The Green New Deal is More Than a Climate Plan, It’s a Model for Building Worker Power. At the heart of the Green New Deal is a recognition that shifting to clean energy could leave many behind. That’s why the plan protects workers’ right to organize, calls for universal health care, retirement security and union jobs at a living wage.
June 27, 2019 Mary Kay Henry NEWSWEEK
The plan protects and increases workers’ right to organize on the job by shoring up collective bargaining rights, calling for universal health care and retirement security, and providing a guarantee of a good union job with family-sustaining wages and benefits for anyone who wants one. We need this kind of climate plan more than ever today. But the energy industry isn’t the only sector undergoing a transition—the U.S. economy as a whole is at a turning point as we shift from manufacturing to service jobs, and as technological advancements upend entire sectors.
We need this kind of climate plan more than ever today. But the energy industry isn’t the only sector undergoing a transition—the U.S. economy as a whole is at a turning point as we shift from manufacturing to service jobs, and as technological advancements upend entire sectors. The rapid growth of the service industry in particular has posed significant challenges to working families. Too many service jobs don’t let families make ends meet, with low wages, no health insurance or retirement benefits, and no voice on the job to advocate for a safer and healthier workplace. In coming years, these jobs will increasingly fuel our economy—the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the service industry is the fastest-growing part of the economy, and that low-wage service jobs will drive the bulk of employment growth over the next decade. In the face of that stark reality, we need to make service jobs the kind of jobs that families can rely on—and that means protecting and boosting workers’ right to organize.
The Camp Fire rages through Paradise, California, on November 8. The fire, the largest in California’s history, killed at least 85 people and caused $16.5 billion worth of damage., Justin Sullivan/Getty Images
Last week, the 2 million-member Service Employees International Union was proud to become the largest labor union in the country to back the Green New Deal, one of the most comprehensive responses that has been offered to date to address the crisis of climate change.
Climate proposals like the Green New Deal are an urgent priority for SEIU members like Francisca Reyes, a janitor in Texas, whose daughter and her family needed to evacuate their home after Hurricane Harvey. While they were staying with Reyes, her own roof collapsed. SEIU later worked with Reyes to fix her house.
And they matter to people like Charissa Fitzgerald, an SEIU-United Healthcare Workers West member and certified nursing assistant in Chico, California, who lost her home and all her belongings in the Camp Fire, the worst wildfire in California’s history. In less than 24 hours, everything she’d ever known had burned to the ground.
Reyes and Fitzgerald are just two of the growing number of people in our union whose lives have been turned upside down by climate change. But the Green New Deal is more than a plan for transitioning the U.S. economy out of fossil fuels. It’s also a model for how lawmakers should design any proposal to restructure the economy—by putting worker power and unions at the center.
At the heart of the Green New Deal is a recognition that the shift from fossil fuels to clean energy could leave many workers behind. That’s why the plan protects and increases workers’ right to organize on the job by shoring up collective bargaining rights, calling for universal health care and retirement security, and providing a guarantee of a good union job with family-sustaining wages and benefits for anyone who wants one.
We need this kind of climate plan more than ever today. But the energy industry isn’t the only sector undergoing a transition—the U.S. economy as a whole is at a turning point as we shift from manufacturing to service jobs, and as technological advancements upend entire sectors. The rapid growth of the service industry in particular has posed significant challenges to working families. Too many service jobs don’t let families make ends meet, with low wages, no health insurance or retirement benefits, and no voice on the job to advocate for a safer and healthier workplace. In coming years, these jobs will increasingly fuel our economy—the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the service industry is the fastest-growing part of the economy, and that low-wage service jobs will drive the bulk of employment growth over the next decade. In the face of that stark reality, we need to make service jobs the kind of jobs that families can rely on—and that means protecting and boosting workers’ right to organize.
And so elected leaders need to develop additional ambitious proposals modeled on the Green New Deal that give workers a stronger voice on the job in industries all across the economy. Just as we need elected officials to hold fossil fuel companies accountable for pollution, we also need to hold other companies with a history of exploiting low-wage workers to account.
Workers across the service industry, from fast food to airports to home care, have already made clear their demands from lawmakers and powerful employers: a livable wage, decent benefits, better working conditions—and the right to a union on the job. Workers have not just demanded that right: From coast to coast, they have stood up, spoken out, and gone on strike in support of unions for all.
We need elected leaders to stand with workers and pursue bold new ideas that center union rights as a solution to the greatest challenges in our economy today.
We must demand, for one, that corporations that do not provide livable wages and benefits give workers a seat at the table to shape their workplace—and that includes fast-food chains like McDonald’s just as much as it does clean energy companies like Tesla.
And we should pursue proposals on the scale of the Green New Deal that allow workers in other rapidly growing sectors to organize and expand unions on the job.
By guaranteeing more workers the right to join unions, we can transform our economy and our democracy. The Green New Deal has opened the door to bigger and bolder ideas. It’s up to us to follow.
Mary Kay Henry is president of the Service Employees International Union.
