Climate Strikes

As Los Angeles temperatures soared this September, the United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA) and its allies demanded that the Los Angeles United School District (LAUSD) bargain over their comprehensive climate justice proposals and take immediate action to address the extreme heat searing LA schools. The announcement for a September 6 press conference stated…

A new Strike! Commentary by LNS’s Jeremy Brecher evaluates the Inflation Reduction Act, its strengths and flaws, and how the labor climate movement can take advantage of the Act and help fix it, including…

“Transforming Transportation – From Below” is a new commentary by newsletter editor Jeremy Brecher. It describes how around the country, “People are acting at the local and state level to create jobs, reduce greenhouse gas pollution, and equalize transportation by expanding and electrifying public transit, electrifying cars and trucks, and making it safe to walk and bike.” It characterizes this work as “a crucial part of building the Green New Deal from Below.”

The US Department of Transportation recently proposed a Greenhouse Gas Rule requiring state departments of transportation to measure greenhouse gas emissions and establish targets to lower those emissions. The Labor Network for Sustainability, as part of its transit justice work, signed on to a letter urging adoption of the rule.

In response to the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, the Labor Network for Sustainability has just released the following statement…

“Young Workers Are Bridging the Climate and Labor Movements” – that’s the title of an article by journalist Leanna First-Arai that just appeared in Teen Vogue and Truthout. It features the Labor Network for Sustainability’s Young Workers Listening Project.

Heat protection will be one of the key issues in the upcoming Teamsters negotiations at UPS for the biggest union contract in North America, which covers the majority of UPS’s 350,000 workers. The current contract expires next year.

A pair of new commentaries by Making a Living on a Living Planet’s editor Jeremy Brecher provides dozens of examples of how unions in the most diverse industries and occupations are creating their own Green New Deal-type programs in localities around the country.

Under pressure from unions and environmental groups, the U.S. Postal Service just announced that 40% of its new delivery vehicles will be electric.

The July convention of the 1.7 million member American Federation of Teachers urged that its members’ retirement assets be divested “from all corporations or other entities that extract, transport, trade or otherwise contribute to the production of coal, oil and gas” and that they those funds be reinvested in “projects that benefit displaced workers and frontline communities.”