Labor Leading on Climate Initiative

The Climate Jobs and Just Transition Virtual Summit on September 21, 2021, will bring together newly established state Climate Jobs coalitions, labor leaders, union climate activists, environmental and environmental justice advocates, clean-energy developers, policymakers, scientists, and all who want to build the clean-energy economy of tomorrow with good union jobs. The Summit will feature speakers and panelists from around the country and around the world.

We will talk about the ways that climate change and inequality are inextricably linked, dig into the once-in-a-generation opportunity to create good family-sustaining jobs by developing the renewable energy sector, and engage in a holistic discussion about just transition for workers in fossil fuel industries and their communities.
 
At a time that calls for public investment on a scale not seen since the Great Depression, let’s invest in the clean energy economy of the future, assure that the new clean energy jobs hire union workers, take climate action at a scale science demands and address the crisis of extreme inequality. 

The Worker Institute's Labor Leading on Climate Initiative is the university partner of the Climate Jobs National Resource Center (CJNRC).

The Initiative provides research, education and training programs to unions on climate change and clean energy across multiple U.S. states.

As in New York, this work will help unions proactively and positively engage in climate change and clean energy work and forge a stronger link in the public discourse between the crises of inequality and climate change. 

The Labor Leading on Climate Initiative at the Worker Institute advances knowledge, policies, and practices to enhance the role of labor and working people in addressing the environmental and climate crises.

Labor has an important reframing of this issue: we have two crises, not one. A crisis of climate change and a crisis of inequality and we need solutions that address both. Solutions to the climate crisis cannot exacerbate the crisis of inequality by creating low-wage, low-quality jobs; Addressing climate change needs to reverse inequality by creating high-wage, family and communities sustaining union jobs. The initiative's efforts focus on building a truly sustainable society and economy.