Calling all labor movement climate and sustainability activists: The Labor Network for Sustainability needs you — And you need it.
Are you in the labor movement? Are you concerned about a sustainable future? Climate change? Economic justice? If so, you should know about the Labor Network for Sustainability.
The LNFS was launched in October, 2009 by labor activists who are concerned about a more just and sustainable world.
Reflecting the growing concern within organized labor and its allies not only with climate change but with an array of issues that threaten our long-term future, the LNFS will bring together activists from many different labor organizations to make labor a more effective force for sustainability. It will address the issues — from water resources to food security, from economic justice to corporate accountability, from climate protection to renewable energy — that will determine whether we have a just and sustainable future.
The Founder of the LNFS is Joe Uehlein, the former Secretary-Treasurer of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department and former director of the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Campaigns. Uehlein is a founder and board member of Ceres, a member of the National Advisory Board of the Union of Concerned Scientists and a senior advisor to the Blue Green Alliance.
According to Uehlein, “Organized labor is increasingly realizing that its future lies with creating green jobs in a green economy. But making that transition work for workers is a big challenge. Our job is to provide information to help organized labor and rank and file workers align their own self interest with the need to green our economy.”
The LNFS has launched the website www.labor4sustainability.org to serve as an independent source of information, perspective, and coordinated action. It will utilize “Web 2” social networking techniques to draw together climate and sustainability activists in the labor movement into a force.
The LNFS provides a community for those inside and outside the labor movement who are concerned about economic justice, ecology and equality to connect and communicate with each other. That community can help labor become a force for advancing worker interests – while advancing the broader social good.
Uehlein says: “Climate protection is the leading edge for a new philosophy of sustainability that includes but goes beyond the environment to encompass social and economic sustainability as well. The fight against global warming is really part of a broad shift in society’s principles and vision – a shift from honoring greed to honoring what’s good for the health of the planet and the people on it first and foremost. That’s to the benefit of labor – and will only happen if labor helps take the lead.”
Whether you are a worker who has or wants a green job; a trade unionist who wants your union to support climate protection; a community activist fighting for sustainable communities; or an environmentalist who believes environmental protection must be socially sustainable, we need your help. Here are a few ways to join our growing community:
· Join our Network
· Become a fan of LNFS on Facebook
· Are you a green worker? Join LNFS’s Green Workers Alliance
· Sign up for our Twitter and blog feeds
· Or just send us an email