The Great Upheaval was a movement widely portrayed as a violent rebellion.  In the midst of a national depression, and with unions decimated, railroad workers struck and closed most of the nation’s railroads; crowds battled or won over police, state militias, and Federal troops; roving crowds and general strikes halted work in a dozen major cities.

In a few cities, notably St. Louis, the Great Upheaval became a general strike.  The British consul in St. Louis wrote home:

“The city was practically in the hands of a mob . . .  Parades of the discontented were permitted on all principal streets without a show of countervailing force, and nightly mass meetings were held in the most public places, where thousands of the most ignorant and depraved in the community were made riotous by the incendiary speeches of their orators.”

(His description was perhaps a bit overblown; the St. Louis Globe-Democrat said of one protest march “A more orderly procession has seldom been seen.”)

An informal “executive committee” with delegates from many groups of workers ordered most work stopped and freight trains put in their roundhouses.  But they allowed passenger trains to run and permitted grain mills to operate so that people could have bread.  Workers controlled the life of the city as employers petitioned the executive committee for permission to operate their shops.

State militias and Federal troops were called out around the country to suppress the movement.  President Rutherford B. Hayes wrote in diary:  The strikers were “put down by force.”  Over 100 of them were killed.

The world of 1877 is as different from today’s as a printed handbill and a digital podcast.  But there are also some deep similarities between the 1877 and today.

Both times followed periods of rapid growth.  In the era following the Civil War, local economies had been incorporated into a national economy as a result of railroads and the emergence of national corporations.  Today, the national economy has been incorporated into a global economy by globalization policies, the Internet, and the rise of the global corporation.

In both cases, great promises were made regarding the benefit that growth would bring.  But for many workers, the result was a race to the bottom in which local communities competed with others all over the country – or today all over the world – to see who could produce for the lowest wages.

Both periods also saw a global movement of peoples as local economies were disrupted and people had to go far from home to find a livelihood.

1877, like today, marked the end of a period of growth and the outbreak of economic crisis.  The depression that started in 1873 was one of the worst in US history; the same could be said of the “Great Recession” we face today.

Both these economic crises were marked by mass unemployment, even as huge needs went unmet.  The both represented a deep crisis of a system in which production was conducted to produce profit, not to meet human needs.

Both periods also saw the culmination of a shift from viewing workers as human beings to viewing “labor” as a commodity to be bought and sold.  In the 1870s, the idea that working people were defined as citizens of a republic was taking a back seat to the idea that workers were nothing but contractors selling a commodity – their labor – in a market.  When they had no purchasers for their labor, they were left to starve.

Today we face a similar free-market ideology, often referred to as “neoliberalism.”  After three-quarters of a century in which workers were increasingly defined as human beings possessing human rights, neoliberalism is redefining labor as nothing but a commodity.  Job security has been replaced by a system of contingent work in which workers’ labor is bought and sold by the piece.  Social rights to economic security, health, education, and housing are being abandoned and denied.  Support for those who are unemployed as a result of the system’s failure is being reduced to the level of 1877.

Before the 1873 depression, the US had more than 30 national trade unions; by 1877 it was down to 9.  We see a parallel decline today, as union membership in the private sector is barely a third of what it was a few decades ago.

Meanings for today

A pervasive demand of workers and the unemployed in 1877 was for public works and more broadly for “production for use.”  A St. Louis rally in the midst of the general strike passed a resolution calling for the president to convene Congress to appropriate one hundred million dollars “to save the people’s lives by giving them work.”

“We are in favor of law and order” but “we are also in favor of bread and meat.”

The concluding resolution of the rally stated that

“every man willing to perform a use to society” was “entitled to a living.”

“If the present system of production and distribution fails to provide for our wants, it then becomes the duty of the government to enact such laws as will insure equal justice to all the peoples of the nation.”

There is one overriding difference between the world of 1877 and that of today.  Human induced climate change threatens to disrupt all human life.  As the British government’s Stern report established, climate change, unabated, will cause economic dislocation greater than the Great Depression and World War I and II put together.

But the concept of production for use, so clearly articulated by workers in 1877, may have a central role to play in making the economic and social changes that are necessary to correct climate change.

More than a century later, President Barack Obama, presenting his stimulus package, echoed the theme, noting “both the paradox and the promise” of the moment:

“There are millions of Americans trying to find work, even as, all around the country, there is so much work to be done.”

He said his program would:

- double the production of alternative energy in three years
- modernize three-quarters of federal buildings
- improve energy efficiency of two million homes
- create millions of new jobs
- spark the creation of a clean energy economy

We know what has happened: that program has been blocked or abandoned.  The result is catastrophic both for American workers and for the future of the earth and our species.

Henry Allen at a demonstration in the midst of the 1877 general strike said:

“We workingmen can present such a force that even the government itself must and will comply with our demands.
We will take such steps as that the old and the young,
the sick and the healthy will be provided for.”

Today we must add:

“And the planet will be provided for.”

