
TUC Report calls for a Just Transition with “Skilled work at its heart”

Work in a Warming World, released by McGill Queen’s University Press on April 15, begins with the acknowledgement that the world of work – goods, services, and resources – produces most of the greenhouse gases created by human activity. In ten chapters, the book’s contributors demonstrate “how the world of work and the labour movement need to become involved in the struggle to slow global warming, and the ways in which environmental and economic policies need to be linked dynamically in order to effect positive change”. The book is organized into “Trends and Challenges”, such as the dilemma of the Canadian labour movement, and gender analysis of emissions reduction, and “Making Green Work”, with examples from the construction, hospitality, and energy industry, as well as chapters on sustainable infrastructure and its implications for the engineering profession, and the role of cities and the green economy. The book has a Canadian focus, but includes an international context. Chapters were written by associates of the Work in a Warming World research project funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, led by Professor Carla Lipsig-Mummé.
Trade Unions for Energy Democracy is convening a 40-person strategy discussion on September 20 as part of the People’s Climate March activities in New York. The meeting will discuss “central political issues facing the global labor movement around energy, climate change, impacts of pollution, and the need to develop an inspiring vision of a truly sustainable political economy based on solidarity and sufficiency”.
To focus discussion, TUED has released a working paper, written by Sean Sweeney of the Cornell Global Labor Institute, taking stock of what he calls “the great inaction” – UN-led climate negotiations and labour’s participation in them. He advocates that “social dialogue and social partnership need to be replaced by a new trade union narrative around movement-building and alliances, coupled with a new agenda or program grounded in economic democracy and popular power”. He concludes: “Focusing on climate change as a distinct and separate issue is counterproductive. To connect with their own members unions will need to embed climate protection into the work they are presently doing to defend and promote workers’ rights, fight privatization, austerity, and defend public services…By integrating climate protection into their present battles, unions can broaden the social base of support for what they presently regard to be their ‘core agenda’. Furthermore, they can play a role in articulating a clear and inspiring alternative that mounts to a new ecological and economic development paradigm”.
Sweeney cites Naomi Klein’s speech at the founding convention of UNIFOR in September 2013 as a statement of a desirable approach. Ms. Klein will also speak at the TUED event about her new book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate.
LINKS:
Climate Change and the Great Inaction: New Trade Union Perspectives by Sean Sweeney is at: http://unionsforenergydemocracy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/TUED-working-paper-2-Final.pdf
Agenda for the TUED meeting, Power to the People: A Strategy Discussion on Advancing Social Ownership of Energy is at: http://unionsforenergydemocracy.org/tued-strategy-discussion-sept-20-draft-agenda
Naomi Klein’s website is at: http://www.naomiklein.org/main; see the book review of This Changes Everything in the Globe and Mail at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/book-reviews/naomi-kleins-this-changes-everything-a-convincing-case-that-global-warming-is-the-defining-issue-of-our-era/article20700657/, and an excerpt at: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/books-and-media/naomi-klein-the-price-of-free-trade-is-unchecked-climate-change/article20578823/