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labor network for sustainability
Only a Just Transition Can End This Anti-Worker Race to the Bottom
Key demands by the UAW and their allies across civil society can promote both climate protection and a decent future for autoworkers.
Oct 05, 2023
Organized labor and the climate movement—often portrayed as opponents—have made an auspicious start toward cooperation in the autoworkers strike. The UAW, eschewing Trumpian blandishments to attack the transition to electrical vehicles (EVs), have instead endorsed the transition to climate-safe cars and trucks.
One hundred climate organizations, rejecting the blandishments of auto industry allies that low wages in the non-union South will make EVs cheaper and therefore help fight global warming, have instead signed a letter of solidarity with UAW workers and are organizing to support union picket lines. The purpose of this Commentary is to explain the context of this convergence and to indicate the elements of a “just transition” for the auto industry that can provide a joint program for the labor and climate movements.
The Backstory
Mr. Ross Gelbspan talked about his new book, The Heat is On: The High Stakes Battle over Earth’s Threatened Climate. The book is about the science, economics and politics of global warming. Mr. Gelbspan argues that there is evidence that global warming is taking place all over the globe and that energy businesses are trying to hide the damage that fossil fuels have caused to the ozone layer.
Labor and climate issues have been entwined in the US auto industry since long before the public recognition of global warming. The Big Three auto strike is intertwined with the business and political strategy of the auto industry, its response to the climate crisis, the changing role of federal and state governments, and the decay and transformation of the UAW.
An investigative report by E&E News in 2020 found that company scientists warned executives at General Motors and Ford in the 1960s that carbon emissions from their cars and trucks would cause the earth’s climate to warm. In response to this threat, the auto companies secretly gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations denying the reality of global warming. Along with the oil industry and the US National Association of Manufacturers they formed the Global Climate Coalition to oppose any mandatory actions to address global warming; it spent tens of millions of dollars on advertising against international climate agreements and national climate legislation. The auto companies expanded their investments in high-emission trucks and SUVs. They opposed higher standards for fuel economy and carbon emissions. Until 1996 the Big Three did not produce a single commercial electric vehicle – allowing Tesla to corner the market with its EVs. Today emissions from the tailpipes of cars and trucks are the largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in the United States.
In 2008, rising gas prices and the Great Recession devasted the Big Three’s carefully cultivated market for gas guzzlers. GM and Chrysler went into bankruptcy and an $81 billion bailout left the US government as majority owner of GM and the UAW and Fiat as the principal owners of Chrysler.
The US auto industry was reconstructed under President Barak Obama’s economic recovery plan. Auto corporations and the UAW agreed to a large, long-term increase in energy efficiency to cut carbon emissions. The auto corporations agreed to cooperate with emission reduction requirements because their survival depended on the plan’s massive public investment in the auto industry. This involved cooperative planning for retooling the industry, large-scale federal support for developing new technology, and substantial public investment in modernizing the industry on a low-carbon basis. The result was a steady decrease in carbon pollution rates, an increase of jobs for auto workers, and an end to the crisis that threated to nearly eliminate auto production – and an estimated three million jobs — in the United States.
Faced with the collapse of the auto industry and the loss of millions of jobs, the UAW had little choice but to agree to major concessions. Its contracts incorporated a two-tiered wage structure under which those hired through 2007 are now making an average of $33 per hour while those hired after 2007 now make $17 per hour or less. Lower-tier employees receive lower health benefits and don’t get defined benefit pensions or retiree health care. Auto workers lost the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) that gave them protection against inflation. Nonetheless they went for years without wage increases. They also lost the “job banks” jobs security program that provided laid-off workers pay and benefits if employment dipped below a pre-defined level.
While the concessions were presented as a temporary measure to address the crisis in the auto industry, they were not reversed in subsequent contracts, and the degradation of auto work has continued to the present day. Meanwhile, the auto companies have continued to oppose climate protection policies and to promote high-pollution, low-mileage trucks and SUVs. Indeed, as recently as July 2023 the auto industry’s largest lobbying organization came out against the Biden administration’s proposed rule to ensure that two-thirds of new passenger cars sold in the United States are all-electric by 2032.
Subsidizing Change in the Auto Industry – At the Expense of Auto Workers and the Climate?