The meeting you probably didn’t hear about: In Vancouver, Canada, on the other side of the North American continent, representatives of 176 million workers in 156 countries and territories met for the Second World Congress of the International Trade Union Confederation.  They put forward a visionary but practical program to address the world crisis through a “global new deal.”

World political leaders can think of nothing but trying to put the world back the way it was before the Great Recession.  The ITUC program, in contrast, starts by recognizing that today’s energy, food, jobs, and climate crises are the consequence of that world’s faulty economic model.

The ITUC calls instead for a transformational change to make global production and consumption systems permanently sustainable.  That transformation will require – and make possible – decent work for all.

The ITUC’s climate change resolution forthrightly states that “Climate change is a workers’ issue.”  It points out:

“The planet’s warming continues to accelerate; water wars are already underway; unending droughts and expanding desertification are affecting the livelihood of millions; the rapid melting of glaciers increase devastating downsteam floods in highly populated areas; climate-related migrations, often intertwined within local and regional conflicts are growing; and substantial rises in food prices and energy costs throw millions into abject poverty.”

Economic and environmental issues cannot be segregated into separate compartments; today’s multiple crises require an integrated approach to “sustainable development through a just transition.”  That means social progress, environmental protection, economic, democratic governance, labor, gender, and other human rights must go hand in hand.

Far from having to wait till the global economy recovers, climate protection can be the primary engine of recovery.  Sustainable development and a just transition can be the keys to a massive global creation of new jobs – a global green new deal.

The ITUC climate change resolution emphasizes the need to meet the greenhouse gas emissions cuts that scientists say are necessary to stop global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees C, because more than that will create irreversible impacts on human and natural worlds.  That will require 85 percent reductions by 2050.  And that in turn will require reductions by developed countries of 25-40 percent compared to 1990 levels. It points out that new scientific evidence suggests that temperature increase will have to be restricted to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

These are considerably greater cuts than are included in current US climate legislation proposals.  Some US unions have endorsed near-term science-based emissions targets, including the Service Employees, Transportation Workers, and Laborers.  Others are wary that such cuts might cost some of their members their jobs.

The ITUC program recognizes that problem and emphasizes the need for a “just transition” that anticipates potential losses of economic activity, employment and income in certain sectors and regions and protects the most vulnerable around the world.  It also notes that climate change is “already impacting the livelihoods of millions of working people” around the world.  It cites estimates that over one billion people will be forced to leave their homes by 2050 due to climate change, environmental degradation, and resulting conflict.

The costs of climate protection pale before such devastation.  But that devastation is now inevitable unless we rapidly make the change to a low-carbon economy.

The economic and social changes required to make our world sustainable are huge. But here’s the good news:  Because we have to reconstruct the global economy on a sustainable basis, we have to create the tens of millions of new green jobs that can also correct our global jobs shortage.

World leaders may not yet have heard the news, but workers from 156 countries recognize curing climate change represents not only the world’s interest, but their own.

Rising greenhouse gases. Climate change. Rising energy costs. Declining fossil fuels reserves. Now the BP disaster. With the arguments against fossil fuels continuing to pile up it’s no wonder people have latched onto nuclear power as an attractive solution.

Here are eight questions that we should answer before, not after, we head down the nuclear path:

1. Are nuclear hazards any different from other hazards we accept every day?
However unlikely, the potential damage that something goes wrong with nuclear power is way out of proportion to the other risks we choose to take as a society. The Chernobyl disaster continues to teach that lesson: the radiation cloud spread over 27 countries; 500,000 people are estimated to have died from radiation exposure over the last two decades; 1,100 square miles surrounding the reactor remain uninhabitable; 5-8 million people continue to live in the contamination zone causing a surge in infant mortality and children born with deformities. The scale, deadliness, and unstoppability of radiation after leakage or an accident at a mine or power plant make nuclear energy unique. Dare we create an energy system where one mistake could turn an entire American region into another Chernobyl?

2. Do we want to switch to nuclear power when there is ZERO room for error?
BP official Mark Hafle recently told a Coast Guard investigative panel that “all the risks had been addressed” at the Deepwater well. With oil still gushing, he’s clearly untethered from reality, but it raises an important question: While we can force BP and other oil companies to improve their safety and environmental damage plans, are there are some technological systems — like nuclear power and deepwater drilling — that are so dangerous that they are unacceptable unless they have zero possibility for error. And who could ever give such a guarantee? If we build the thousands of nuclear plants required to meet growing energy needs, even the smallest mistake puts millions of lives at risk. As a society are we willing to accept the risk — however small — of such a catastrophic disaster?

3. Can nuclear power production be kept safe from natural disasters?
Regardless of our best laid plans, tornadoes, earthquakes, tsunamis and other irrepressible natural forces will inevitably strike some nuclear power sites. Just this month a tornado forced the shutdown of the Fermi2 atomic reactor in Michigan, the site of a 1966 melt-down that nearly irradiated the entire Great Lakes region. We need to ask ourselves, is it possible to manage the risk posed by natural disaster?

