Labour - Unions

The following is a presentation by Sean Sweeney to the 'Democracy Rising' conference in Athens, Greece on July 18, 2015. Sean Sweeney, PhD, is Coordinator of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy. He recently joined the Murphy Institute at City University of New York to direct its International Program for Labor, Climate and the Environment.

Third memorandum or Grexit: What are the implications for the future of Greece’s energy system?

Full presentation:

Speech to the BC Provincial Council of the Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada in Vancouver, April 27, 2013, by Gene McGuckin, past president of CEP Local 1129 (retired) and a member of the Vancouver Ecosocialist Group.

Good morning, sisters and brothers. It’s been just over six years since I found myself in a CEP crowd   like this.  Last time, in this very room, I was a delegate for Local 1129 at the Pulp and Paper Wage Caucus.

BURNABY, BC, July 23, 2015 /CNW/ - The B.C. Government and Service Employees' Union is joining First Nations and environmental advocates in opposing the B.C. government's approval of the Site C dam project, the union announced today.

"Site C is the wrong choice for British Columbia. The project is not needed: there are better alternatives," says BCGEU president Stephanie Smith. "Site C will cause massive habitat loss. It violates First Nations' indigenous rights. It removes high-value agricultural lands from production."

Promoting class warfare a 'losing strategy,' pundits say. Well, check out these class acts. Class warfare is a very bad thing, according to the pundits who create and enforce the limits of acceptable public opinion in Canada. In fact, any mention of class relations or interests other than a pious reference to the "middle class" seems to have been banned across much of the mainstream media.

This 3.5 min video interview with the long-serving President of the Union of BC Indian Chiefs touches on the Petronas LNG proposal, opposition to the Site C Dam and being arrested on Burnaby Mountain protesting the Kinder Morgan pipeline proposal.

http://www.theprovince.com/news/Grand+Chief+Stewart+Phillip+explains+pow...

Climate message to transport unions: mobilize in Paris, build alliances back home

This piece was written by Asbjørn Wahl, International Advisor for the Union of Municipal and General Employees, Norway. It was addressed to the Working Group on Climate Change of the International Transport Workers Federation, which he chairs.

From FAILURE20 to COP21

. . . The United Steelworkers, which represents 30,000 refinery workers in collective bargaining, tracks workplace deaths. It reports that 27 workers died at refineries in the past five years – more than five a year.

That’s intolerable. And it’s a big part of the reason that 5,000 USW oil and chemical workers, including me, are on unfair labor practice strikes nationwide. We believe not enough is being done to prevent our co-workers from leaving refineries and chemical plants in body bags. None of us wants to be the next to lose his or her life for no good reason.

In what may seem like an unlikely alliance, environmental groups are throwing their full support behind oil industry workers who on Sunday announced a widespread work stoppage over complaints that Big Oil companies "value production and profit over health and safety."

The strike, which marks the largest national strike of oil workers since 1980, was called by the United Steelworkers Union (USW) after negotiations with Royal Dutch Shell, which is leading the industry-wide bargaining effort, broke down.

Greece will hold parliamentary elections on January 25 and Syriza, the left-wing party which has consistently called for debt restructuring and an end to austerity, is leading the polls. The IMF-European Commission-European Central Bank `Troika' are warning of the "threat" of Syriza coming to power and have forcefully indicated their support for Greece's ruling coalition by conditioning further financial support on the re-election of a pliable government.

While the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has claimed that the proposed Keystone XL pipeline would create 250,000 jobs, labor researchers say the jobs figures have been vastly distorted. We speak to Sean Sweeney, director and founder of the Global Labor Institute at Cornell University, and Bruce Hamilton, vice president of Amalgamated Transit Union.

Watch all our reports from the U.N. climate summit in Lima, Peru on our website: