Blog #2 - Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Byrd from Copenhagen

Secretary-Treasurer Barbara Byrd is in Copenhagen as part of the Labor Delegation to the climate change talks. This is her second post.

It’s snowing in Copenhagen, but neither the cold nor the chaos at the Bella Center (the official site of COP 15 activities) have stopped labor delegates from taking full advantage of opportunities to negotiate, educate, persuade, and build bridges. Most of our folks have managed to get officially registered at the Bella Center (some after waits of up to 7 hours in freezing temperatures), and events at the World of Work (WOW) pavilion are also in full swing.

The WOW pavilion is located at the Danish Confederation of Trade Unions. The events here provide labor delegates and others with opportunities to share information and strategies for labor’s involvement in lowering carbon emissions globally. Since the number of NGO delegates able to attend events at the Bella Center have now been reduced significantly (by 80% through Wednesday, and even more Thursday and Friday), the availability of these off-site activities has become even more important. And it is these educational sessions that have been most helpful to me in drawing lessons for the Oregon labor movement in dealing with climate issues.

Yesterday, for example, the international labor group Public Services International, convened a discussion called “Public Services: Key to Getting Us Out of the Climate Crisis”. We heard from public sector union leaders from Australia, South Africa, and the UK about the important role public workers can play, not only by reducing the carbon footprints of their departments and agencies but by stimulating change in other sectors of the economy as well. “Public services came about to address market failures,” stated David Arnold of UNISON, one of the UK’s largest public employee unions, “and climate change is itself an example of a disastrous market failure.” Our own members in AFSCME, the Amalgamated Transit Union (who’s Portland local union President, Jon Hunt, is also here in Copenhagen) and other public unions can and do play a similar role in Oregon, drawing attention to the need to “green” their own workplaces while helping the state meet its energy efficiency and renewable energy targets through the high quality of their work.

Near the end of the workshop, delegates from Uruguay and the Philippines informed us that the climate crisis has created huge problems with the public water supply for our brothers and sisters in the developing countries. These countries suffer the double whammy of the climate crisis and poverty, stalling their efforts to deal with flooding and water resource depletion. Uruguay’s public service unions are struggling against privatization of the public water supply, just as Oregon’s public sector unions have fought privatization of public services. It was a stark reminder of what we have in common with our union brothers and sisters in the global south. And it contained an implicit call for support the demands of the G77 – the developing countries at the COP – for increased financial assistance from wealthy industrialized nations. While we argue with our bosses about using recycled paper, union members in these countries lose their livelihoods – and sometimes their lives – to the climate crisis.

Posted on December 16, 2009 in Weekly Update.