Preliminary results from a survey by LNS’s Young Workers Listening Project provides a startling picture of what young workers think about climate and labor. According to a just-released article in The Forge,
More than 92 percent of our survey respondents stated that they are concerned about how climate change will impact their future and 87 percent stated that they believe addressing climate change offers opportunities for good paying jobs. All of our interviewees shared the ways that climate change impacts their working conditions: they dispose of huge amounts of waste everyday, they work in extreme heat and inclement weather, they construct pipelines and Amazon warehouses when they know the communities they live in need better roads and more affordable housing. Many also shared experiences of attempting to reduce waste in their industries, make their unions more democratic, bargain on climate issues in contract negotiations, and respond to the ways climate change is impacting their industries and communities.
The survey, which is on-going, already has more than 300 respondents.
The article, titled “From Climate Strikes to the Union Hall,” is written by three activists in the Young Worker Committee of the Labor Network for Sustainability, Teresa-Marie Oller, Travis Epes, and Maria Brescia-Weiler. The article concludes:
Through the YWLP, we are finding we don’t need to build a bridge between the labor and climate movements; young people are the living bridge. We just need to provide the space, support, and resources to allow them to serve as powerful, transformative voices within the labor movement.
Use this social media toolkit to share this article and to link to articles by other young workers in the full feature by The Forge.