UE Convention Resolutions
Protect Our Planet for Future Generations
In our work as trade unionists, we are often called upon to act with foresight, keeping in mind the generations of workers yet to enter our workplace. We must apply our experience in workers' struggles to the fight for a just environmental policy.
Global warming caused by human activity is widely accepted as scientific fact. Rising temperatures are affecting human lives by compromising health, financial burdens, and social and cultural disruptions. We see this particularly among the working class, communities of color, and indigenous people. As people's ability to provide for themselves and their families is disrupted by climate change, it will drive ever-larger numbers of workers to migrate in search of work. There is perhaps no better illustration of the lethal intersection of climate change, poverty and racism than Hurricane Katrina, where thousands of working-class families were abandoned by an inept and uncaring government.
Like other disasters facing our nation and world, climate change is being driven by the energy monopolies' hunger for superprofits. UE has long called for establishing public ownership of the energy industry to prevent racketeering and price-gouging; it is now clear that this step is also necessary to preserve our planet. UE has always seen through the false choice between jobs and the environment. Destruction of jobs and pollution are both caused by the same thing: corporate greed and desire for the highest possible profits, no matter what the costs. Unfortunately, both climate talks at the United Nations and climate legislation in the U.S. have been dominated by market-based approaches. Carbon-trading and carbon offset projects have given corporations excuses to destroy jobs while avoiding emission cuts, and accelerating the corporate takeover of the natural world. We believe that bringing the voice of workers to environmental issues is necessary not only to protect our economic interests, but also to develop creative solutions that can stop global warming and preserve the environment. In the 1940s, UE District 8 led a campaign of labor, farmer and civic organizations for the creation of a Missouri Valley Authority that would have incorporated both community economic planning to preserve jobs and environmental measures to preserve farmland. In 1949 – well before the emergence of the modern environmental movement – the United Auto Workers research department produced a pamphlet, "A Small Car Named Desire," which urged the automakers to produce smaller, more affordable, and more fuel-efficient cars. Our labor movement must return to this kind of visionary work.
Sustainable energy is a growth field, with the potential to create millions of good-paying manufacturing jobs, as demonstrated by the Apollo Alliance, a forward-thinking alliance of trade unions, environmentalists and civil rights organizations that proposes rejuvenating our nation's economy by creating three million industrial jobs and treating clean energy as an economic and security mandate to rebuild America.
UE fully supports this concept of a just transition, where groups of workers or communities should not have to shoulder the burden caused by the transition from a fossil-fuel-based economy to one based on renewable energy. A just transition would create opportunities for displaced workers and communities to participate in the new economic order through compensation for job loss, loss of tax base, and other negative effects. The environmental organization Sierra Club played a key role during the Local 1110 Republic Windows & Doors sit down struggle by connecting UE with potential plant buyers and operators at the very moment the plant was slated for closure. This enabled the transition to a new plant owner and operator, one who specializes in the manufacturing of energy efficient windows.
The 1999 demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle captured the need for labor and environmentalists to work together against the common enemy of corporate globalization. The desire of business for a world where nations and communities compete in a race to the bottom, in terms of both labor and environmental standards, will lead to a future of poverty and poison for all working people. To defeat them, and ensure the right of all people to live, work, and play in safe, healthy, and clean environments, we need to form stronger alliances between trade unions, environmental justice organizations and environmentalists.
THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT THIS 71st UE CONVENTION:
- Encourages the union at all levels to educate our members about the climate change crisis, and about creative solutions that can reduce society's carbon output while creating good jobs;
- Endorses the call by the Mobilization for Climate Justice mass action on November 30, 2009 for real, effective and just solutions to climate change;
- Encourages our allies in the environmental movement to be mindful of the effect of environmental policies on jobs, and to push for solutions that curb the power of corporations rather than creating market incentives;
- Demands that any and all measures for dealing with climate change and other environmental issues incorporate just transition for workers and communities affected by changes;
- Supports worker-oriented efforts to address climate change such as the Apollo Alliance for Good Jobs and Clean Energy, and the Environmental Justice and Climate Change Initiative;
- Reaffirms the union's proposed solution to the energy crisis of the 1970s: public ownership of the energy industry and massive investment in renewable energy in order to end price-gouging and preserve our environment;
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Recognizes and thanks Sierra Club for its timely assistance and support shown to members of UE Local 1110 at Republic Windows & Doors during their sit-down struggle and their effort to find a new owner and operator for the plant.