The Maine AFL-CIO just passed a resolution at its October Convention “to Address the Climate Crisis and Inequality Crisis and Create Union Jobs.” The resolution said climate change poses “an immediate and long-term threat to all working class people, our communities and our economic security.” It resolved that the Maine AFL-CIO will push to include the following measures in climate policies developed at the state and federal level:
- Expand collective bargaining and ensure the creation of union jobs through card check neutrality agreements, prevailing wage requirements, project labor agreements, the use of provisions of the 2019 PRO (Protecting the Right to Organize) Act, and the requirement of direct partnerships with joint labor-management registered apprenticeship programs; and
- Prioritize projects, union career opportunities for Maine workers and investments in working class, rural, people of color and indigenous communities historically disproportionately impacted by pollution, environmental injustice and economic insecurity; and
- Include a fair and equitable Just Transition for workers impacted by a transitioning economy, including but not limited to workers in power generation, that will make them whole, including a fund to provide access to sustainable jobs and education opportunities, income protection, bridges to retirement, and
- Include incentives for domestic manufacturing like Buy American and Buy Clean provisions; and work to make the supply chain for any projects as strongly union as possible; and
- Include adequate resources for any public agency expected to enforce the provisions of climate legislation
- Include incentives for the building of publicly owned, union built affordable housing.