On Earth Day, Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers announced an executive order creating a new office of environmental justice. The new office will work with farmers and rural communities, communities of color, Tribal Nations, state and local partners, and low-income populations, among other key stakeholders, the governor’s office said.

The latest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emphasizes the need for immediate action to protect the climate and lays out detailed strategies for how to do it. The report includes a lengthy analysis of ‘just transitions’ in countering climate change. A just transition could entail that…

Somerville, MA is an inner suburb of Boston with 81,000 residents undergoing rapid development – most of it non-union. In 2017, more than a dozen unions and several allies established Somerville Stands Together (SST), a community-labor coalition advocating a new orientation for development.

The Maine legislature has just passed legislation to raise the standards for clean energy jobs and advance equity in the renewable energy sector.

A growing convergence between climate protection and worker justice is embodied in a new report from Warehouse Workers for Justice titled “For Good Jobs and Clean Air: How a Just Transition to Zero Emission Vehicles Can Transform Warehousing”.

A new report from the Cornell University Worker Institute titled “Building a Just Transition for a Resilient Future: A Climate Jobs Program for Rhode Island” lays out “Rhode Island’s route to an equitable, worker-centered, green economy.”

The Labor Network for Sustainability has endorsed the “Energy Security and Independence Act” (ESIA), sponsored by Senator Sanders and Representatives Bush and Crow. The legislation would take on the climate crisis, deny revenues to authoritarian petrostates, and invest in clean energy manufacturing and energy efficiency.

According to an April 5 article in the Guardian, US labor leaders view this year’s elections – and 2024’s -- as “a goal-line stand to preserve America’s democracy.” Shane Larson, Director of Government Affairs for the Communications Workers of America, told the...

Germany, which imports around two-thirds of its gas from Russia and other former Soviet Union states and which aims for net-zero carbon emissions by 2045, is planning to require nearly 100% renewable electricity by 2035. Robert Habeck, German’s economic affairs and climate minister, said Germany needs to triple its rate of emissions reductions.

LNS board member Sarita Gupta and Jobs with Justice leader Erica Smiley have just published a new book called The Future We Need, Organizing for a Better Democracy in the Twenty-First Century. The book lays out ways to evolve collective bargaining to match the needs of modern people—not only changing their wages and working conditions, but being able to govern more aspects of their lives.

Edgar Franks, LNS Board member since 2019, is the Washington State Campaign and Political Director for the independent union Familias Unidas por la Justicia where he works with union leadership and allies in the development and implementation of the Just Transition framework that centers food sovereignty and worker organizing in innovative models of participatory democracy, such as People’s Movement Assemblies and Tribunals.

The United Mine Workers just announced that it will partner with energy startup SPARKZ to build an electric battery factory in West Virginia in 2022 that will employ 350 workers. The UMWA will recruit and train dislocated miners to be the factory’s first production workers.