Climate Change Unites Unions and Enviros
Labor unions have for years been pitted against conservationists in a jobs-versus-the-environment conflict. But now, a greater threat to the planet has paired members of the rival movements in a fight against a greater evil: global climate change.
The Global Climate Convergence, a worldwide 10-day “education and direct action campaign” that started on Earth Day (April 22) and ends on May Day (May 1), is the first annual action that fuses several different movements into one common mega-movement with multiple goals, particularly stopping climate change. Lauren Regan, executive director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center, says to keep in mind that it’s not just labor unions and environmentalists that have joined the movement. Many others including immigrants and students have joined the cause as well.
Some issues, such as the Keystone XL pipeline, have left unionists and environmentalists at odds, with one group touting jobs and the other pointing to climate disaster. “It’s my hope to see what we really have in common,” Regan says. “At the community level we are starting to put that movement together.”
Shelley Pineo-Jensen, the chapter chair of the Eugene-Springfield Solidarity Network Jobs with Justice, says that unions will have a big presence with the climate convergence. The UO’s Graduate Teaching Fellows Federation is hosting a May Day march, which starts on campus, with SEIU Local 49, a service employee union and others participating. May Day is an internationally recognized (though not in the U.S.) labor holiday. “Everyday union members are just as aware of climate change as anyone else,” Pineo-Jensen says.
http://www.eugeneweekly.com/20140424/news-briefs/climate-change-unites-unions-and-enviros
