Talking Union, Talking Climate (2023, 15 minutes) Three oil workers share their experiences and views about their jobs, labor conditions, and thoughts on the impact of climate change on their industry. Their conversation is both a funny and serious dialogue between workers in the global north and south (California, Norway and Nigeria) each of whom is involved in forms of union leadership. But they also are rank and file workers: Charlie is a refinery operator in California, Kristian is an oil platform machinist in Norway, and Didi is fluids engineer in Nigeria, as well as working in other countries. The film is a collaboration that emerged from WAGE, Work and Labour in a Greening Economy, a four-year project funded by the Norwegian Research Council to study the views of oil workers about their role in a green transition, The purpose of the film is to stimulate dialogue among workers and their unions in diverse political economies about how they situate themselves around climate change. But the film is also useful to the wider public to understand workers’ perspectives and their ideas about the green shift. While the beginning of the film follows the three workers as they find similarities and bond as trade unionists in the oil industry, differences soon emerge. These reach a climax when a deep contrast punctuates their experiences and perspectives around climate change. At the end, underlying questions linger about the role of the state, unions, and the power of oil profiteering across countries. Audiences of workers, students, environmentalists, and others have responded with great interest to this covid era film that challenges stereotypes and takes on hard questions about just transitions.
Voices from the green transition (2025, 8 minutes) While scientists worldwide agree that we must reduce greenhouse gasses quickly or face extreme climate change, how are those efforts affecting workers and communities? This piece is the first of several research to film shorts based on studies organized by the University of Leeds Just Transition project, funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation. This initial piece presents stories from unionists in South Africa and workers and Indigenous communities in Chile about the need to involve local people during the phaseout of coal in the former and transition to a green economy in the latter.
At the COP26, western countries and the World Bank set their eyes on rapid decarbonization by lending billions of dollars to several global South countries to abandon coal. In South Africa, that contributed to a rapid shutdown of the Komati coal power plant, celebrated with great fanfare as a model program. However, unionists from the National Union of Mineworkers express their anger at the empty promises of the Just Energy Transition Partnership (JETP), the massive loss of jobs, the lack of authentic skill training and employment in renewable industries and the resulting devastation of a community dependent on coal. There are also issues of growing inequality as the funding further plunges South Africa into debt and privatizes green energy.
In Chile, international investors and private Chilean companies push to expand the extraction of lithium from brine, while the national government attempts to expand domestic control of the industry for the benefit of the country. A lithium worker recounts stories of poor treatment and low wages and the opposition to strong unions, while an Indigenous woman protests the destruction of the fragile habitat of the arid desert where the Atacameňos and others have lived for generations. This glimpse of the center of the world’s green economy calls attention to the contradictions of renewable development driven by profit and without meaningful consultation with workers and communities.
Please note: Vivian Price will be presenting virtually.
Professor, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Vivian Price, PhD, Professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills & former union electrician, is a researcher and filmmaker for US and international projects on labor and climate justice. She was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Liverpool, a Fulbright specialist... Read More →
Thursday April 3, 2025 1:00pm - 2:00pm EDT
Hannaford HallAbromson Community Education Center, 88 Bedford St, Portland, ME 04101
Despite our pristine environmental reputation, Maine has the highest per capita greenhouse gas emissions in New England. As a lifelong Mainer who is raising three children in the Dirigo State, I am passionate about helping to accelerate the transition from finite, polluting fossil... Read More →
Thursday April 3, 2025 2:15pm - 3:15pm EDT
Hannaford HallAbromson Community Education Center, 88 Bedford St, Portland, ME 04101
Labor Educator, Scontras Labor Center, University of Southern Maine
Union organizer, labor educator, and author, Kevin Van Meter, Ph.D. is a teaching fellow at the Dr. Charles A. Scontras Center for Labor and Community Education at the University of Southern Maine. Kevin writes about contemporary labor issues, labor history, and neighboring social... Read More →
Thursday April 3, 2025 3:30pm - 4:30pm EDT
Abromson Room 10988 Bedford St, Portland, ME 04101
Climate infrastructure must be rapidly built in the next 5 to 25 years to meet impending demands of decarbonization in the face of growing climate risks. With the new federal administration, the infusion of massive investments in the green economy is at risk, as well as the labor standards that helped make these investments a historic win for the working class. Yet despite the unclear future of pro-labor federal climate investments, the demand for climate solutions will continue to exist and grow. This panel discussion will examine the consequences of building out climate infrastructure with poor working conditions in the solar industry in New York and Texas, the opportunity to rectify these consequences and foster a pro-labor environment in emerging climate industries like thermal energy networks, and pathways to build the high-quality, equitable union workforce to meet this unprecedented moment.
Lessons learned from the growth of the solar industry: The number of solar job postings has more than tripled since 2010 (Curtis & Marinescu, 2023), however, recent findings from two studies supported by the Climate Jobs Institute in the last year have highlighted serious concerns around job quality, from potential legal concerns to severe racial disparities within each sample.
Applying these lessons and the case of thermal energy networks: Thermal energy networks are an emerging technology to reduce emissions from buildings at the block, neighborhood, or campus scale with the potential to utilize the existing unionized fossil fuel workforce. As thermal energy networks or TENs rapidly gained popularity across the U.S., their proliferation offers a chance to apply the lessons learned from the growth of the solar industry and instead create a truly just transition for organized labor and communities alike.
Ensuring the buildout of a just, equitable green economic future for the working class: Building out the needed infrastructure for a climate-safe economy will take millions of workers, but there is no guarantee that these workers will be highly-trained, well-paid, diverse, and treated with dignity on the job. Union-led programs around the country show what is possible when industry leaders and policymakers prioritize high-road job creation and investment in skill development. Successful models of pre-apprenticeship that specifically support expanding diversity in the trades provide a roadmap for how community, labor, government, and industry can work together to ensure an equitable transition.
Assistant Director of Labor Outreach and Workforce Equity, Climate Jobs Institute
Melissa began her labor career as a community organizer with the Laborers Eastern Region Organizing Fund (LIUNA), working to build multi-stakeholder community labor coalitions to ensure quality and labor standards in affordable housing. She was the Director of Organizing and Political... Read More →
Thursday April 3, 2025 4:45pm - 6:00pm EDT
Abromson Room 21388 Bedford St, Portland, ME 04101
Jobs with Justice (JWJ) is a national network of local coalitions that are leading the fight for workers rights and an economy that works for all. Since the passing of the Bi-Partisian Infrastructure Law, Inflation Reduction Act and CHIPS and Science Act, Jobs with Justice has strategically engaged in opportunities to increase worker power within these federal funds. Local coalitions in our network are anchoring various campaigns and projects with union and community partners to build worker power in the clean energy sectors, leveraging the labor provisions baked into these federal funds. The geographic areas of JWJ’s coalitions engaging in this work are not limited to but do include: East Tennessee, Central Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Pennsylvania and California. There is a wide scope of goals and focus in our networks campaign and project goals, including:
Increasing union density in construction, manufacturing and operations of these clean energy and decarbonization projects.
Increasing representation and retainment of people of color, non-binary individuals and women in the building trades.
Implementation and enforcement of Community Benefit Plans/Community Benefit Agreement provisions.
Ensuring that workers on the construction and operating sides of these projects have union neutrality, specifically in union hostile states in the regional South.
