Blog #1 - Labor comes to Copenhagen

Blog #1 – Labor comes to Copenhagen

Barbara Byrd is in Copenhagen as part of a Labor Delegation to the Climate Change Talks. She'll be sending us information over the next few days about what the Delegations goals are, and how they're doing. This is the first of her updates.

I’m here in Copenhagen at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, along with 40 other US unionists. Bob Baugh, Director of the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Council, is heading up our delegation, which includes affiliate leaders from every sector we represent – leaders like Richard Ianuzzi, AFT Vice President; Mike Langford, President of the Utility Workers; Terry O’Sullivan, President of the Laborers ; Jim Hunter, Director of IBEW’s Utility Division; and our own Jon Hunt, President of Amalgamated Transit Union, #757 (with Ron Heintzman, former #757 President and now International Representative).

So what are we doing here, and why is it important to Oregon’s union members?

First, we want to make sure that whatever comes out of these international climate negotiations includes labor’s core principles. We’re here to urge, persuade, and encourage our own and other countries’ delegations to incorporate these principles into the framework document they’re developing:

1 – We need ambitious actions to be taken on climate issues in order to prevent irrevocable harm to the planet.

2 – We must ensure a just transition toward a low-carbon economy. This means making climate action a driver for sustainable economic growth that leads to decent and “green” sustainable jobs. It also means protecting vulnerable communities and workers who will be harmed by the transition away from a carbon-intense economy.

3 – We are calling for substantial investment in research and development of new technologies and to train workers in new skills – these changes should be good for working people, not just investors!

4 – Leaders must see labor as a crucial stakeholder in the process of climate policy-making, and unions and other community organizations should be represented at all levels of government discussion and action.

If you’ve followed our work in the state legislature and with our regional labor partners in interactions with the Western Climate Initiative, you’ll recognize these principles as parallel to our own in Oregon.

Second, we want to learn from each other. In addition to the formal meetings, we are attending a huge array of educational “side events”, some of which we’ve organized ourselves and some of which have been developed by other “non-governmental organizations” like youth, environmentalists, indigenous peoples, and business. We’re interacting informally with others in the 300 plus international labor delegation, learning from their best practices and sharing our own. In my next post, you’ll get a taste of what I’m learning from my brothers and sisters here that is relevant to our day-to-day work in Oregon.

It’s unclear right now how much can be accomplished by Friday, when the Convention ends. The purpose of COP 15 – to reach an accord that can replace the Kyoto Treaty when it expires in 2012 – is unlikely to be achieved by then. Many believe, however, that we can at least leave Copenhagen with a framing document in place, outlining the issues that will have to be negotiated and signed off on during the coming year and perhaps even laying out some basic agreements.

Difficult divisions abound. The developing nations have already walked out of the discussions once, frustrated by what they see as the unwillingness of the industrialized countries to accept financial responsibility for helping them adapt to already-disastrous climate impacts while developing the means to lower emissions in the future. And the industrialized nations are fighting among themselves; the US and China, for example, are immersed in an increasingly hostile blame game.

Nonetheless, there is hope. Our labor delegation has been meeting with representatives from the US government who are here. All assure us that they want an agreement, that delay is not acceptable. They’ve urged us to back President Obama’s call for a 17% emissions reduction by 2020, and they’ve assured us that they support our call for a just transition and the retention and creation of millions of good jobs. (Obama will be here in Copenhagen on Friday, seemingly intending to be part of a successful closing day.)

So, we’ve marched (Saturday’s demonstration, in which labor participated, was 100,000 strong!), we’ve met, we’ve strategized and we’ve gotten to know each other across industry, occupation and national lines. The work of building international labor solidarity on a complex and urgent issue like climate change, across what can be very deep divides, is one that never ceases to inspire me. More on all this as the Convention proceeds. Thanks, everyone, for all you do to make Oregon and Oregon’s labor movement green and strong!