4. Can nuclear power sites be terrorist-proof?
Al Qaeda has repeated expressed its intent to launch nuclear attacks on American soil. Pakistan’s nuclear facilities have been attacked three times since 2007. South Africa’s Pelindaba nuclear site was breached by gunman in 2007. According to Warren Buffet, concerned over his major stake in the insurance industry, a nuclear terrorist strike is matter not if, but when: “We’re going to have something in the way of a major nuclear [terrorist] event in this country. It will happen. Whether it will happen in 10 years or 10 minutes, or 50 years … it’s virtually a certainty.” Do we want to give terrorist elements–or even a “lone wolf” — thousands of new sources of radioactive material and the ability to kill thousands of people with one successful attack?

5. How are we going to store the waste?
Spent nuclear fuel rods have a half-life of nearly 30,000 years; depleted uranium will remain toxic for an estimate 4.5 million years. After decades of scientific research at locations like Yucca Mountain in Nevada, no one has figured out how and where to store the radioactive waste created by nuclear power generation. Energy Secretary Steven Chu recently admitted that he has no firm plans for the radioactive wastes created by the proposed new reactors, or by the 104 currently licensed. And according to CBS News, waste is currently leaking from a quarter of US nuclear power sites. In the last three years alone, cancer-causing tritium was found in the water and soil around nuclear sites in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Vermont. How can we move forward with more nuclear power plants when we do not have the capability — or even a plan — to safely store existing toxic waste?

6.  Can extraction be made safe?
Millions of tons of toxic waste is created at the start of the “nuclear chain” with uranium extraction producing radioactive rock, dust and water — resulting in contaminated water supplies and skyrocketing cancer, kidney and other deadly diseases in communities near uranium mines.  The extraction jobs are some of the most dangerous anywhere, with workers regularly overexposed to radiation.  Is the human and environmental cost of uranium extraction being properly included on the cost side of nuclear power?

7. How are we going to transport the waste?
Another unsolved problem is how to safely transport nuclear material across the country. During the decades long debate over storing the nation’s radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain, transportation experts estimated that waste disposal from existing nuclear plants would require 1 truck, every 4 hours, 24-hours a day, 365 days a year for 38 years. They estimated that over the same period there would be 130 truck and 440 rail accidents. Each transport container heading to Yucca would hold enough radiation to create a devastating dirty bomb. Shipments would need to travel through 43 states, within one half mile of the homes of tens of millions of people, and through more than 100 of America’s largest cities. Barge shipments would move through 17 port cities on the Atlantic seaboard and through the drinking water of the Great Lakes via Lake Michigan. Do we want to build new nuclear power plants when we have yet to figure out a safe way to transport radioactive material across the country?

8. Are nuclear power plants worth the cost?
Nuclear power is expensive — really expensive. After reporting on the true costs of building and running nuclear power plants, Time magazine concluded: “It turns out that new plants would be not just extremely expensive but spectacularly expensive.” A report published by the Center for American Progress estimates costs for power from new nuclear plants to be 25 to 30 cents per kilowatt-hour–triple current U.S. electricity rates and 10 times the cost of energy efficiency. Wall street has largely deemed nuclear power a bad financial bet, with credit agencies such as Moody’s asking “whether new liquidity is even available to support such capital-intensive projects.” As a result Congress has been forced to dole out millions in loan guarantees in order to attract private financing for new nuclear plants. This is despite the fact that the Congressional Budget Office has concluded that the risk of default on a nuclear loan would be “very high - well above 50 percent.” Do we want to promote a energy “solution” that is more expansive and financially unstable — and creates fewer jobs — than renewable alternatives?

With gallows humor, my fellow oystermen around the country have been passing around a Youtube clip of a 1960 educational film produced by the oil industry entitled “Lifeline to an Oyster.”

This reel explains how in the late 1950’s Louisiana oystermen began sounding the alarm that oil production in the Gulf was killing their oysters. The American Petroleum Institute came to the rescue, donating $2 million to researchers at Texas A&M University to “figure out the problem” by studying the effects of oil on oysters. Any guesses on the results?

Turns out oysters love oil.

According to the narrator, after six months of living in a simulated oil spill “The test oysters showed no ill effects from oil. As a matter of fact the test oysters were so happy they brought forth new generations to share their lot. They never had it so good!” Scientists are shown explaining to eager oystermen why oil is a friend not foe of the oyster industry.

Fast forward 50 years and oil companies like BP remain dedicated to “helping” oystermen. Within days after the initial spill BP, set up employment centers where oystermen and other fishermen had the opportunity to wait in line for temporary jobs “cleaning” the Gulf. Tony Hayward, BP’s CEO soothed fears by explaining amount of oil in the Gulf is “tiny” compared with all that seawater and that the environmental impact will be “very, very modest.” BP even donated $2 million to the Louisiana Seafood Council to figure out how to respond to worried customers asking: “Are these oysters from the Gulf?”

Gallows humor masks our pain and fury.

