At Climate Change March, Unionists Push Drive Against Global Warming
For the tens of thousands of unionists participating in the massive Sept. 21 climate change march in New York City, the campaign to curb global warming is as important as the campaign for worker rights.
Indeed, for many of the most-exploited people, from poor and minority communities and nations, who led the 400,000-person throng, the two go together, since the same corporate polluters who poison their air and their water are the ones who exploit their labor. Union leaders speaking at the march and afterwards repeatedly made that point.
Environmentalists, unions and other activists called the march in advance of a Sept. 23 UN-hosted global climate summit to make clear to the world leaders – including Democratic President Barack Obama – that the time for inaction on curbing carbon emissions has ended.
Saying they see climate change as a labor issue, unionists at the march said also climate disasters like Hurricane Sandy in New York often hurt their members - workers, the poor, youth, women, immigrants and minorities - the most and that that green jobs could be good-wage jobs that can't be shipped overseas. Marchers included Communications Workers, Teamsters, AFSCME, the Office and Professional Employees, National Nurses United, the Service Employees, the National Writers Union-UAW and other unionists.
“Working families and their communities bear the brunt of the impacts of climate change. It’s time for world leaders to heed the call of working people everywhere for action on climate now, so we can count on a clean energy future with its promise of more jobs, better jobs and stronger communities,” said Lillian Roberts, executive director of New York's AFSCME District Council 37. Her council helped organize and publicize the march.
The national leaders whom the marchers targeted took no action against global warming, using the UN summit to lay groundwork for future bargaining on controlling the emissions, which scientists report lead to global warming and its bad impacts. Marchers made clear their patience with politicians and polluters is running out. Indeed, on Sept. 22, dozens were arrested after non-violent civil disobedience at the Wall Street corporate headquarters of various polluters.
"Further delay, and inadequate and unenforceable treaties to mitigate global environmental pollution, is no longer an option if life and our planet's health are to be protected and preserved,” Jean Ross, RN, co-president of National Nurses United, told one of many pre-march rallies elsewhere nationwide.
"We are facing a world health emergency," she said. NNU used the rallies and the march to again demand a tax on financial transactions – trades of stocks, bonds and mutual funds, etc. – to, among other things, help pay for cleaning up pollution.
"Nurses now regularly see patients suffering a variety of ailments, from asthma and other respiratory illnesses to cardiovascular disease that are directly linked to environmental pollution, which is daily exacerbated by the climate crisis,” Ross said.
“I wish every SEIU member -- in fact, every American -- who cares about protecting our environment could have experienced the magic and power of the climate change protest and events in New York on Sunday,” said Service Employees President Mary Kay Henry, who led her union's troops in the march.
“Many of the people I spoke with during the People's Climate March saw it as a turning point in how we tackle clean air and water -- both for them personally and for the whole world.
“One 199SEIU healthcare leader from Long Island who grew up in Haiti...felt 'blessed' to participate in the march, thrilled her union was all in, and grateful I was there to draw more national attention to the idea the climate crisis is a working person's issue.
“And members of 32BJ marched with us, their leaders proud of their own green building initiatives that have already changed the conversation in the commercial real estate industry,” Henry said. 32BJ President Hector Figueroa told the march's lead sponsors, the Climate Justice Alliance, that Hurricane Sandy destroyed workers' communities and flooded their workplace buildings, that workers suffer asthma epidemics due to pollution “and we care about the world that we will leave for our children and grandchildren.”
“This is your Woodstock,” Christopher Erikson, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 business manager, told the crowd. “Today is the day your children and their children remember us. Today, our voices will be heard. This is not a moral issue. It’s an economic battle.” His international union is more cautious: IBEW is one of several unions warning that Obama's plan to cut U.S. coal-fired power plant emissions by 30 percent within a decade or so will cost thousands of jobs.
“For us, climate change is not an abstraction,” AFSCME's Roberts explained. “In 2013, many of our members were victims when Sandy flooded streets and subways, damaged homes and destroyed communities. We were forced to close DC 37 headquarters for over eight months and redeploy to other locations. Still, in spite of the devastation our dedicated city workers reported to duty as 9-1-1 operators, EMS first responders, sewage treatment workers, librarians, school aides and more, so they could keep fellow New Yorkers safe.
“That is why District Council 37 joined the march. Working families and the most vulnerable are among those hardest hit by climate disasters...We are sending a message to our city, state and federal elected officials to take the necessary steps to decrease global warming pollution. They must act now!”
Added Teamsters Joint Council 16 President George Miranda: “Teamsters marched to tell our story. Workers are the ones most vulnerable to climate change impacts, and we are the ones who lead the cleanup after events like Sandy. New York Teamsters are working with the environmental justice movement to clean our air and protect workers at the same time. We have seen what climate change can do and we are part of the solution.”
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(The Peoples World contributed material for this story.)