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100th Anniversary of ILO Recognizes Coops As ‘Future of Work’: During the 108th International Labour Conference, the 100 year old International Labour Organization (ILO), adopted the ‘ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work, 2019’. The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) welcomes the recognition of cooperatives and social and solidarity economy in the final version. Read how the new Memorandum of Understanding gives strength to the movement.
The ILO and the ICA reaffirm vows of friendship and collaboration by signing a new MoU 24 JUN 2019
The International Cooperative Alliance (ICA) and the International Labour Organization (ILO) reaffirmed their century-long friendship by signing a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today.
The document states that its main purpose shall be to “foster collaboration […] in areas of promotion and strengthening of the cooperative enterprise model”. In that respect, both commit to promoting cooperatives as a “sustainable business model to advance inclusive and sustainable development”.
ICA’s President Ariel Guarco and ILO’s Director-General (DG) Guy Ryder signed the new MoU as a sign of renewed friendship. As both recalled, the first ILO’s DG Albert Thomas came from the cooperative movement and was part of ICA’s Board in the 1920’s.
The relationship between the two organizations started from the founding of the ILO and has continued uninterrupted to this day.
ILO – ICA joint conference
The memorandum was signed during a joint conference on ‘Cooperatives and the Future of Work’, following the 108th International Labour Conference (ILC) as the ILO is commemorating its centenary. Both moments are historic for the development of cooperatives as the ILO also adopted on 21 June the ‘ILO Centenary Declaration for the Future of Work 2019’, in which the role of cooperatives and the social and solidarity economy in the future of work, in particular towards decent and sustainable work, was recognised.
For Ariel Guarco, “this mention in the Declaration [about cooperatives] is very significant for us, since it will allow us to carry out more advocacy work and public policy proposals favorable for cooperatives and will further strengthen the partnership that we are renewing today with the signing of a new agreement of collaboration between our two organizations”.
Guy Ryder underlined that “at the ILO we are committed to working with our constituents and the cooperative movement in supporting the creation of such an ecosystem that is conducive to the growth of cooperative enterprises. In these times of unprecedented change and of exceptional challenges in the world of work we look forward to continued partnership with the cooperative movement in this quest for sustainable development and a fairer, inclusive and more secure future of work with decent work for all.”, .
During the ICA-ILO conference, representatives from the permanent representation of Iran, Korea and Uruguay took the floor underlining the role of cooperative for building a sustainable future of work sharing concrete cooperative examples. The International Trade Union Confederation, Deputy General Secretary Victor Baez noted how “the trade unions and cooperatives need to work together not only to save jobs but also to create jobs” and the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA) representative Wenyan Yang said cooperatives have a “big role to play to reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)”.
Book launched
The ‘Cooperatives and the World of Work’ book was launched as part of the ICA-ILO Joint Conference. The publication is co-edited by authors from the ICA, the ILO and the International Organisation of Industrial and Services Cooperatives (CICOPA). With the uncertainty of the world of work and with the rise of technology, the book furthers the debate on the future of work, sustainable development, and the social and solidarity economy where cooperatives are major players. The publication was edited by Bruno Roelants (ICA), Hyungsik Eum (CICOPA – ICA), Simel Esim (ILO), Sonja Novkovic (ICA Research Committee) and Waltteri Katajamäki (ILO).
The President of Cooperatives of the Americas Graciela Fernandez closed the session highlighting the importance of the ILO’s centenary declaration and the memorandum of understanding as a significant recognition of the cooperative movement.
- Community Land Trusts Are a Model for Reparations
- This Community Is Striving To Rebuild One Of The Poorest Places In America
This Community Is Striving To Rebuild One Of The Poorest Places In America
Battered by poverty, discrimination and climate change, Native Americans on the Pine Ridge Reservation are raising homes – and hope – for the next generation.By Julian Brave NoiseCat, Guest Writer Jun 10, 2019
PINE RIDGE, South Dakota — Alan Jealous, a 27-year-old construction worker, dreamt of building and owning a home. Homeownership is the cornerstone of the American Dream. But for this citizen of the Oglala Lakota Nation living on the Pine Ridge reservation, a community that regularly tops the list of the poorest places in the country, having realized this dream is a monumental achievement.
Pine Ridge, a 3,500-square-mile landmass home to nearly 20,000 people, mostly Oglala, has one of the worst economies and some of the weakest infrastructure in the developed world.
The unemployment rate stands at around 75%, compared to a national rate of 3.6%. Four in ten do not earn enough to meet their basic needs. A quarter of adults, like Jealous’ parents, never graduated from high school. Dark humor about doctors who prescribe Tylenol as a cure-all and federal service providers with no useful services to provide abounds, satirizing the divide between Oglala life and the rest of America. One study describes Pine Ridge as a post-disaster landscape.
The community needs to build about 4,000 homes to replace substandard structures and meet the demands of a young and growing population. Extended families routinely squeeze into single or double-wide trailers. In Oglala, a reservation town on Highway 18 that traverses Pine Ridge from west to east, residents have lived in Federal Emergency Management Agency trailers since a tornado hit in 1999.