BP’s reckless and insatiable pursuit of ever-deeper underwater oil wells has turned the Gulf into a poisonous swamp forcing the shutdown of 1000’s of acres of oyster grounds. NOAA has set up an oil “damage assessment” program to use Gulf oysters to signal where and when oil contaminants are entering the food chain. As one scientist explained, “Because oysters have to sit there and take it and they can’t run away, they’re a very good canary in the coal mine.”

One oyster filters up to 50 gallons of water a day — with nowhere to hide they are left to choke on BPs toxic sludge. And whatever oysters do survive will poison the entire ocean food chain as both oil and dispersant contaminants concentrate in their tissues and are passed onto larger marine species.

As the oyster goes, so goes the oysterman. Before the disaster, the Gulf provided 40% of the nation’s oysters, generating $318 million annually for the region. It’s brutal to watch the evening news, night after night, as Gulf oystermen and other fishermen choke back tears and fury, clinging to legacies of self-reliance and fortitude. “We’ll bounce back; we always do” is the refrain. But as the disaster continues to unfold, they know, in words of one captain, that “We’re watching our livelihood and even an entire culture being washed away by crude oil and chemicals.”

BP has now hired Anne Womack Kolton, an aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney, to run it’s $50 million new media campaign to promote the company’s efforts to “restore the livelihoods” of Gulf Coast fishermen. As of June 1st, BP had paid out an average of $1,200 per person to 25,000 people in six states. People whose livelihoods BP has wiped out for their lifetime and perhaps their children’s lifetimes are being offered less than they might make from a single day’s catch. Reports are now pouring in of BP’s claims adjusters rejecting fishermen’s applications left and right.

At the same time, BP appears to be laying the groundwork to limit its future liabilities in court. Listen closely to BP’s CEO and every mention of covering fishermen’s losses is couched as paying only “legitimate claims.” This is legalese for “We’ll tie up your claims in court until you either die off or we convince a judge to reduce damage awards”. Exxon did it in Alaska, appealing for more than 20 years and finally convincing the courts to reduce damages by 90%. Based on his experience as the lawyer representing Alaskan fishermen against Exxon, Brian O’Neill recently told Huffington Post, “if you were affected in Louisiana, to use a legal term, you are just f–ked.”

BP has no intention to make anyone “whole” again. But this is only a small piece of the picture of how BP and other oil corporations are “f–cking” oystermen and everyone else along the way.

Supposing Obama and the courts really required BP to pay for the damage it has done: all bills get paid; all the oil is cleaned up; fishing grounds are miraculously restored.

Oystermen would still be doomed.

Why? Because within 40-50 years scientists anticipate a die-off of oysters worldwide. The greenhouse gases released from burning oil and other fossil fuels are quickly turning oceans too acidic for oysters and other shellfish to survive. This ocean acidification is taking place at ten times the rate that preceded the mass marine extinction 55 million years ago. Scientists recently studied the unexpected die-off of several billion oyster, clam and mussel larvae at the Oregon Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery in 2008 and concluded that acidic water was the likely candidate for the destruction. Another 2009 report estimates that 85 percent of oyster reefs worldwide have already been destroyed.

As the old salts say in Newfoundland, ’tis a bad outlook, my son. On our current course, all of us oysterman will be left to stand in the unemployment lines.

Of course BP is not the only one responsible — our whole society runs on fossil fuels.  But the oil industry has pumped millions into campaigns to ensure the twin evils of greenhouse gases — climate change and ocean acidification — are not addressed.

If BP, Obama and the rest of the country are more than rhetorically committed to saving the oyster and rest of the seafood industry, it’s going to require a major commitment — and funding — to wean ourselves off of fossil fuels and repower our society with renewable energy sources. It’s going to mean thousands of wind and solar farms, just transition and green jobs programs for oil, coal and other workers impacted by a switch to renewable energy.

There is already an on-going struggle to make BP pay for the damage it has done to fishing communities and everyone else in the Gulf. But that can’t mean putting things back to the same doomed condition they were in before. We should require BP to compensate those whose livelihoods it has destroyed by paying for hundreds of wind and solar farms — providing its victims green jobs restoring the region’s economy based on clean, safe, and renewable energy. Let’s take BP’s motto “Beyond Petroleum” to heart and make the region BP destroyed the poster child for the transition to a green energy economy.

Out of disaster this could be the beginning of saving our oceans and the livelihoods of all that work the sea.

But there’s something a little funny here.  Turns out that the main financial backers of the “California Jobs Initiative” are a bunch of oilmen from Texas.  Texas-based Valero Energy Corporation gave a cool half-million, and along with them Texas oil companies with names like Tesoro Oil, Tower Energy Group of Torrance, World Oil Corporation of Houston, Southern Counties Oil, and JACO have contributed 70 percent of the funding for the “California Jobs Initiative.”  All told 89 percent comes from oil companies.  Valero, Tesoro, and other contributors own refineries in California that would be forced to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the law.

