Labour - Unions

Since each of us gets only a few minutes for our contributions on such a large subject as climate change, I have chosen to put forward ten brief points for a trade union strategy against climate change. Firstly, I will establish some of the important factual basis on which we have to build our strategies and policies.

Over 300,000 people march through the streets of New York, 21 September 2014.

1. Climate change is not a threat of the future, it is already happening here and now, it is man-made, and the consequences can be catastrophic.

The issue that we can't ignore this Labour Day is the disorientation in our movement's politics. List the issues working people are most concerned about today – whether deindustrialization, unemployment and underemployment; access to healthcare, childcare and pensions; poverty, racism, conditions of foreign workers and appalling levels of overall inequality; the environment, transit costs and transit services; another corporate-friendly trade agreement that is insensitive to workers and communities; or the horror of Gaza – and two things especially stand out.

A major climate change march in New York September 21 may be a tipping point for labor movement participation in global warming activism.

Climate initiatives are still controversial in the labor movement. But dozens of unions in New York, jarred by memories of Superstorm Sandy, have lined up to join the People’s Climate March, planned to coincide with a United Nations summit that will draw world leaders to the city.

It's good news that in a number of cities people "are meeting together in growing numbers to explore what it means - and doesn't mean - to stand in solidarity with Indigenous peoples within Canada," as journalist Meg Mittelstedt wrote recently.

Read this July 25 story from the Vancouver Sun, which undermines the BC Liberal government’s promises of jobs for British Columbians from their proposed LNG industry.

There are two points of common agreement amongst almost all sections of the Left. We are in the midst of a fundamental turning point in the earth's environment from climate change, with many catastrophic consequences unfolding, from species extinction to habitat loss to enormous obstacles and costs for human adaptation; and the Left remains, in almost all zones of the world, but especially in North America, on the margins as a social force in the face of a reconstructed and more authoritarian neoliberalism. How to respond in such a situation?

Continuously declaring that a decisive crisis is around the corner may generate attention, but as an organizing tactic it is counterproductive. An economic crisis may scare people and bring out their most conservative instincts. It may lower expectations and make people long for the pre-crisis period (no matter how much they had previously criticized it), desperately hoping to just fix, not transform or even significantly modify capitalism. We cannot depend on crises to do our political work for us.

Over 140 locked out workers at IKEA Richmond have signed a petition calling on the Canadian Labour Congress, Teamsters Canada (their union), and all trade unionists to start a Canada-wide boycott against the well-known corporation.