The politics of climate and jobs was transformed in 2019 by the proposal – initiated by the youth climate Sunrise Movement and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez – for a Green New Deal. They called for a ten-year mobilization of every aspect of American society to create 100% clean and renewable energy, guarantee living-wage jobs for anyone who needs one, and a just transition for both workers and frontline communities. The Green New Deal reconfigured American politics with its core proposition: fix joblessness and inequality by putting people to work at good jobs fixing the climate.Joe Biden’s presidential campaign created a committee stocked with Green New Deal advocates like Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders. He made their recommendations the centerpiece of his campaign policy. Biden’s Build Back Better plan combined ideas from the Green New Deal with proposals for “industrial policy” – government efforts to shape the economy by supporting specific industries, firms, or economic activities — long advocated by industrial unions and some progressive politicians. Many of these ideas were incorporated into Biden’s three major economic bills, the American Rescue Plan, Bipartisan Infrastructure, and Inflation Reduction Acts, which provide trillions of dollars over the next decade to incentivize domestic production in targeted industries, notably the auto industry. Unlike the government-led reconstruction of the auto industry under Obama, however, today’s federal program is largely limited to providing subsidies to auto companies to expand EV production, rather than actively reshaping the industry. When the House passed its version of the Inflation Reduction Act in 2021, it included another $4,500 tax credit to consumers for EVs built largely with union labor, but Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia succeeded in removing the provision as a condition for allowing the IRA to pass the Senate.
The auto companies have been happy to accept these federal subsidies, but they are also happy to evade their stated purposes. Auto companies have given surface compliance to federal pressure to reduce carbon pollution, but in reality they continue to promote highly profitable but high-carbon SUVs and light trucks and drag their feet on shifting to EVs. And they are using the federal subsidies to move their operations to low-wage, non-union locations in the South and to use joint ventures with foreign auto companies to evade unionization.
Since the early 1990s the South’s share of auto industry employment has grown from 15 to 30 per cent while the Midwest’s proportion has fallen from 60% to 45%. The auto companies are now using the subsidies provided by Biden’s industrial policy to accelerate this migration. In the past two years the big auto companies have announced nearly $90 billion in investment for EV plants, according to the Center for Automotive Research. Their suppliers are investing billions more. Brookings Metro says total private-sector investment in EV manufacturing under Biden has reached nearly $140 billion.
Brookings Metro calculated that the South has attracted 55 percent of the total private investment in electric vehicles and batteries under Biden, twice as much as has gone to the Midwest. Such EV and battery plant investments include Hyundai and Rivian in Georgia, Toyota in North Carolina, Tesla in Texas, BMW in South Carolina, Mercedes-Benz in Alabama, General Motors in Tennessee, and Ford in Tennessee and Kentucky. EV investments in the South are expected to create at least 65,000 jobs.
To further bolster their resistance to worker demands, auto companies are creating their EV battery plants as joint ventures with foreign companies. As such they are not subject to the master agreements that cover the Big Three, so that the UAW must negotiate separate contracts for plants that are already offering wages far below the master agreements.
This “restructuring” seemed to be just fine with the Biden administration. In early June Energy Secretary Jennifer Grandholm told an industry group that the administration was “agnostic” about where companies choose to site their clean-energy investments. Later that same month the Department of Energy approved more than $9 billion in loans to Ford and a Korean company to build EV battery plants in Kentucky and Tennessee. This subsidy gave no consideration to wages, working conditions, union rights, or retirement security. The next day UAW president Shawn Fain issued a statement that read in part:
The switch to electric engine jobs, battery production and other EV manufacturing cannot become a race to the bottom. Not only is the federal government not using its power to turn the tide – they’re actively funding the race to the bottom with billions in public money. Why is Joe Biden’s administration facilitating this corporate greed with taxpayer money?
In the past five years, workers who build GM products in Lordstown Ohio, have had their lives turned upside down as they were forced to retire, quit or uproot their families and move all over the United States when GM closed their plants despite massive profits. Their jobs were replaced in GM’s new joint-venture battery facility with jobs that pay half of what workers made at the previous Lordstown plant.
Not only is the White House refusing to right this wrong, they’re giving Ford $9.2 billion to create the same low-road jobs in Kentucky and Tennessee.
The last time the federal government gave the Big Three billions of dollars, the companies did the exact same thing: slash wages, cut jobs, and undermine the industry that for generations created the best jobs for working families in this country. Autoworkers and our families took the hit in 2009 in the name of saving the industry. We were never made whole, and it’s an absolute shame to see another Democratic administration doubling down on a taxpayer-funded corporate giveaway.