Hmm, what’s that about?  The answer begins to come into focus when you look at what the “California Jobs Initiative” initiates.  The initiative would suspend the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, known as AB 32, which established a comprehensive program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.  The law would remain suspended until California’s unemployment drops to 5.5 percent for a full year. (In the last twenty years it has only dropped to 5.5 percent for a year two times, in 2000 and 2006, and it is now over 12 percent.)

This “California Jobs Initiative”  is a microcosm of the national campaign being run by the fossil fuel industry and those they fund, notably the Republican Party and the radical right, to exploit Americans’ fear of job loss to put the planet at risk – and all for a few million extra bucks.  Indeed, Bill Day, a Valero spokesman, states that Valero had set up a website “to educate consumers about federal cap-and-trade legislation.”  Valero has been “very outspoken about the dangers of these proposals and the fact that they would badly damage the economy.”  From now on, when you see U.S. businesses altruistically trying to save American workers’ jobs from the menace of climate protection, think about Valero Energy Corporation’s attempt to manipulate Californians in their own oily interest.  You can trust Valero to protect the interests of California workers just about as much as you can trust BP to protect the Louisiana Gulf.

How will AB 32 actually affect California jobs?  There’s been a virtual “war of reports” claiming to answer that question.  A 2008 report by University of California economist David Roland-Holst found AB 32 “increasing the Gross State Product by about $76 billion, increasing real household incomes by up to $48 billion and creating as many as 403,000 new efficiency and climate action driven jobs.” A new study commissioned by a coalition of business groups including the California Manufacturers and Technology Association (Valero is a leading member) maintained that AB 32 would cost as many as 485,000 jobs by 2020.

Mary Nichols, chair of the California Air Resources Board, commented that the business group is “dedicated to protecting oil companies and fighting environmental laws that hold them accountable for polluting our environment.”  The Board released a report by a team of academic experts March 24 projecting that AB 32 will cause jobs to increase over the next decade by a tenth of a percent more than they would without it.

Often forgotten amid all these numbers is the devastating effect on jobs of failure to halt global warming.  The British government’s Stern Review, widely regarded as the most definitive study so far of the economic impact of global warming, warns of economic disruption on the scale of the Great Depression and World Wars I and II.  A survey of 144 top climate economists found that 84% agreed that “the environmental effects of greenhouse gas emissions, as described by leading scientific experts, create significant risks to important sectors of the United States and global economies.” By taking the lead on protecting the climate, California is also taking the lead on saving jobs, nationally and at home, from that economic disruption.

Many of California’s largest employers, including Google, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Intel, Applied Materials, eBay, Waste Management, and even Chevron, support AB32.  The California Labor Federation has worked closely with the agencies implementing AB 32 to ensure that it is worker friendly.

One thing is certain: As the Legislative Analyst Office has said, the long-term impacts of AB 32 are far from certain.  It is likely to result in “gains in some occupations and industries (including so-called ‘green’ jobs) and losses in others (primarily involving fossil fuel-related energy production).”

This points to the need for climate protection strategies to also protect any workers they adversely affect.  It is a basic principle of fairness that the burden of policies that are necessary for society – like protecting the earth’s climate – should not be borne by a small minority who happen to be victimized by their side effects.  The way to protect them, however, is not letting the likes of Valero pour destruction into the environment without impediment, but to craft and implement programs that actually protect workers.  These will range from GI-bill style benefits that allow displaced individuals to establish new careers, to long-term community revitalization trust funds that provide economic development grants to create jobs and business opportunities for hard-hit communities, to  “Green TVAs” that rebuild regional economies based on transitioning from fossil to green energy.  That would be a real “jobs initiative.”

By the way, California’s Attorney General, who gets the final say on ballot initiative naming, doesn’t think much of calling it the “California Jobs Initiative.”  He prefers, “Suspends air pollution control laws requiring major polluters to report and reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.”  Maybe with that name it would be easier to understand why the jobs it is most likely to save are those of some Texas oilmen.

[For more on the good jobs being created by AB32, click here.]

“There are no jobs on a dead planet.” That’s how one union leader answered those who say that unions should be concerned only about jobs, and leave the planet to someone else to take care of.

Many unions and both labor federations hailed Barack Obama’s bold talk about solving America’s jobs crisis by putting millions of people to work in “green jobs” that would solve the climate crisis by transforming America to a low-carbon economy. Obama’s stimulus bill emphasized renewable energy and energy conservation; many unions and state labor departments have added “green” programs to their job training.

But many workers feared that the transition to a low-carbon economy would destroy existing jobs, and they wondered if anything would be done to protect the workers who held them. Some union leaders, meanwhile, worried that green jobs might be lousy jobs that would only accelerate the deterioration of wages and conditions.

If America is to find the political support for a green transition, these concerns must be answered.

BAD GREEN JOBS?

Unions are right to fear that green jobs may be terrible jobs. Consider the case of General Electric. In 2005 GE launched its “EcoMagination” campaign, a marketing effort to sell products that help solve environmental problems and create green jobs. CEO Jeffery Immelt claims it’s created tens of thousands of jobs.

