Labor Goes to Bali: Unions Ready to Take on Global Warming

By Brendan Smith and Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, Global Labor Strategies. Posted November 29, 2007.

This week trade unionists from around the world will travel to Bali for the December 3rd launch of negotiations for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol limiting greenhouse gasses. It will include delegates from such U.S unions as the Electrical Workers (IUE), Mine Workers, Service Employees, Boilermakers, Steelworkers, Communication Workers, Transport Workers (TWU), and UNITE HERE garment and textile workers. It will also include the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council as well as such labor-oriented groups as the Blue-Green Alliance, the Cornell Global Labor Institute, and the Labor Research Association.

The Kyoto Protocol was signed by 172 countries - not including the U.S. The AFL-CIO, which then represented the great majority of all U.S. unions, opposed the Kyoto protocol. What will be the stance of American labor toward an even stronger version for the future?

The devastating realities of climate change, and the scientific consensus around its cause and cure, are shifting the global political climate. In Australia, Prime Minister John Howard is defeated by the Australian Labor Party partly because of his intransigent opposition to effective action on global warming. Rightwing French Prime Minister Nicolas Sarkozy visits Washington and lectures George Bush on his failure to address the global warming crisis. Rupert Murdoch announces his papers will go green. A major power company cuts back on new plants because they would contribute to global warming. It remains to be seen whether this trend will also change American labor.

The attitude of U.S. unions may be critical to how well the world addresses the crisis of global warming. Despite its waning power, labor retains a critical position in controlling energy legislation in Congress. According to the highly respected Congressional reporting of Congressional Quarterly, lawmakers in Congress view support of the AFL-CIO as "essential" to passing any climate change bill. James Grumet of the nonpartisan National Commission on Energy Policy says, "If you don't have organized labor, you can't get something through" Congress.

The international labor movement has responded valiantly to global warming. It has taken a strong stance in support of international and national limits on greenhouse gas emissions. In a statement prepared for the Bali meeting, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC, successor to the ICFTU) noted the tangible impacts of climate change for millions of workers' communities and workplaces, including droughts, floods, and diseases. And it put the issue in a broad historic frame:

History will judge us by how we exercise the conscious options that we still have within our reach. Will we truly face up to this monumental challenge? Trade unions want everyone to accept this challenge together, in solidarity and common action.

They add:

As trade unionists, we are confident that Bali will mark the beginning of a new and more ambitious process of social change, where our collective hearts and minds must aspire to save our planet, on the basis of solidarity and mutual respect.

The ITUC recognizes that both global warming and the efforts to combat it will have serious impacts for many groups. In a tone rarely heard from any quarter in the U.S. debate on global warming, it calls on governments and society to show "solidarity with those who are most vulnerable" around the world. According to the ITUC:

Such solidarity first of all means countering global warming and its effects on the most vulnerable. Trade unions consider the best way for developed countries to exercise solidarity with developing countries is by cutting their own emissions in order to limit further suffering and irreversible changes, and by creating the means for other countries to participate in reduction efforts.

In another theme little heard in U.S. discussion, the ITUC says that trade unionists "believe climate justice cannot be achieved without gender justice." Climate change "is not gender neutral. Women are generally more vulnerable, representing the majority of the world's poor and powerless." It points out that the 2004 Asian Tsunami killed four times as many women as men.

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