Faced with such a rebuff in the prelude to the impending auto strike, and perhaps counting the working class voters in a state critical for the 2024 presidential election, the Biden administration announced in late August that the Energy Department would provide $2 billion in grants and $10 billion in loan guarantees under the Inflation Reduction Act, plus $3.5 billion in grants under the infrastructure law, to help companies convert existing plants to making EVs and batteries. The once-“agnostic” Granholm proclaimed her new religion: “We are going to focus on financing projects that are in long-standing automaking communities, that keep folks already working on the payroll, projects that advance collective bargaining agreements, that create high-paying, long-lasting jobs.”
UAW president Fain praised the decision.
The UAW supports and is ready for the transition to a clean auto industry. But the EV transition must be a just transition that ensures auto workers have a place in the new economy. Today’s announcement from the Department of Energy echoes the UAW’s call for strong labor standards tied to all taxpayer funding that goes to auto and manufacturing companies. This new policy makes clear to employers that the EV transition must include strong union partnerships with the high pay and safety standards that generations of UAW members have fought for and won.
The Biden administration’s shift – at least momentarily – toward a just transition for auto workers facing the greening of their industry indicates both the political popularity of just transition and a balance of forces propitious for efforts to realize it. Given that context, what measures can labor and climate movements advocate to begin to realize a just transition for auto workers?
A Just Transition for Auto Workers
The UAW, more than a hundred climate and allied organizations, and President Joe Biden have all endorsed a “just transition” to electric vehicles for auto workers. But what would a just transition for auto workers actually mean? Here are some of the measures that workers, environmentalists, and governments could join together to promote.
Union demands
In contrast to past negotiations with the Big Three, the current UAW leadership has presented its basic proposals both to auto workers and to the public. In addition to wage and other economic demands, there are three union proposals in particular that are necessary parts of a just transition.
- Working family protection program: Until 2009 the Big Three had a “job banks” jobs security program. If employment dipped below an agreed level, laid-off workers would receive pay and benefits. The UAW is proposing an updated version, the “Working family protection program,” which would require companies that shut down facilities to pay UAW members to do community-service work. It would give the companies a strong incentive to keep plants open and workers on the job.
- Right to strike over plant closures. The Big Three have closed 65 plants over the last 20 years. Yet workers and communities are often powerless in the face of shutdowns. The right to strike over plant closures will provide a powerful tool to deter them and to provide workers and community members power to negotiate just terms for closures.
- Eliminating tiers. In 2008 when the collapse of the US auto industry threatened to destroy as many as three million jobs, the UAW agreed to major concessions, including separation of workers into “tiers” which provided far lower wages and worse conditions for workers who were newly hired. The companies have used this to divide the workforce and to drive down wages for the growing proportion of lower seniority workers. As long as the tier system persists, the companies will be able to discriminate against a growing proportion of the workforce. Getting rid of tiers is an essential part of a just transition because the companies can use them to drive down conditions for workers making electric vehicles. The Teamsters’ recently ended tiers at UPS.
Federal policy
- Just Transition requirements in federal auto subsidies. Initially funding under the Inflation Reduction Act and other federal programs that subsidize the transition to climate-safe industry did little to see that the jobs created would be good jobs, let alone union jobs. As a result, the auto companies have been taking the subsidies and using them to shut down good-paying union jobs in the Midwest and open new, nonunion jobs with lower pay and dangerous health and safety conditions in southern states with anti-labor “right-to-work” laws.
When the UAW protested, the Biden administration changed course and issued a $15.5 billion package of grants and loans primarily focused on retooling existing factories for the transition to EVs. This package included conditions for grants and loans that, if applied across the board to all EV subsidies, would make a major contribution to a just transition for auto workers.
In the $2 billion Domestic Conversion Grant Program, higher scores will be given to “projects that are likely to retain collective bargaining agreements and/or those that have an existing high-quality, high-wage hourly production workforce, such as applicants that currently pay top quartile wages in their industry.” The program “aims to support a just transition for workers and communities in the transition to electrified transportation,” with particular attention to “communities supporting facilities with longer histories in automotive manufacturing.” Preference will be given to projects that “commit to pay high wages for production workers and maintain collective bargaining agreements.”
The Department of Energy’s recent $10 billion loan initiative under the Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program for automotive manufacturing conversion projects is targeted for automotive manufacturing conversion projects that “retain high-quality jobs in communities that currently host manufacturing facilities.” Examples of criteria include “retaining high wages and benefits, including workplace rights, or commitments such as keeping the existing facility open until a new facility is complete, in the case of facility replacement projects.”
