Revisiting Relations Between the Labor and Environmental Movements

Despite the narrative that the labor and environmental movements are opposed to each other or even that they are by nature opposed to each other, which is a variant of this I have encountered over the years in comments here, in fact, there is very little reason why they should be opposed to each other. When tensions did arise after the 70s, it was much more about the uneven impact of globalization than anything inherent in their relations. Today, in fact relations between the two movements are better than they have been in a half-century. I have a piece in Boston Review that discusses a new book of essays on what’s going on between the two movements, with a lot of more digressive points about these relationships. Here’s an excerpt:

The biggest and most important change has taken place at the local level. Forward-thinking unions began moving beyond traditional bargaining over wages and hours. “Bargaining for the Common Good” became the mantra among successful union movements in the 2010s, beginning with the Chicago Teachers Union strike against mayor Rahm Emanuel’s austerity policies in 2012 and intensified with successful teacher unionism around the country in 2018 and 2019. That “common good” increasingly spoke of climate-based issues such as regulating temperatures in overheated classrooms.

That’s not to say that all has been smooth sailing, of course. But there’s a difference between tension that’s poisonous and tension that’s productive—precisely the point made by many essays in Power Lines, which emphasize the need to embrace and work through the inevitable frictions that arise between the two movements. As the book’s editors write in the introduction, “Successful labor-climate coalitions are grounded in real relationships, deep listening, and a willingness to lean into conflict.”

This idea is especially important when it comes to the idea of a “just transition,” which the book’s editors define as “a transformation of the extractive fossil fuel economy to a healthy, regenerative, equitable, and democratic economy.” Patrick Crowley, secretary-treasurer of Rhode Island’s AFL-CIO, has an essay in the book on this subject. In 2020, shortly after the presidential election, both labor and greens sat down to strategize, creating a group called Climate Jobs Rhode Island. But as it turns out, the two groups had very different ideas about what exactly a just transition around “climate jobs” would look like.

For the environmental organizations, a just transition meant environmental justice—pushing for goals like climate resiliency and carbon neutrality. For unions, a just transition meant the continuation (and expansion) of union jobs. These two goals can converge, of course, but they are not the same thing. Unions are concerned with working-class communities but serve their own members first, wherever they live. Environmentalists generally do want good jobs for people, but just moving dirty industry out of poor communities of color does not lead to the kind of jobs that will provide economic emancipation for them (nor are those jobs necessarily union jobs). This is the fundamental tension.

What it takes to bridge these differences is an old answer to many questions but one that we often forget to do: organizing. And organizing means listening—precisely what environmentalists and labor didn’t do in the decades they mostly operated independently.

Veronica Coptis’s superb essay, “Organizing Coal Country,” is a case study in the value of dialogue. Coptis, who worked at the Center for Coalfield Justice (CCJ) in Pennsylvania, notes that even if the coal workers disagree with you, by opening lines of communication, you can keep talking and help them build their own organizing capacity. The media has spilled an endless amount of ink speculating about coal workers’ political commitments: Are they worried that Democrats will destroy the coal industry? Why did Donald Trump appeal to them? Was it racism, “economic anxiety,” or sheer ignorance?

Coptis, who’s on the ground with these workers trying to build a climate-labor movement, seems to have an answer: start building power with them and find out for yourself. She denies that the working class don’t care about climate change, even as they want coal jobs. Some workers will disagree with the CCJ’s mission, she acknowledges. But so what? Listening, having conversations, building lines of communication, building trust instead of suspicion: all of this can lead to major benefits down the road, if not on every campaign or issue. She urges us to talk to unions and unorganized workers, focus on political education, and know that it is OK to disagree.