Solidarity

The contortions of organized labor when confronting climate change are difficult to watch. It was inevitable that the Grand Bargain they had entered with Capital, labor peace for middle class lifestyles, would unravel at some point. Globalization was that point. But the contradiction of industrial production ecological stability is putting the nail in the coffin. All these miners and drillers and refiners and auto workers and pipeline construction workers, the list goes on and on, must have seen the writing on the wall. So they turned a blind eye. A strategy which only gets you so far. Here is a report from COP 24 in Poland, a country dependent on coal fired energy:

"Just hours after Frick invokes 1980s Solidarity as a model for activism, the current Solidarity—whose union headquarters are just blocks from the conference center—releases a joint press release with the Heartland Institute, an American think tank dedicated to climate denialism. The release calls climate science an “international dogma of the United Nations” and affirms Solidarity’s commitment to protecting its workers and the coal they mine."

And of course we know how organized labor is reacting here in the US; totally schizophrenic. On the one hand the leadership is using the language of "just transition" to try to appease the extractors. But if you start to add up the jobs that are linked to the fossil economy you start to see the enormity of the problem. And the old question "which side are you on" takes on new meaning.