These programs were welcomed by UAW president Shawn Fain. Their provisions will make it difficult for auto companies to take the money and use it to shut down existing union plants and open new nonunion plants in low-wage regions.
So far, these conditions apply only to a tiny sliver of the hundreds of billions of dollars that the federal government plans to give or induce others to invest in the transition to electric vehicles. They do not currently apply to other grants and loans. And they do not apply to the many times larger subsidies that will be given via tax credits. The Advance Manufacturing Tax Credit, for example, requires minimums for domestic content, payment of prevailing wages, and apprenticeship-based training. But it says nothing about location or workers’ right to union representation or collective bargaining.
A crucial strategy for a just transition for auto workers could be to include labor requirements in all EV subsidies similar to those in the recent package of grants and loans. Their inclusion in already established programs makes a strong case that they are legal and proper policies.
- Community Benefit Plans. The Department of Energy is requiring Community Benefits Plans in all funding opportunity announcements and loan applications under the Bipartisan Infrastructure and Inflation Reduction Acts. Its Community Benefits Plans are based on four core policy priorities: investing in America’s workforce; engaging communities and labor; advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility; and implementing Justice 40. A core purpose of the Community Benefit Plans is “engaging communities and labor.” Auto workers and communities can use this as an opportunity for demanding that such plans in fact address the needs of existing auto workers and communities. For example, labor and climate coalitions could demand that there by no layoffs of current workers in facilities that use the grants and loans.The requirement for Community Benefits Plans can and should be extended to all BIA and IRA grants and loans.
- Employee Retention Credits. The 2020 Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act) provides for an employee retention tax credit designed to encourage employers to keep employees on their payroll despite experiencing an economic hardship related to COVID-19. Some or all of the federal tax credits allocated for the transition to EVs could be redesigned to similarly incentivize auto companies to retain current workers.
State policy
- Just Transition Programs: Legislation recently submitted to the Michigan legislature has proposed a state program for just transition, modeled in part on the just transition legislation now in operation in Colorado. An early version of the Michigan bill establishes a broad-based advisory committee to draft a community and worker economic transition plan. It would establish a wage differential benefit for affected workers, provide education for dislocated workers, and create a grant program to support transitional communities.
- Job Criteria in State Subsidies. A wide array of state programs could incorporate criteria like those indicated above for federal programs. For example, economic development grants could be targeted for investments in existing auto communities to encourage conversion of existing plants and/or building of new plants for EV production.
- State Employee Retention Credits. Discussion is under way in some midwestern state legislatures to enact state employee retention credits along the lines of those in the federal CARES act.
These state programs might be most effective if they were coordinated among the states of the Midwest auto region.
These just transition proposals are not “pie in the sky.” They grow out of existing programs and proposals of the UAW, the climate movement, federal agencies, and state legislators. As President Biden’s unprecedented decision to join the UAW picket line indicates, they come at a time when the government and the auto companies are most vulnerable to pressure to do the right thing. They will not in themselves turn the auto plants into a utopia. But they can play a significant role in halting and even reversing the race to the bottom that is already underway in the auto industry. They can promote both climate protection and a decent future for auto workers. And they can provide a program around which auto workers, climate protectors, and advocates for the public interest can join forces.
Read the original version of this post, along with footnotes, at the Labor Network for Sustainability website here.
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Labor Unions and Green Groups Sue Trump Admin. for 'Failure to Protect Frontline Workers From Covid-19'
"People are dying, and more people are going to die because the Trump administration has totally failed to protect Americans who have been on the job throughout the pandemic keeping our country running."
Oct 08, 2020
Labor unions representing healthcare staff, teachers, transit employees, and millions of other frontline workers joined with environmental groups on Thursday to sue the Trump administration for its failure to protect essential workers from Covid-19 by providing an adequate supply of masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment.
"Nurses will do whatever it takes to care for patients who are fighting this virus, but we need the tools it takes to do our jobs. It's disgraceful that we still can't count on an adequate, reliable supply of PPE."
--Karen Ballentyne, registered nurse
In their lawsuit (pdf), the plaintiffs--the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Labor Network for Sustainability, AFL-CIO, AFT, SEIU, USW, and additional unions representing aviation, communications, food, and transportation workers--point out that since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, the country's essential workers have been disproportionately exposed to and impacted by the devastating disease, which has killed more than 211,000 people in the U.S.