But what kind of jobs? Sixty-two African American employees at a GE subsidiary recently filed a racial discrimination suit over their working conditions. Their job is cleaning out “baghouses” where, under
an EPA Clean Air Act mandate, cloth or synthetic filters or “bags” capture toxic particulates such as lime, coal black, lead, arsenic, and mercury.

Workers were forced to work up to 12 hours a day, often with only one half-hour break for lunch, and denied bathroom and rest breaks. Workers say they were refused requests for water or a chance to leave the 100-degree bag house and were denied adequate protection from the dangerous chemicals. Is GE offering us 250,000 jobs like that?

Green jobs programs at all levels should include requirements for labor rights and standards, with monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. Corporations that are repeat violators should be banned from green job funding.

But the most important way to protect workers is for them to protect themselves through organization. A robust version of labor rights, including employer neutrality when workers try to unionize, should be incorporated into all government contracts for green jobs. Workers alleging violations should have access to an independent tribunal that can order correction or, if violations are frequent, termination of the contract.

There are Davis-Bacon prevailing-wage requirements for the green jobs in the stimulus bill, but so far only very limited ones in the major climate bills that are pending. Such provisions can nonetheless be introduced through Project Labor Agreements (PLAs).

The Port of Oakland, California, which recently went through a major green reorganization, introduced a PLA which requires 50 percent local hiring, prevailing wages and benefits, and safety standards; recognizes unions as the sole collective bargaining representatives; and establishes a Social Justice Committee and Labor/Management Committee to administer the contract terms.

In Massachusetts, the Green Justice Coalition, which includes the Laborers, Painters, and Carpenters, is negotiating agreements with utility companies for weatherization pilot projects in several cities.

The process was set in motion in 2008 after the legislature mandated dramatic reductions in the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. The law established an advisory council to work out the details, and the Green Justice Coalition successfully pressured the council to try out a new model for home energy efficiency.

The model hires trusted community-based organizations to canvass their own neighborhoods and sign up dozens or hundreds of residents for home energy retrofits. With large numbers of jobs bundled together, responsible contractors can afford to bid, hire local residents, provide quality training, pay living wages with benefits, and provide safe worksites. The coalition, utility companies, unions, and contractors are negotiating agreements that will include wages above the prevailing local weatherization wage of $11-$17 an hour.

In Portland, Oregon, the city council has endorsed a Community Workforce Agreement for a clean energy pilot program. It requires contractors to recruit from disadvantaged local communities.

LOST JOBS

Often forgotten in the climate debate is the devastating effect on jobs that failure to halt global warming will bring. The British government’s definitive Stern Review warns of economic disruption on the scale of the Great Depression and the great wars that devastated the world in the 20th century. Many of those effects are already under way, including floods and droughts, ocean acidification, forced migrations, forest fires, crop pests, and rapid spread of epidemics.

But is it fair to put the cost of preventing such devastation on those workers who happen to find themselves in the fossil-fuel economy?

Many studies indicate that climate protection legislation will create many more new jobs than the old ones it destroys. That is little comfort for those who stand to lose the jobs they have now. As Carl Wood of the Utility Workers put it, “Workers are used to being ground up and spat out by any change in society. In the U.S. there is no safety net for the victims.”

A JUST TRANSITION

Most of the climate protection bills currently before Congress include worker transition programs modeled on the Trade Adjustment Act program that purports to protect workers from the effects of globalization.

They provide short-term work, often at poverty-level wages, training for jobs that in many cases simply do not exist, and incentives for workers to “solve” high local unemployment by migrating elsewhere.

An effective program would address both individual workers and impacted communities and regions:

• Displaced workers should receive real transition assistance, including GI Bill-style education benefits that allow them to establish new careers.

• Communities hard hit by climate protection measures should get grants for reconstruction for 25 years.

• The federal government should plan “Green TVAs” to transition entire regions from fossil to green energy.

• The government should guarantee that no worker or retiree will lose pension or health care benefits as a result of the climate protection bill, period.

A Senate bill introduced by Bob Casey and co-sponsored by Sherrod Brown includes some of these approaches. And it goes beyond the House and Senate climate bills by helping adversely affected communities develop strategic plans to rebuild their economies.

IT’S THE SCIENCE

While many unions and both labor federations have embraced green jobs, they have been far more reluctant to support the actual reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that climate science says are necessary to prevent catastrophe. Yet specific, legally binding targets are essential not only to protect the planet but also to ensure that green jobs are actually created.

A recent statement by the Service Employees and the Laborers explains: “A clear science-based target will drive a massive increase in the generation of green jobs, public mass transit, renewable energy, green manufacturing, energy-efficient construction and building retrofits.”

Without binding targets, there will be few green jobs and a lot of hot air.

[originally published in Labor Notes]

Thanks to greenhouse gas emissions, it’s looking like my days as a commercial fisherman are numbered.

