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 generations of workers yet to enter our workplace. Now more than ever we must apply our experience of struggle for the rights of future generations, and our concern for our children’s and grandchildren’s future, to the struggle for a sane and just environmental policy.
Contrary to what some scientists on the payroll of the Bush administration or the energy industry would have us believe, the existence of global warming, and the fact that it is caused by human activity, is widely accepted as scientific fact. With rising temperatures, human lives — particularly among working class communities, communities of color and indigenous peoples — are affected by compromised health, financial burdens, and social and cultural disruptions. There is perhaps no better illustration of the lethal intersection of climate change, poverty and racism as the Katrina disaster, where thousands of working class families were abandoned to the ravages of a hurricane exacerbated by rising ocean temperatures.
Like other disasters facing our nation and world, the climate change crisis is being driven above all 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 to the communities they operate in. In fact, 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 American industrial jobs and treating clean energy as an economic and security mandate to rebuild America. UE also fully supports the concept of a "Just Transition." No group of workers or communities should have to shoulder alone the burden caused by the transition from a fossil-fuel-based economy to a renewable-energy-based economy. 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 1999 demonstrations against the World Trade Organization in Seattle capture the need 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, and is 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 70th UE CONVENTION:
- Encourages UE from the national to the local level to educate our members about the climate change crisis, and urges congressional passage of the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act (S.309) as introduced by Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT);
- Demand 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 this 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.