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Getting it Right: Worker Input in a New Energy Economy |
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More than 10,000 delegates and observers from around the world traveled to Bali, Indonesia, for the U.N. Climate Change Conference from Dec. 3-14. Of the 90 union delegates, more than 20 were from North America, including Lauren Asplen, communications director of , who sent us the following post. Delegates sent us a series of posts from Bali: here, here, here, here, here and here.
Our experience here has been both exhilarating and exhausting. Exhausting not (only) because of jet lag and the oppressive heat and humidity. But exhausting because of the complexity of the climate change issue and the intricacies of the U.N. process.
IUE-CWA entered the climate change debate through the rather narrow issue of job loss as the market shifts away from incandescent bulbs in favor of compact fluorescents light bulbs (CFLs)—a move soon to be mandated by the federal government.
Our campaign, Screw That Bulb, isn’t about impeding the easy consumer action of using a more efficient light bulb. We are raising the critical question of why can’t they be manufactured in the United States. After all, how environmentally friendly is it to produce the bulbs in China, with its lax standards both for workers and the environment, and then ship them half way around the world? You seriously have to ask what the carbon footprint is for the entire cycle of the bulb, not just how many kilowatts of energy it saves when it is in a U.S. lamp.
Rita Bugzavich, president of one of the IUE-CWA-represented General Electric lighting plants, traveled with me. In October, GE announced it was closing her plant. GE, which touts itself as a “green” company, so far is refusing to put energy-efficient lighting technology in its U.S. plants. Our campaign is about raising public and political awareness on this issue. This whole notion of how jobs will relate to the low-carbon economy is why the trade delegation is here: to lobby the ministers of the various countries to simply add the words labor and employment to their vocabulary when discussing responses to climate change.
In the United States, we soon must worry about concepts such as “carbon leakage” if (hopefully, when) we adopt a cap-and-trade policy to reduce emissions. The concern is how to set up the system domestically and worldwide so a carbon tax in our country doesn’t just become another of the many excuses used by U.S. multinational corporations to send jobs overseas. We need to take action to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but it must be done fairly and ensure a “just transition” for workers who will be affected.
Many people here in Bali, including our own brothers and sisters from trade unions in other countries, do not grasp how devastated U.S. manufacturing workers are. They see us as a rich nation and so believe it would be easy for U.S. workers to transition to this new economy. In fact, the new term is to talk about paying the price for the carbon “legacy.” Paying the price for the “legacy” of pensions and retiree health care has sent industries into bankruptcy, slashing wages and costing workers their retirement security. Then add in globalization and the outsourcing of jobs. Our members simply can’t take another hit.
We have to make changes to save the planet. But we have to insist that workers are not once again the ones paying the price.
And that is the exhilarating part of this experience. This debate is ongoing, and we have a real opportunity to get in on the ground floor, not play catch-up. The trade delegation intervened at a side event of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development to challenge its members’ positions on climate change and to raise our issues. The North American delegates also met with the U.S. Climate Action Network to start the dialogue about our concerns. It was agreed we have many opportunities for synergies. Both groups could benefit from working cooperatively and from trying early on to work through our differences so we can present a united front.
In the evening, Carl Pope, director of the Sierra Club, was one of many speakers, including several high-level European government environmental secretaries, who spoke at the trade union side event. He put the issue succinctly:
If we don’t get it right now as the new energy economy is born, we will have another century of struggles to make it accountable to the people it serves.
Our mission is to get it right. It will take a lot of hard work, a lot of education, a lot of cooperation worldwide. But we have opportunities as well as challenges. The world will act. That much is clear from the Bali convention. U.S. labor cannot afford to sit on the sidelines.
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OK so UAW folk when are you going to jump all over the French air powered car? Don’t laugh the prototypes exist, and a India is going to build them (India?)!! A hybrid air car (fossil fuel for compressor only) can do Seattle to New York on one tank of gas/biodiesel/greasile.