I’ve been working the sea on-and-off my whole life. At 15 years old I quit high school to work the lobster boats out of Lynn, MA; later I fished cod and crab boats on the Bering Sea. As over-fishing decimated the cod stocks, I headed back home to Newfoundland to try my hand as a fish farmer growing halibut and salmon.

Now I’m an oyster man, growing 100,000 organic oysters a year on a 40 acre plot in the Long Island Sound. I see myself as a new breed of green fisherman, who have shifted from hunter-gatherers trolling the seas in search of declining fish stocks, to ocean-based farmers, sustainably growing shellfish on small plots of ocean acreage for local markets. (Oysters rank as one of the top “super green seafoods” by the Environmental Defense Fund.)

But now, just as I’ve regained my green sea legs, scientists tell me that in the coming decades I won’t be able to make a living growing oysters anymore. They tell me greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are turning the oceans acidic, and oysters, already fickle little creatures, are likely to be the first victims.

Here’s how the marine biologists tell me the process works: Oceans absorb about 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases from human activities. The problem is that too much CO2 absorption also raises water’s acidity. Increased acidity reduces carbonate — the mineral used to form the shells and skeletons of many shellfish and corals. The effect is akin to osteoporosis, slowing growth and making shells weaker. If pH levels drop enough, the shells will literally dissolve.

The acidification of the ocean today is larger and faster than anything scientists can find in the fossil record over the past 65 million years. According to a recent study in the journal Natural Geoscience, current ocean acidification is taking place at ten times the rate that preceded the mass marine extinction 55 million years ago.

Oysters and other shellfish are expected to be some of the first victims of ocean acidification. Researchers at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences found that even minor increases in ocean acidity have significant, detrimental effects on the growth, development and survival of hard clams, bay scallops and oysters. Scientists already suspect that acidic water is responsible for killing several billion oyster, clam and mussel larvae that were being raised at the Whiskey Creek Shellfish Hatchery on the Oregon coast in the summer of 2008.

But it’s not just my oysters and livelihood that are imperiled. Shellfish and other vulnerable species function as crucial links for entire ecosystems in the ocean. According to the NRDC:

The new chemical composition of our oceans is expected to harm a wide range of ocean life. The resulting disruption to the ocean ecosystem could have a widespread ripple effect and further deplete already struggling fisheries worldwide… A more acidic ocean could wipe out species, disrupt the food web and impact fishing, tourism and any other human endeavor that relies on the sea.

Commercial fishermen have conflicted hearts. We’re famously independent, often wary of government regulation. We have traditionally had a complex, often combative relationship with the environmental movement. But at the same time, we also have a deep respect and love for the sea. Our lives, our livelihoods, are held at the mercy of natural forces more than almost any other occupation.

Politicians try to cast workers as not caring about protecting ocean resources and the perilous effects of greenhouse gases. They say the coming crisis is too far off and we’re more fearful about environmental policy destroying jobs. Exactly the opposite. Protecting my life and livelihood requires protecting the oceans and planet.

Serious efforts to combat climate change will include changes in the transportation and logistics industries that will have major impacts—both positive and negative—on employment in key industries. Unions representing transportation workers in trucking, rail, ports, busses, mass transit, and airlines will have to address these changes. The 2008 spike in fuel prices provided a harbinger of the kind of changes that could occur. Airlines and trucking companies cut back; rail traffic and mass transit ridership increased; logistics industries sought new efficiencies in an economy increasingly dependent on complex global and national supply chains.

Union density in the transportation industry is much higher than in the economy as a whole. Overall almost 25% of all transport workers are unionized, compared with 7.4% of the entire private sector. Seventy-four percent of railroad workers are unionized; 50 % of airline workers belong to unions; density in local trucking hovers around 20%. Some sectors however, such long distance trucking, are virtually non-union.
As is often the case in the US labor movement, non-transport unions also have pockets of membership in the industry. For instance, some of the craft unions of the building trades such as the Sheet Metal Workers, the Boilermakers, and the IBEW represent workers employed in those crafts by railroads.

A variety of unions representing transportation workers have weighed in politically on the stimulus package and its provisions for improvements in the transportation infrastructure, such as high speed rail. But the most active union—and the pivotal union on climate change issues—is probably the Teamsters Union.

The Teamsters have been losing union density in the trucking industry for years, but over the last decade some of these loses have been offset by new organizing and mergers with existing unions in rail, airlines, ports, and buses. As a result, today the Teamsters is much more a general transport union than it has ever been.

In transportation there has long been a competition for scarce public and private funding for infrastructure maintenance and development among trucking, railroads, airlines, and shipping/ports. This sectoral competition has the potential to pit Teamster union members in different transportation sectors against each other.

The Teamsters seek to avoid these conflicts by casting themselves as a “supply chain union,” that is, as the representative of workers at every link of the global supply chain from ports to distribution centers to rail to trucks to the final customer.

