Climate Strikes

In the on-going strike by UAW auto workers against the auto industry Big Three, one of the central objectives is to win a just transition to climate safe vehicle production for auto workers. At press time the strike continues, but the union has already won significant concessions that will contribute to a just transition.

The strike by the UAW against the Big Three auto companies has brought together autoworkers and climate advocates around the demand for a just transition to a climate-safe auto industry. But what is a just transition? Why is a just transition necessary? And how could a just transition for auto workers be achieved?

Picket lines are an essential way that workers show their determination and collective power. And they are a key way that others can show their support. Environmental, environmental justice, community, and other supporters have been joining picket lines at auto plants around the country to show their solidarity with striking auto workers.

On October 3 the Executive Council of the American Federation of Teachers passed a resolution “Declaring a Climate Emergency and Developing Climate Action and Healthy Building Plans.”

On October 24 a new labor union coalition released the California Worker Climate Bill of Rights calling on legislators to take urgent action to support workers through the economic upheaval and hazardous conditions wrought by a rapidly changing climate.

On October 4 Americans for Democratic Action presented LNS co-founder and president with the Winn Newman Lifetime Achievement Award. In his acceptance speech, Joe said in part…

LNS Board Chair and former president of the Washington State AFL-CIO Jeff Johnson made the following remarks to the September 17 Climate Rally in Seattle…

The Rutgers AAUP-AFT, which represents more than 5,000 full-time faculty, graduate workers, postdoctoral associates, and EOF counselors at the state university’s three main campuses, has been holding a series of “Freedom Schools” in the tradition of “Ella Baker, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the 1960s civil rights movement.”

A new coalition of labor unions called Climate Jobs Washington was formed this summer “to address both climate change and racial and economic inequality by creating high-quality union jobs to sustain Washington’s families and communities.”

While protecting the climate will require millions of jobs, there is no guarantee that those jobs will be good jobs. In his new Commentary “The Green New Deal from Below and the Future of Work,” newsletter editor Jeremy Brecher describes how the local and state Green New Deals that have sprung up around the country are not only creating new jobs, they are also addressing low wages, lack of opportunities for training and advancement, de facto exclusion from access to good jobs, and other dimensions of job quality.