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ST.
PAUL, Minn.—A two-day conference here hosted by United Auto Workers Local
879 brought some 200 union members and environmental activists together
for a pioneering discussion on the mounting global climate crisis from a
working-class perspective.
The
Jan. 19-20 Labor and Sustainability Conference began with a keynote
session that filled Local 879’s meeting hall, located across from Ford
Motor Co.’s Twin Cities Assembly Plant, where the local’s nearly 2000
members work. The meeting was chaired by Phyllis Walker, president of
AFSCME Local 3800. Walker is a native of New Orleans, where her mother
and sister still live, and has spoken publicly on the catastrophic
results of Hurricane Katrina.
Keynote
speakers Jack Rasmus, a former union organizer who has done extensive
research on global warming, and Bill Onasch, a veteran union leader in
both the Minneapolis/St. Paul and Kansas City areas, addressed the
heating up of the planet, driven by increases in atmospheric carbon
dioxide. Charles Griffith and Claudette Juska from the Auto Project of
the Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, Mich., also spoke.
The
amount of CO2 has doubled in the last 200 years, with most of the growth
occurring in recent decades, Rasmus said.
The
frozen Artic Ocean could melt completely by 2040, and scientists say
Greenland is melting twice as fast as previously predicted. Massive ice
melts will cause major climate changes and create a cycle of heavy
rainfall in some areas, drought in others.
Saturday’s
10 workshops covered a wide range of topics, including sustainable
agriculture, wind power, sustainability in union contracts, the campaign
for zero greenhouse gas emissions, and technology conversion for “Green
Operation.”
Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 1005 President Michelle Sommers spoke on “The Need to
Expand Clean Mass Transit,” suggesting conversion of the soon-to-be
closed Ford plant to the production of hybrid-fuel buses.
Other
workshop speakers with union affiliations included Phil Qualy, director
of the United Transportation Union’s Minnesota Legislative Board, Dennis
Levendowski from Millwrights Local 548—who reported on the increasing
employment opportunities for of building trades workers in construction
of wind power generators—Jon Malek, vice-president of United Steel
Workers Local 1938 on the Minnesota Iron Range, and Bernie Hesse, Special
Projects Organizer for UFCW 789.
Christine
Frank, IATSE Local 12, a co-convenor of the conference and writer on
environmental issues, spoke on the mounting global climate crisis.
Lynn
Hinkle, Health and Safety Director for UAW 879, and a conference
co-convenor, welcomed conference participants to the union’s meeting hall
and training center, where workshop sessions were held.
The
Twin Cities Assembly Plant, which Ford has announced will close
permanently in 2008, is justly celebrated for its total reliance on energy
from its hydro-electric dam located adjacent to the factory on the
Mississippi River. The dam and power station were essentially a gift from
the state when Henry Ford began assembly operations at the newly
constructed site in 1923.
Ford’s
recent decision to close 15 plants, including this state-of-the-art
production facility, one of only a few in the industrial world that
operate with their own hydro-electric station, has prompted proposals for
saving the plant for conversion to green production of environmentally
friendly products such as wind-generating turbines and hybrid vehicles.
Christine
Frank and environmental activist Alan Maki have authored a
widely-circulated proposal for public ownership and operation of the
plant in green production. A workshop entitled “Saving the Ford Plant
Through Green Manufacturing,” led by Hinkle, addressed the campaign for
alternatives.
Increasing
awareness of and activity around the global-warming crisis combined with
Ford’s abrupt decision to shut the plant and eliminate some 2000 jobs led
to the convergence of environmental and union concerns that prompted the
conference. In what is apparently one of the first, if not the only,
union-initiated convocations to seek to address these matters jointly
with a broad range of environmental activists, the conference organizers
sought the widest possible participation of the rank and file of both
movements.
“Workers
have a fundamental human right,” the organizers said, “to remain in their
historic communities with a guarantee of no loss of good-paying,
union-protected employment. In order to avoid having solutions imposed by
others with no sense of obligation to the communities that they impact,
labor must develop its own program and solutions than can equitably
balance justice for workers with the need to preserve our natural
heritage.”
The
conference was endorsed by Minnesota State Federation of Labor, the
Minneapolis and St Paul central labor councils, and other labor and
environmental groups, including Socialist Action. Buoyed by the positive
response to the conference, a continuations committee is in formation to
pursue further education and action. More information is available at the
conference website, www.laborandsustainability.org/
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