By Susan Orlofsky, UCSD retiree (member of UPTE retiree (CWA_RMC_9119) and AFT 1931 retiree orgs), currently serving as: UPTE delegate to SDICLC; Steering Committee member, Green New Deal at UCSD student organization
Greta Thunberg set sail on the Madleen to bring aid to Palestinians starving and dying in Gaza. Before she and her crew were detained and arrested by Israel she said “I fight for climate justice for the same reason I fight for social justice; it’s the same struggle.
Like Greta I view the fight for workers’ rights and climate justice as the same struggle.
I became a union activist while I worked at UCSD (UPTE-CWA 9119), serving on the local executive board and as delegate to San Diego Imperial Counties Labor Council (SDICLC). I helped fight many contract battles successfully, but I also took collective action for union siblings’ struggles. In the union movement we call this solidarity.
It is this concern for solidarity that has made me want to find ways organized labor and environmentalists can work together. Let’s face it–there are moments when our interests don’t align, but isn’t that true of all relationships? As an activist in both realms, the gaps often seem difficult to bridge. Nevertheless, for me the answer/solution lies in local realities. There are so many moments when we can work together. When we must work together or fail in our own separate silos.
A Green New Deal resolution passed at our 2018 UPTE convention brought me to the climate justice movement. UPTE was one of the founders of California Labor for Climate Jobs (CLCJ)—a coalition of labor unions organizing for a worker-led transition to a just and climate-safe economy (member unions represent oil and gas workers, teachers, domestic workers, healthcare workers, farmworkers, janitors, University of California workers, as well as other public-sector workers in oil and gas-dependent counties across the state).
The California Workers’ Climate Bill of Rights that CLCJ created, is an example of policies that labor unions and environmental justice activists can work on together to create a livable future; the following are some basics from that document (for more details see www.calaborforclimatejobs.org)
Climate Hazard Protections
Strengthen statewide indoor and outdoor heat and smoke protections for workers
Refinery safety compliance—staffing minimums, including training and certification pathways—as companies try to maximize profit by cutting safety staff
Strengthen workers’ rights in evacuation zones and during disasters
Safety Nets for Impacted Workers and Communities
Establish comprehensive safety nets for displaced workers including wage replacement, health-care coverage, re-training, and relocation
Community Transition Support Set-Aside Fund to maintain local critical services and public sector jobs in oil and gas-dependent communities
Disaster insurance to protect workers’ pay when climate-fueled disaster makes working unsafe, as well as full unemployment benefits for undocumented workers
Training record access and certification pathways for all industrial oil and gas workers so that any displaced worker can transition with their experience, skills, and training intact
Good Jobs in the Low-carbon Economy
Secure labor standards and a strong unionized workforce in building California’s equitable broadband
Expand oil well remediation work across CA while ensuring prioritized hire and strong labor standards for displaced oil and gas workers
Expand Green Janitors Energy Efficiency Workforce Training and the In-home Healthcare Emergency Preparedness Training programs as pathways to higher wages in historically low-wage sectors
Attach labor, equity, and climate standards to all state and federal climate funding
A Strong Public Sector = Climate Adaptive Services for All
Universal home-care benefit so all Californians have access to in-home care as we face a care cliff, increasing climate-exacerbated health problems, and weather emergencies
Direct federal funding toward expanded public transit and water services, included increased hiring in engineering, operations, and maintenance
Electrify and modernize K-14 School HVAC systems to promote healthy, climate-resilient, climate-smart schools
Invest in our public sector through hiring and training public employees with the skills necessary to plan, oversee, and maintain public infrastructure and services in the low-carbon economy; prevent outsourcing of this work
We are living in an unprecedented time. The above policy approaches are antithetical to Trump’s agenda. The only way I can imagine fighting for them is by cultivating alliances. Labor needs the community’s support and the community needs the working-class resources that unions can offer.
Nationwide the labor movement has declined (because of right-wing attacks on union organizing) but here in California it is still a significant force. Unions know how to fight corporate elites, and if our greater San Diego community adopts some of its priorities and listens to its most progressive leadership, possibilities for building a livable future open up.
But how should we do this? We need to show up in solidarity with labor’s struggles. Every time we join a union’s picket line we fight back against Trump’s billionaire agenda. Every time our communities show up to oppose ICE’s sweeps to deport our neighbors we oppose the dismantling of our democracy. We outnumber the billionaires. Especially when we organize and show up for each other. The great labor leader Eugene Debs once said, “Without solidarity nothing is possible, but WITH solidarity nothing is impossible.”
Solidarity Forever!