Public Employee Press

Climate Change is an Issue for Labor

By JON FORSTER

With the right-wing Republican attacks on unions, one might ask whether global warming and the resulting climate change is really a union issue. In fact it is, and it may even be a key to the resurgence of the labor movement.

Climate change directly impacts many of our members, especially those who live in low-income and vulnerable communities. Superstorm Sandy not only closed our union headquarters for 10 months, but it ravaged communities like the Rockaways, Red Hook, Staten Island, Hunts Point and the Lower East Side, where many of our members live. They were left without essential services and even food, and when it came time to rebuild, there was less help, less money, and less attention.

Climate change is an environmental justice issue. For that reason unions have a social and political obligation to combat global warming. The very fact that climate change impacts our communities also offers opportunities for unions to work more closely with environmental justice, faith and other community organizations.

Making our communities more resistant to stronger storms and hotter days while reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs) like CO2 is a collective effort. It is this cooperation on the community level that helps make unions strong. Historically, unions have fought alongside community residents on issues of local importance, but then community residents are also ready to stand by their union neighbors in their fight for better contracts.

The fight against climate change also could lead to the creation of tens of thousands of jobs, many of them in the public sector.

To effectively limit climate change, government, at all levels, must make massive investments in public works and therefore a huge growth in public sector jobs.

PlaNYC was former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's plan for combating climate change in New York City. It called for things like planting a million trees and building new parklands. Many of these projects should have been done by civil servants; however, Bloomberg contracted out most of this work.

Today, PlaNYC is being updated and again there is the potential to create thousands of good, civil service jobs. But labor must be involved in this updating of PlaNYC and must ensure that the plan results in good, union jobs.

A report, "Climate Works for All," calls for ten environmental construction projects that will reduce CO2 emissions and create up to 39,000 new jobs in the city every year. These projects include putting solar panels on school roofs, building more greenways, and requiring energy efficiency in large buildings. Several unions, including DC37, have endorsed this plan. It is now important to work with other groups to make these projects a priority for the de Blasio administration.

The creation of new jobs is critical to rebuilding the strength of unions. The strengthening of alliances with community organizations is essential in the fight against the political right wing. And the struggle for environmental justice is the struggle for the equal rights of all people.

Climate change is a union issue.

Jon Forster chairs the DC 37 Climate Change Committee. A member of Local 375, he serves on the DC 37 Executive Board.