Powershift is a network that mobilize the collective power of young people to mitigate climate change and create a just, clean energy future and resilient, thriving communities for all. In April a Powershift Convergence brought together thousands of climate and social justice activists in Bvlbancha/New Orleans.

Conventional wisdom often holds that the interest of workers in jobs and the interest of environmentalists in preserving nature are diametrically opposed, and that they inevitably lead to conflict between environmental advocates and organized labor. A small but growing Labor-Climate Movement, however, is challenging that frame. It is trying to draw the labor movement into the fight for climate protection while persuading the climate movement that it must take a stand for workers and social justice.

The Labor Network for Sustainability recently endorsed the call of Railroad Workers United for public ownership of American railroads. A video panel on railroad nationalization sponsored by Solutionary Rail included LNS Transit Organizer Bakari Height.

How are workers around the world viewing climate change and its impact on their jobs, their labor conditions, and their industries? For a quick, revealing glimpse at the answer, take a look at the 15-minute video Talking Union, Talking Climate. It provides a dialogue among workers in California, Norway, and Nigeria about labor conditions in the fossil fuel industry, the shift to a green economy, and what a just transition might be.

At a recent panel on Working Class Environmentalism at UMass Amherst, organizers from the building trades, education, and human service sectors discussed how the labor movement can organize workers around both immediate workplace issues and bigger-picture problems like the global climate crisis, and how unions can address those problems at the bargaining table and beyond.

True Transition, an organization composed of fossil fuel workers, recently released their “American Oil and Gas Workers Survey.” It provides the answers given by 1649 oil and gas workers to 38 questions about their jobs and work lives.

Workers are rising up and taking cities back from capitalists and corporations. Unions are negotiating for benefits for the community and not just members, emerging from behind the fortress. This moment of labor insurgency in the aftermath of the pandemic, which laid bare the disposability of the working class, has echoes in historical struggles to make cities more livable and democratic.

David Hughes is an anthropologist of the climate emergency and energy democracy. He works at Rutgers University, where he has served as president of the faculty and grad worker union.

Public schools need a Green New Deal, and educators are ready to win it. From April 16th-22nd (the week of Earth Day), educators across the country are taking action for green, healthy, fully-resourced schools.

As Project Manager of the LNS Young Worker Listening Project and an organizer of the LNS Young Workers Convergence on Climate, Maria Breschia-Weiler has worked with, surveyed, and interviewed hundreds of young workers. In a talk March 3, 2023 to the DC Youth Climate Strike, organized by Fridays for the Future, Maria provided some reflections on what she has learned from the process.

On March 21 senior citizens held more than 100 climate actions around the country. Participants included retired trade unionists from 30 different international unions.

“You braved the cold, you braved the wind, you braved some hail, and you braved the hellish rains. And we took the fight to every corner of Los Angeles. We had strong picket lines, we had massive rallies, and we, together, put LAUSD on notice!”