This rebranding has been accompanied by new thinking on creating intermodal systems that maximize efficiencies, and thereby reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The union believes that an efficient intermodal system could actually increase employment in sectors where the union has a presence. The big loser would be the inefficient over-the-road long distance trucking sector which is non-union and generally consists of very low wage, high turnover jobs.

Supporting this kind of big systemic thinking should be a key aim of climate change advocacy. It should be noted also that the Teamsters have demonstrated a rare capacity to take the long view even when it seems to conflict with some of the union’s short term interests.  For example, after being an enthusiastic supporter for years, the Teamsters pulled out of the coalition in support of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. Union president Hoffa said:

“Global warming is for real. Air pollution is killing people and making our children sick. And you know what? We share some of the blame. In the past, we were forced to make a false choice. The choice was: Good Jobs or a Clean Environment. We were told no pollution meant no jobs. If we wanted clean air, the economy would suffer and jobs would be sent overseas. Well guess what? We let the big corporations pollute and the jobs went overseas anyway. We didn’t enforce environmental regulations and the economy still went in the toilet. The middle class got decimated and the environment is on the brink of disaster. Well I say ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! No more false divides. The future, if we are to prosper as a nation, will lie in a green economy….”

The UAW is a manufacturing union, but its fate is deeply tied up with transportation policy. Half of the greenhouse gasses emitted in transportation are from private automobiles.

In the post-war period up to the 1950s the UAW attempted to pressure the big car companies to produce smaller cars. But the union was consistently rebuffed by the companies that jealously guarded their management prerogatives. Over time the union dropped its efforts to influence product development.  Instead for decades the UAW aligned itself with the big carmakers fighting against mileage standards. As a result, the UAW was perceived as part of the problem and not part of the solution and this contributed to the lack of public support for the union when the car companies collapsed.

The collapse of the American automobile industry and the announcement of new fuel economy standards by the Obama administration could be a game changer for the UAW. If it is to survive, the union will have to reposition itself on fuel standards and low carbon technology generally and this may offer opportunities for future alliances with climate change activists.  It has taken some steps in this direction, such as supporting higher fuel efficiency standards and proposed climate legislation.

But a narrow focus on the short term has led some unions to neglect the longer term effects of climate change on jobs, workers, and their communities and the action needed to address them.  Unless labor develops a full-fledged response to climate change it is likely to left by the roadside in what will be the pivotal challenge of the 21st century.

There are compelling reasons workers and their unions should be concerned about climate change.  They include:

•    the universal interest in protecting our planet that workers share with all people

•    the threats of climate change to their own workplaces  and the resulting economic devastation

•    the positive interest of specific unions and groups of workers in more and better jobs

•    the negative interest of specific unions and groups of workers whose jobs are threatened

•    the interest of the labor movement as a whole in its overall social role and its alliances with other social groups

Labor has come a long way in the last two years.  Today, almost all unions have a “green jobs” focus.  Both national labor federations and many individual unions recognize the threat of climate change and call for policies to address it.  The AFL-CIO has even established a Center for Green Jobs to promote green jobs, establish appropriate job standards, and help train workers to fill them.

But on the difficult question of transitioning away from existing high carbon energy sources and industries labor faces big challenges.  Indeed it is important to remember that even the most far sighted trade union leaders have a very difficult job:  They must represent the immediate interests of existing members, some of whom may face job losses in the transition to a low carbon economy, while keeping in mind the longer term social and ecological concerns.

Labor matters in the fight against climate change. Even in its weakened condition, it retains enough political clout to help or hinder the passage of meaningful climate change legislation.  It will be up to activists inside and outside of the labor movement to help make clear labor’s stake in climate protection.  That task begins with a clear understanding of the complicated dynamic around climate change in the labor movement.

While unions are bargaining opponents of their employers over wages and working conditions, they have a long tradition of building alliances with them over public policy issues that affect growth in their sectors.   This too often leads unions to follow the narrow self-interest of their industry instead of developing independent positions representing the interests of labor as a whole.  A recent, and striking, example is the UAW’s long alliance with the big car companies in opposition to strong fuel economy standards – a policy which contributed not only to carbon emissions but to the current crisis in the American auto industry.  Such shortsighted sectoral alliances can be a significant obstacle to drawing labor into the climate change fight.

But there are grounds for optimism. Although labor’s response has often been confused and contradictory, there is a growing awareness that re-tooling the energy and transportation infrastructure and retrofitting existing buildings to make them more energy efficient can both save the planet and create a new sustainable economy that will benefit all.  One illustration of that change is the UAW’s support (along with ten auto companies) for the new, more stringent fuel economy standards proposed by President Obama in May, 2009.

Meeting the challenge posed by climate change will require some wrenching changes in the way we live and work.  Navigating those changes in ways that result in a more sustainable, more just, society will require changes in public opinion, government policy, the economy, and technology.  Change in the labor movement is part of that process:  Labor can serve either as an accelerator or as a brake on the process as a whole.

[The extended version of the LNS briefing paper on Labor and Climate Change is available here]