Climate-strike unionism is a strategy and vision for building worker-led power that is deeply integrated with the fight against climate change. It’s about unions and workers organizing not only around wages and working conditions, but also around the need to stop climate destruction—and using collective action, including strikes, as a tool to do it.
💥 Climate-strike unionism = labor power + climate justice + mass disruption.
Key Elements of Climate-Strike Unionism:
Centering Climate in Union Agendas
- Workers bargaining for climate-safe jobs, decarbonized workplaces, and green infrastructure
- Unions fighting for just transition provisions in contracts—training, job guarantees, retirement, and more
Using Strikes to Demand Climate Action
- Building toward strikes—not just over wages, but over things like:
- Fossil fuel infrastructure
- Public investment in green transit, schools, housing
- Climate disaster protections for workers and communities
- This could look like a climate general strike or sectoral strikes tied to climate demands
Solidarity with Frontline Communities
- Aligning labor with environmental justice movements, especially Indigenous, Black, and working-class communities most impacted by pollution and climate disasters
- Supporting community-led climate fights—not building projects that harm frontline people, even if they create jobs
Expanding What Counts as Labor and Who Counts as a Worker
- Recognizing the value of care work, unpaid work, and informal work in building a regenerative society
- Organizing all workers—gig, service, undocumented, incarcerated—as part of the climate strike-ready base
Why This Matters Now
- The climate crisis threatens all workers, especially those in vulnerable or extractive sectors
- The current transition is being led by corporations, not people—green jobs don’t mean good jobs unless workers organize
- And most of all: only workers can shut down the economy—and the economy is what drives emission
Real-World Examples Building Toward Climate-Strike Unionism
- UAW’s electric vehicle contracts demanding job standards and transition support
- Chicago Teachers Union bargaining for green schools and climate-safe buildings
- Public transit unions pushing for expanded, unionized clean transit
- “Fridays for Future” student climate strikes inviting labor to join
- Workers at Amazon, Google, and other tech firms walking out over climate policy and fossil fuel contracts
Climate-strike unionism is the next frontier of labor and climate justice.
It asks: What if the people who make the world run decided to stop it—until we get a livable one? Want a short definition or graphic of this for a toolkit or workshop? I can help distill or visualize it.