Why Unions Are Suspicious of the Green New Deal

This is an interesting discussion of the Green New Deal and providing good jobs to Americans. But we know that unions are highly suspicious of the Green New Deal. Lots of liberals like to just chalk this up to “white men being racist and not wanting the others to get the jobs” or as dupes of corporate America. But there are very good reasons for this suspicion. They are based around the fact that green capitalists are still capitalists and don’t like unions. So if we shut down all the dirty energy jobs that have long-standing unions and transfer our economy to new clean energy jobs with anti-union green capitalists, well, why would workers go along with that?

We welcome the call for labor rights and dialogue with labor,” stated members of the AFL-CIO in a 2019 letter to Green New Deal authors Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “But the Green New Deal resolution is far too short on specific solutions that speak to the jobs of our members and the critical sectors of our economy.”

This opposition emerged largely from pay discrepancies between fossil fuel and renewable energy workers. The starting salary for a solar energy worker averages to $7000 less per year than a coal mine worker. Solar installers make a median wage of $12 per hour, while their counterparts in some fossil fuel industries can make upwards of a six-figure salary. 

Contributing to this pay disparity is the lack of unionization in green manufacturing sectors. The 2020 U.S. Energy and Employment Report found that 6% of solar and wind workers are unionized, while only 4% of workers in photovoltaics are union members. 

According to Jason Walsh of BlueGreen Alliance, lack of unionization could have consequences for blue collar worker’s ability to ensure a just transition. “We need to ensure that the benefits of a green economy are shared equitably across our society and build ladders to the middle class,” he told the HPR. “We’re at an inflection point where it’s clear that clean technology will be the global economic race of this century. U.S. manufacturers have the ability, with the right policy support, to sell the products that any country will need to stave off the worst consequences of global warming.”

Those policy supports could come in the form of President-elect Biden’s proposed $2 trillion stimulus package, which allocates funding for manufacturing and unionized jobs in green industries. A key policy within this package includes a $400 billion government procurement of clean energy technologies such as batteries and electric vehicles — sectors in which other countries have already developed significant competitive advantages due to their public own investment programs. 

Despite initial opposition to a federal green industrial program, attitudes of labor leaders have since shifted. In response to Biden’s green stimulus proposals, United Auto Workers, a union of 400,000 automobile workers, released a statement describing the president-elect’s plan as a “win-win for American manufacturing … and a cleaner environment.” State level campaigns like Climate Jobs New York and regional branches of the AFL-CIO have also expressed their support for a green industrial strategy.

A June 2019 poll by think tank Data for Progress additionally found that, in total, 62% of surveyed union members nationwide support a green economic transition through the use of industrial strategy. 

“The president-elect has made it clear that he wants the jobs created by strategic federal investment to be high quality union jobs,” continued Walsh. “Growing a green and clean economy will not be possible unless there is a fundamental role for unions in this transformation.”

This is absolutely right. In World War II, the government ensured a lack of work stoppages through maintenance of membership clauses. In short, it meant that the government wasn’t going to give defense contracts to companies that were didn’t let workers organize if they wanted (this is what finally got Ford and the non-U.S. Steel steel companies to allow unions) and then guaranteed that new employees would automatically be union members. In exchange, workers gave up the right to strike, though they often engaged in short wildcat strikes anyway.

In any case, this is what has to happen today. The war against unmitigated climate change is the nation’s greatest challenge since World War II. To see this transition through, the government has to make sure that these jobs are automatically union jobs if the workers want them, without any anti-union campaign by the employers.

If green capitalists don’t agree with this, it demonstrates that they care a lot more about the capitalism than they do about saving the planet.