Labour and environmental movements working together to build a new green economy in the United States
Solidarity is defined “as unity (as of a group or class) that produces or is based on community of interests, objectives, and standards.”
But how is solidarity defined in the face of global economic and climate crises? Labour unions are forging alliances in the United States to confront our biggest challenges. With the Blue Green Alliance, unions are partnering with environmental organizations to build a new green economy that creates good jobs while combating climate change.
This idea of solidarity is what brought labour and environmental movements together in the United States. At the intersection of the economy and global warming, the challenges are stark. But arising from these crises is an opportunity to rebuild the American middle class and protect the environment.
Nowhere are the contrast between these challenges and opportunities more apparent than in the Pacific Northwest and in the state of Pennsylvania.
Before 2000, 40 per cent of the aluminum made in the United States was smelted in the Pacific Northwest, and over 5,000 USW members worked in eight smelters. These smelters relied on low-cost hydroelectricity from the Columbia River. But years of diminished snow fall in the Cascade Mountains resulted in less water flowing through rivers and small reservoirs which reduced the supply of hydroelectricity. This, combined with now infamous energy-market manipulations, meant that they could no longer compete in the global economy. As a result, many of the smelters shuttered and over 4,500 steelworkers lost their jobs.
All the way across the United States in Pennsylvania, a state Alternative Energy Portfolio Standard requires 18 per cent of the state’s electricity be produced by renewable sources. Spanish wind-turbine company, Gamesa, saw opportunity in a new market for wind power and set up U.S. operations in Pennsylvania, bringing about 1,100 jobs to the state.
With the challenge of climate change comes the opportunity to build a clean energy economy that puts people back to work. Union members and environmentalists are working to make sure that the new green economy works for working people.
The Blue Green Alliance was launched in 2006 as a partnership between the United Steel Workers and the Sierra Club to jointly advocate for the development of a green economy that creates good jobs while helping to protect the environment. These goals, the two organizations agreed, were inextricably linked. But this partnership was born long before in the battles for policies at the state and national level that both protected workers and benefited the environment.
Back in the 1970s, labour unions and environmentalists worked together to pass the Clean Air Act and Clean Water Act. They opposed the succession of unfair trade agreements from the North American Free Trade Agreement to the Free Trade Area of the Americas. They pushed for the democratizing the global economy through protests of the World Trade Organization Ministerial meeting in Seattle in 1999, and since have come together to support workers’ rights in the United States through such legislation as the Employee Free Choice Act.
These joint efforts come with the knowledge that the means to our ends converge. In 1999, the United Steel Workers realized they had something in common with environmentalists who opposed clear cutting by Maxxam’s Pacific Lumber — union members were fighting against job cuts at Maxxam's Kaiser Aluminum facilities.
They also find agreement on this idea of a green economy. Creating jobs and protecting the environment go hand in hand. And it is this mutual goal that has solidified the Blue Green Alliance which since 2006 has grown to include the Communications Workers of America (CWA), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and Laborers’ International Union of North America (LIUNA). This alliance unites more than six million people in pursuit of good jobs, a clean environment and a green economy.
Environmentalists believe that a clean energy economy will reduce our reliance on volatile, high-priced foreign oil. Labour unions know that many of the jobs created in the green economy will be jobs that already exist today, and many of them are good union jobs.
Electricians, carpenters and roofers will retrofit our buildings to make them more energy efficient. Engineers, machinists and laborers will build a new smart grid transmission system. Iron and steel workers, sheet metal workers and trucks drivers will help to build wind power. And industrial mechanics, equipment operators and construction managers will develop solar power.
Building the green economy begins with investments in the solutions to global warming. And the United States made down payment on this new, clean energy economy with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The Recovery Act makes critical investments in efficiency and a new smart grid, includes tax incentives for renewable energy manufacturing and encourages domestic sourcing of the materials used in building and infrastructure improvements, and seeks to double renewable energy-generating capacity in three years.
But this is just the beginning. In order to transform our economy, we need to continue the policies that encourage investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency. These policies will help us to put Americans back to work and take a huge step forward in meeting our obligation to mitigate climate change.
We must pass a national renewable energy standard — creating a market for producing renewable energy in the United States, thereby creating good jobs and making America more energy independent.
We have to restore the rights of workers to form a union and bargain collectively by passing the Employee Free Choice Act. When we build this new economy, we have to ensure that the jobs we create are good, family-supporting jobs with benefits and that workers have a greater voice on the job.
Finally, we have to pass climate legislation that puts a price on carbon and funds the long-term transition to a clean energy economy.
Building the green economy will not be easy. In fact, transforming the American economy will require determination. It defies most of the conventional wisdom. But like in movements of the past, vision is the guide and feet on the ground will move us forward.
We are building this new, green economy the bottom up. By talking to our friends and neighbours about the potential of creating millions of new green jobs while protecting the environment and rebuilding the middle class, we are creating the groundswell to transform the economy.
The Blue Green Alliance and its partners are working across the country to organize around the green economy. With the Labor Climate Project, we are working to spread the word among union members about global warming and the opportunity that lies in its solutions.
In February, we coordinated the second national Good Jobs, Green Jobs Conference, bringing together more than 2,700 people to forge an agenda and share ideas and strategies for the emerging green economy. Hundreds of conference attendees went to Capitol Hill to advocate clean-energy solutions. More than 4,000 high school students and community members came to the first Green Jobs Expo to find out more about green careers and academic programs.
At the intersection of the economy and global warming, the traditional blue colour of solidarity has taken on a green tone. In 2009, solidarity is about forging alliances with friends, old and new. It’s working together to achieve the common vision that will move our nation and our world forward. And it’s about rebuilding the middle class and making green jobs good jobs.
David Foster is the Executive Director of the Blue Green Alliance, a
national partnership of labour unions and environmental organizations
dedicated to building a green economy. Foster was Director of District 11 of the United Steel Workers from 1989-2006.
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