"The federal government is abandoning essential workers and treating them like they're disposable," said Jean Su, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's energy justice program. "These are teachers and nurses and bus drivers who have made sure our country survives during this crisis."
"We stand in solidarity with them," Su added, "and will do everything possible to prevent this tragic, preventable loss of life."
The plaintiffs argue that essential workers have been hit especially hard by the coronavirus due to the federal government's failure to utilize its power granted by the Defense Production Act (DPA) to ensure the adequate production and distribution of personal protective equipment (PPE), which would help prevent frontline workers from contracting and dying from Covid-19.
"President Donald Trump and his administration have mishandled the Covid-19 crisis from the very beginning," said Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.). "Their failure to fully utilize the DPA to produce vitally-needed PPE is a prime example of their unwillingness to do what is necessary to keep Americans safe and healthy."
Rep. Andy Levin (D-Mich.) echoed Casey, saying that Trump "should have used the DPA to organize systematic domestic production of all of the supplies we need to address the Covid-19 pandemic and protect frontline workers."
"Failure to act in this worst-case scenario," Levin added, "has resulted in the unnecessary death of tens of thousands of our fellow Americans, pain and anguish for millions, and an economic collapse we will be climbing out of for many months to come."
\u201cBREAKING: Labor unions joined environmental groups to sue the Trump admin over its failure to provide #PPEforAll and #ProtectEssentialWorkers from #COVID19. Proud to stand with them in this fight they wouldn't have to wage if Trump would just do his job. https://t.co/eaiVETvw2u\u201d— Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (@Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib) 1602172233
Thelawsuit, filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., coincides with a coronavirus outbreak in the White House, an uptick in infections in multiple states bringing the U.S. caseload to over 7.5 million, and Trump's undermining of congressional negotiations on a much-needed economic relief and public health package.
The case comes after Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Alex Azar and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Chad Wolf ignored a legal petition demanding the immediate production and distribution of PPE that was submitted in August by the same groups and supported by scores of additional unions and advocacy organizations.
"This country doesn't stand a chance at an effective recovery from this pandemic if our elected leaders don't do everything within their power to protect frontline workers."
--John Samuelson, Transport Workers Union
In the two months since the labor and environmental groups filed their initial petition, the number of coronavirus infections in the U.S. has surged by 50%, or 2.5 million cases. Experts expect the situation to become even more catastrophic this fall and winter with the onset of flu season and with cold weather increasing the amount of time people spend indoors, where the risk of transmission increases.
"People are dying, and more people are going to die because the Trump administration has totally failed to protect Americans who have been on the job throughout the pandemic keeping our country running," said Communications Workers of America (CWA) president Chris Shelton. "Workers are terrified about the possibility of having to face a potential third surge of this Covid-19 virus during flu season without having access to adequate protective equipment."
The plaintiffs argued in a joint statement that the failure of HHS and DHS to respond to the earlier request for emergency action violated federal law. They also explained that the ongoing refusal of the federal government to effectively manage the manufacturing and allocation of PPE has forced states to compete with each other as frontline workers endured, and sometimes died as a result of, shortages of lifesaving supplies.
"Nurses will do whatever it takes to care for patients who are fighting this virus," said Karen Ballentyne, a registered nurse at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in Los Angeles and a member of SEIU Local 121RN. "But we need the tools it takes to do our jobs. It's disgraceful that we still can't count on an adequate, reliable supply of PPE."
Denise Abbott, an emergency room nurse in Buffalo, New York, and a member of CWA Local 1168, said that "it's difficult for healthcare workers to get supplies on a daily basis because employers are conserving what they have, and having to ask or find PPE on our own is a horrible practice."
"Staff still have to reuse masks for the entire day unless they're dirty, damp, or damaged," Abbott added. "PPE must be at the ready and used properly if we're ever going to see an end to this crisis."
The lawsuit asks the court to direct Azar and Wolf to use the DPA to facilitate "the mammoth action necessary to safeguard the millions of essential workers powering the country's survival, in spite of their own devastatingly disproportionate rates of mortality and morbidity."
United Steelworkers International president Tom Conway stressed that "we cannot allow this dangerous shortage of PPE to become the new normal."
"This country doesn't stand a chance at an effective recovery from this pandemic," said John Samuelson, president of the Transport Workers Union, "if our elected leaders don't do everything within their power to protect frontline workers."
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Calling for 'Climate President,' 500+ Groups Demand Next Administration Take Immediate Action
"Swift action to confront the climate emergency has to start the moment the next president enters the Oval Office."
