strategies through the Regional Energy and Resource Tables
• Introduce a sustainable jobs stream under the Union Training and Innovation Program
• Advance funding for skills development toward sustainable jobs
• Promote Indigenous-led solutions and a National Benefits-Sharing Framework
• Improve labor market data collection, tracking and analysis
• Motivate investors and draw in industry leadership to support workers
• Collaborate and lead on the global stage
• Establish legislation that ensures ongoing engagement and accountability
   

For text of the bill: www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/training/initiatives/sustainable-jobs/plan.html

 For a government backgrounder on the bill: www.canada.ca/en/natural-resources-canada/news/2023/06/backgrounder-canadian-sustainable-jobs-act.html

 For Sustainable Jobs Action Plan: www.canada.ca/en/services/jobs/training/initiatives/sustainable-jobs/plan.html

Image Source: Taproot Earth’s Executive Summary Report

The Gulf South and Appalachia have increasingly been the targets of environmental destruction by fossil fuel and other toxic industrial infrastructure – and the location of significant campaigns against that destruction. Over the past year-and-a-half the climate justice center Taproot Earth convened People’s Movement Assemblies to align grassroots organizers and regional efforts across the Gulf South and Appalachia. Along with the Climate and Community Project they have issued the “We Choose Now Climate Action Strategy” which highlights the deep connections between the Gulf South and Appalachia and calls for action to reject extractive economies and cultivate regional solutions that advance collective healing and climate justice.

 The report notes that, 

For many communities in the Gulf and Appalachia, the most lucrative financial paths are fossil fuels, military, or drugs. Future generations deserve more opportunities. We need solutions that move us away from labor that is extracted and exploited, to labor that is fulfilling and life-giving.

 Proposed solutions include: 

1. Repurpose fossil fuel infrastructure for renewable energy economy
2. Build a mine/well reclamation or fossil fuel transition workforce
3. Develop state Civilian Climate Corps and expand existing environmental job training programs 

For Executive Summary: https://taproot.earth/wp-content/uploads/CAS_Executive_Summary_2023.pdf

 For Full Reports: https://taproot.earth/category/reports/?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=433c6f6a-c4d1-4906-bb49-a4cb89ac33eb

As key states like Illinois, New York, and California start reducing their production and use of coal, oil, and gas, what will happen to the workers who produce, transport, and burn those fossil fuels? A new by Commentary Jeremy Brecher, LNS co-founder and senior strategic advisor, portrays state-level programs to guard workers and communities against loss of livelihoods and income from climate protection policies.

 To read the commentary: www.labor4sustainability.org/strike/protecting-workers-and-communities-from-below-part-2-there-ought-to-be-a-law/

Image Source: TarikVision- stock.adobe.com

A district court in Montana is deciding a case brought by 16 youth plaintiffs who are arguing that, by enacting pro fossil-fuel policies, state officials have violated their constitutional rights to a healthy environment. The trial has featured testimony of experts from around the world as well as from the youth themselves.

 One 19-year-old plaintiff, Grace Gibson-Snyder, says thinking about Montana’s future fills her with fear. She told the court the rivers she grew up rafting are getting lower amid frequent dry spells. The air she breathes in during soccer practice more frequently fills with wildfire smoke. And in Glacier national park in Montana’s Rocky Mountains, the glaciers are melting. 

 I have hopefully 80 years left of living in Montana and living on this earth,” she said on the stand. “Knowing that my health will be in danger for those 80 years, my livelihood, my home? That’s a long time to live with that.

 While many cases have been brought on the basis of a constitutional right to a stable and healthy climate, this is the first constitutional climate in US history to reach trial. Four cases are pending in four other states and a major federal case, Juliana vs. U.S., was put on track for trial June 1 after eight years of delay.

 Image Source: Bluecloud9. (2020). Climate Strike IMG_0629. Wikimedia Commons.

A labor-climate movement is developing not only in the US but worldwide. An on-line forum in June brought together labor activists from different countries to explore the global labor movement’s response to climate change.  

Speakers included:

•  South Africa: Ferron Pedro, 350Africa.org
• USA: Jeremy Brecher, Labor Network for Sustainability
• Germany: Rika Muller-Vahl, Fridays for Future activist involved in the "We ride together" campaign
• Susan Price, Global Ecosocialist Network Steering Committee member 
  

To view the webinar: www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyegA9fgQJo

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: