Labour - Unions | Page 7 | System Change Not Climate Change

How climate protection has become today’s labor solidarity

Jeremy Brecher , The Nation, May 27, 2015

Under banners proclaiming “Healthy Planet & Good Jobs,” thousands of trade unionists from 75 local and national unions, highly visible in their red, blue, green, and white union uniforms, joined the People’s Climate March in New York City last September—a quantum leap from labor’s previous participation in climate actions.

Striking oil workers emerge victorious thanks in part to green group solidarity

Kate Aronoff, Waging Nonviolence, March 16, 2015

Yesterday afternoon, the United Steelworkers reached a tentative contract agreement with negotiators from Shell Oil Co., which has represented Chevron, ExxonMobil and other oil companies affected by the union’s now nearly six-week strike. Even as the strike continues in many workplaces, yesterday’s victory is the hard-won result of careful organizing and some promising collaboration.

Green jobs: The newest challenge for workers and unions

Steven Tufts, Angela Bischoff, Nigel Barriffe, Socialist Project, March 1, 2015

We cannot develop an ecologically-responsible and just economy without considering the consequences for work and employment. But what is the meaning of 'green work' in capitalist societies of endless production and consumption for the purposes of profits? If we scale back on tar sands, fracking, and other dirty energy projects, as we must, workers who lose their jobs will need retraining, temporary income support, and a green energy infrastructure to work in. This will require a whole range of collective investments and decisions.

To stop Big Oil, environmentalists need labor unions

Rebecca Burns, Aljazeera, February 26, 2015

Winning on Keystone XL and other issues requires thinking about workers’ needs

In their push to halt construction of the Keystone XL and other pipelines in recent years, environmentalists have often put a familiar question to labor: Which side are you on? More often than not, unions have ended up on the other side of the line in the tar sand, backing the oil and gas industry in its efforts to expand the pipeline and drilling projects that are poised to push us past the point of carbon no return.

Striking for climate justice

Peter Rugh, Dissent, February 21, 2015

When unionized oil workers at the Tesoro Golden Eagle plant in Martinez, California walked off the job on February 1 to demand safer working conditions, they received some unexpected company on the picket line. Since the beginning of the strike, which has expanded from nine to eleven refineries nationwide, environmental activists with Communities for a Better Environment have joined members of the United Steelworkers (USW) union for their daily protests outside the plant.

The seeds of an alternative

Trish Kahle, Jacobin, February 20, 2015

Thousands of oil refinery workers are striking for safer working conditions. Their fight is central to the struggle against climate change.

NGO-led efforts to combat climate change have resulted in decades of failed negotiations, increased fossil-fuel production, and degraded working conditions. The largest oil workers strike in decades — now in its third week — contains within it the seeds of an alternative: class-struggle environmentalism.

Another bomb train blows up — Could workers put an end to this madness?

Peter Rugh, February 17, 2015

It's becoming a familiar story. Another oil train has flown off the rails. Its cargo of crude oil, fracked from the Bakken shale formation out west, burst into flames. The crash occurred Monday amidst a snow storm in Kanawha county, near the town of Boomer. The fire was reportedly still burning this morning, nearly 24 hours after the crash.

Home Business Story Nurses join oil workers' strike at Tesoro refinery

Rick Hurd, Merucury News, February 14, 2015

PACHECO -- A tanker truck slowed to a halt 10 yards from a group of oil workers, nurses and environmentalists holding signs at the intersection of Arnold Industrial and Solano ways just before noon Tuesday.

The group blocked the tanker's entrance to the Tesoro Golden Refinery, keeping the driver from delivering his product. For 10 minutes, the two sides essentially stared each other down, the driver talking with a representative of the pickets.

Climate activists have to stand with the strikers

Ragina Johnson, Socialist Worker, February 19, 2015

SOME 5,000 union members represented by the United Steelworkers (USW) are on strike at 11 refineries in six states, and counting. Workers at BP refineries in Whiting, Indiana, and Toledo, Ohio, joined the strike this week. The union could bring out more than 30,000 workers at 63 refineries plus related oil terminals, pipelines and petrochemical facilities, which would dramatically affect oil production.

In stand for people and planet over profit, green groups back oil worker strike

Lauren McCauley, Common Dreams, February 9, 2015

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.

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