Dems and Climate Change – Vulnerability or Strength with Unions?

 

“The writing is on the wall about what’s going to happen next…

We’re either going to be proactive about it, or we’re going to get run over by it.”

Norman Rogers, VP United Steelworkers, Local 675 (which represents workers at the West Coast’s largest refinery).

That there is a storm brewing across the land – one of many I might add – as technology moves forward, as survivability amidst global climate change becomes an existential issue and artificial intelligence threatens millions of jobs, is beyond obvious. When automobiles began proliferating at the beginning of the 20th century, cities and towns across the United States banned cars, because their backfiring and engine noise scared horses. Except for an occasional sentimental tourist opportunity, a racetrack, a few police officers on horseback and a tiny minority of religious groups who eschew a mechanized world, you don’t see many horses in towns anymore. The great lesson, emphasized particularly with military, transportation and communications technology advances, is the stark reality that no major society in history has been able to stop “progress.”

The UK, with a history of strong unions prone to strike, provides a case in point. In the mid-1980s, print unions struck a series of type-setting newspaper printing facilities focused on Rupert Murdoch’s various newspapers. Fighting for better wages and job protection against labor-saving technologies, the strike went on for several years. Secretly, Rupert Murdoch was building an ultra-modern, centralized printing plant in Wapping, England. Murdoch finally issued an ultimatum to his striking workers: accept the contract he had offered or he would close all the existing plants and permanently discharge all existing workers. The strikers scoffed at his threat. But in January of 1986, the Wapping plant was opened. All the other existing plants were immediately closed.

“At the new facility, modern computer facilities allowed journalists to input copy directly, rather than involving print union workers who used older ‘hot-metal’ Linotype printing methods. All of the workers were dismissed. The failure of the strike was devastating for the print union workers, and it led both to a general decline in trade union influence in the UK, and to a widespread adoption of modern newspaper publishing practices… Print unions tried to block distribution of The Sunday Times, along with other newspapers in Rupert Murdoch's News International group, after production was shifted to [the new facility].” Wikipedia. They lost… an example of a rightwing media mogul during a rightwing government playing hardball.

But now Americans are living in a highly polarized era, where one political party is looking to the past, where life was simpler and white Christian demographics still dominated. Climate change was not a factor back then, and workers were happy, generation after generation, to work in well-paying blue collar union jobs. This is the mantra of Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, and as President Joe Biden recently visited striking United Autoworkers (see above photo), Trump reminded workers that electric cars required less labor… that gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles needed to remain our clearly primary and growing automotive segment, preserving their traditional jobs.

MAGA is strongly based on denying or marginalizing climate change. The conservative GOP House, mired in leadership issues, seems focused on purging the major legislative changes passed early in Biden’s administration, dedicating billions of tax dollars to alternative energy and climate change initiatives. Trump has already attracted large segments of working-class populists, noting now that autoworkers were poignant force in election-critical swing states. So, Dems – committed to a transition away from fossil fuel-generated energy – were in a complex and contradictory space when focused on their pro-union stance.

We know progress will not be stopped, but MAGA hopes seriously to delay any economic changes from legislation and business practices that support moving from traditional polluting fossil fuels to clean, green, energy. Could the GOP use that willingness to delay progress to win elections? Could the Dems embrace counter policies that support the transition, where millions of new jobs will soon eclipse the entire fossil-fuel-related industrial base but where millions of older jobs will be displaced?

In California, United Steelworkers are joining other unions to lobby the legislature to project those traditional worker’s livelihoods. Sammy Roth, writing for the October 25th Los Angeles Times, writes: “[This union grouping] launched a new political coalition Tuesday [10/24] that will lobby California to help fossil fuel workers transition to clean energy jobs — and push state officials to protect those workers from extreme heat and other dangers of global warming…

“The unions behind California Labor for Climate Jobs represent teachers, utility workers, farmworkers, janitors and more. They’re calling their initial policy platform the California Workers’ Climate Bill of Rights. It urges policymakers to invest in safety nets for oil and gas industry employees, including healthcare coverage and relocation, and to fund training that prepares those employees for similarly well-paying union jobs in climate-friendly fields.

“The workers’ bill of rights also urges state officials to protect indoor and outdoor workers from deadly heat and lung-scarring wildfire smoke — threats that are getting worse and worse as temperatures rise with the burning of fossil fuels… ‘We’re looking at a huge restructuring of the economy — probably the biggest since World War II,’ said Kathryn Lybarger, a gardener at UC Berkeley and president of AFSCME Local 3299, which is also part of the new coalition. ‘We’ve got to make sure that as we shift to a low-carbon economy, that the jobs and those rights and protections are just as good.’

“These types of proposals aren’t exactly new… I wrote two years ago about an academic report — endorsed and funded by many of the same unions — finding that California could provide an equitable transition to fossil fuel workers at a cost of $470 million a year, or just 0.02% of the state’s expected gross domestic product. There have been increasingly loud calls for state lawmakers to safeguard workers from extreme heat.

“But the new coalition arrives on the political landscape amid continued sparring over how to build a clean energy future that works for everyone… As I’ve written in recent weeks, there’s no shortage of well-meaning people who understand the severity of the climate crisis but are convinced that certain climate solutions do more harm than good. Some critics say sprawling solar energy farms can disrupt sensitive desert landscapes, while others argue that rooftop solar incentives are driving up electricity rates.” Nevertheless, these rising costs and structural changes are also scaring voters, who are watching the cost of nearly everything rise. Is that fear enough to elevate the climate-marginalizing GOP to victory in 2024, implementing a delay that will save jobs at a terrible expense? Time will tell.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the entire planet is facing an existential inflection point where denial and resistance to needed changes just might make life on Earth irreversibly intolerable.