Dec 08, 2019
Over 500 groups on Monday rolled out an an action plan for the next president's first days of office to address the climate emergency and set the nation on a transformative path towards zero emissions and a just transition in their first days in office.
"Swift action to confront the climate emergency has to start the moment the next president enters the Oval Office," said attorney Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Climate Law Institute.
The set of 10 actions, which together "form the necessary foundation for the country's true transformation to a safer, healthier, and more equitable world for everyone," are featured on the new Climate President website. The actions--which "touch the lives of every person living in America and those beyond who are harmed by the climate crisis"--can all be taken by the president without Congressional, thus can, and should, happen immediately, the document argues.
The new effort is convened by advocacy groups representing a range of issues, including the Center for Biological Diversity, Climate Justice Alliance, Democracy Collaborative, and Labor Network for Sustainability. Other backers include Physicians for Social Responsibility, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, and Demos.
The groups' roadmap kicks off with a demand for the next president to declare a national climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act. It includes a demand to direct "relevant federal agencies to reverse all Trump administration executive climate rollbacks and replace with sufficiently strong action."
Asserting authority the National Emergencies Act, Siegel and Center for Biological Diversity energy director Jean Su wrote in a legal analysis supporting the action plan, is necessary in order for the next president to reinstate the crude oil export ban and redirect "military spending towards the construction of clean renewable energy projects and infrastructure."
Declaring a climate emergency, the analysis adds, would also "set the appropriate tone of urgency for climate action."
The other nine steps for the nation's next leader to take within their first 10 days of office are, as noted in the document:
- Keep fossil fuels in the ground.
- Stop fossil fuel exports and infrastructure approval.
- Shift financial flows from fossil fuels to climate solutions.
- Use the Clean Air Act to set a science- based national pollution cap for greenhouse pollutants.
- Power the electricity sector with 100% clean and renew-able energy by 2030 and promote energy democracy.
- Launch a just transition to protect our communities, workers, and economy.
- Advance Climate Justice: Direct federal agencies to assess and mitigate environmental harms to disproportionately impacted Indigenous Peoples, People and Communities of Color, and low-wealth communities.
- Make polluters pay: Investigate and prosecute fossil fuel polluters for the damages they have caused. Commit to veto all legislation that grants legal immunity for polluters, undermines existing environmental laws, or advances false solutions.
- Rejoin the Paris Agreement and lead with science-based commitments that ensure that the United States, as the world's largest cumulative historical emitter, contributes its fair share and advances climate justice.
As part of this overall undertaking, groups say,
the next president must prioritize support for communities that historically have been harmed first and most by the extractive economy, including communities of color, Indigenous communities, and low-wealth communities. The next President must also take special care to ensure that the rights of Indigenous Peoples are upheld, which includes following the Indigenous Principles of Just Transition.
Moreover, climate policies must drive job growth and spur a new green economy that is designed and built by communities and workers and that provides union jobs with family-sustaining wages. These policies must ensure that workers in the energy sector and related industries, whose jobs will be fundamentally transformed, are not abandoned.
"We're also putting the next Congress on notice to get serious about dismantling this crisis, or the people will circumvent you with all available means."
--Anthony Rogers-Wright, Climate Justice Alliance
According to Anthony Rogers-Wright, policy coordinator for Climate Justice Alliance, "This set of executive actions puts the fossil fuel, and other iniquitous industries that treat our communities like sacrifice zones, on notice, while offering a suite of actions the next president can promulgate on day one to address systemic and institutionalized injustices. At the same time, we're also putting the next Congress on notice to get serious about dismantling this crisis, or the people will circumvent you with all available means."
In addition to executing the 10 steps, the Climate President action plan urges the next president to further tackle the crisis by working with Congress as well as state and local governments on appropriate plans. Those efforts must include working to pass the Green New Deal.
While the Trump administration has taken a sledgehammer to environmental protections, previous administrations also hold blame for failing to sufficiently act on the climate, said Sriram Madhusoodanan, climate campaign director of Corporate Accountability.
"The United States government has long acted to advance the interests of corporations over people, and under Trump the government has lowered the bar even further," he said. "The U.S. continues to act at the behest of big polluters like the fossil fuel industry by ignoring science, blocking climate policy, and putting big polluter profit over the needs and demands of people."
"The next administration," added Madhusoodanan, "must start a new chapter in U.S. history, kick polluters out of climate policy-making, make them pay for the damage they've knowingly caused, and take every action possible to advance urgently needed, internationally just climate action."
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