Last summer, golf-ball-sized hail blew holes in the sides of many of these mobile homes, which owners patched with plyboard. As much as one-fifth of the reservation’s population could be counted as homeless or nearly homeless by Housing and Urban Development (HUD) standards.
The climate crisis has made punishing circumstances far worse. When I visited in March, historic floods exacerbated by a series of climate factors — wetter seasons, frozen soils, record-breaking blizzards and heavy rains from a bomb cyclone — battered the reservation, inundating homes and marooning families on the far side of impassable dirt roads. Floodwaters broke and contaminated water systems. The New York Times reported 8,000 without potable water. Tribal officials attributed at least three deaths to the deluge and declared a state of emergency.
In this plain of despair, Jealous is an outlier for hope. On a reservation with little to no work, he is a workaholic. In an economy with little to no capital, he owns a business. In a community where homes are decrepit and in short supply, he is a homeowner. And in the wake of disaster, he is helping his people rebuild.
Jealous’ future is promising because of the Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation (CDC), a community-based nonprofit on the reservation. It’s in the process of developing a 34-acre plot of land, which will include 33 housing units and eventually a community center, food-growing plots, a school and retail spaces for local businesses.
Set up around a decade ago by a group of young people wanting to tackle the root causes of the crushing poverty in Pine Ridge, Thunder Valley CDC is well-known throughout Indian Country for its path-setting model for Native self-determination.
The organization — which gets most of its funding from government programs as well as philanthropic foundations like Newman’s Own, Doris Duke and Surdna — takes a broad approach to community development. Focusing on a wide range of service areas including housing, food, workforce training, education, youth leadership and Lakota language, it aims to become a template for the whole Oglala Nation.
“Our vision as an organization is liberation,” Tatewin Means, 39, an Oglala citizen and executive director of Thunder Valley CDC said. “Liberation for Lakota people through our language, culture and spirituality.”
Jealous is a co-owner of Thikaga Construction, a worker-owned cooperative financed by Thunder Valley CDC. Thikaga means “to build homes.” In July of last year, Jealous became the owner of a home he built himself. He credits the Thunder Valley CDC for helping him achieve this dream. “If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be an owner of a construction company. I wouldn’t be a homeowner,” he says. “They opened up my eyes and opened up a lot of doors for me that I thought were unreachable.”
Jealous grew up with five younger brothers, a little sister and his mother in a log cabin built by his great-great-grandfather in the 1930s. The cabin had a dirt floor, no bedrooms, no bathroom and no plumbing. When the family needed water to cook or bathe, they hauled it from nearby Porcupine Creek. When they needed to stay warm in the winter, they chopped wood. “We had to kind of live in hardship a little bit, but that’s what helped me become who I am today,” Jealous says. “That’s what made me want to build houses.”
On Pine Ridge, material hardship rarely comes without a spiritual toll. Five years ago, Jealous’ younger brother Alex, a student at Oglala Lakota College studying to become an automotive technician, killed himself in the basement of his family home. He was 20 at the time. More than 100 young people on the reservation have died by suicide or attempted suicide in the years since. Harsh realities make somber poetry of the meaning of Oglala: “Scatter Their Own.”
To pull through, Jealous has committed himself to his family, his culture and his career. With his wife, Kateri Means, he has a son, Nolan, who is 5, and a daughter, Lenora, who is 1. “I wake up every day and look at my son and my daughter,” he said. “We gotta carry on.”
In the sweat lodge, a Lakota rite, Jealous prays for his brother, whose presence he still feels. He avoids substances — save for Marlboro No. 27’s, which he always shares, and the four or five strong cups of coffee he drinks each day. He has a razor-thin mustache and sharp features. Most days, he wears the same uniform: a Carhartt shirt and Dickies with steel-toe boots and, sometimes, sunglasses — the kind made for the worksite, not the beach.
Jealous took extra online classes to learn how to manage Thikaga. He has thrown himself into his work, pulling long hours building homes on the reservation. “Knowing that what we’re doing now is going to end up making an impact on somebody’s life, a family’s life when they move into one of those homes,” he said. “That’s one thing that keeps my eye on the prize and keeps me motivated and keeps me going every day.”
Thikaga has been tasked with building 13 of the first 33 housing units for Thunder Valley CDC. Seven, built through a parallel self-help program that Jealous was part of, have been completed so far. Every home is intended to be affordable and sustainable, built with extreme-weather-resilient materials and rooftop solar.
Family residences are laid out in semi-circular groups of seven with all doorways facing east, a blueprint that aligns with the way Oglala would arrange their tipis as a Tiospaye, or “extended family.” Stonework at each building’s base mirrors the rocks used to erect a tipi. The community hall has exposed beams evoking the poles on the inside of that traditional Oglala structure.
All of this can get expensive. Each three- or four-bedroom home costs about $220,000 to build, but the CDC sells them for just $160,000 to ensure that they are affordable — requiring $60,000 to $70,000 of subsidy. Homeowners repay debts in monthly installments of about $800. Foundations, lenders and local banks have not always been eager investors. To build its first 14 houses, the corporation had to piece together capital from many sources, including the South Dakota Housing Authority, a government agency, non-profit developers like the Minnesota Housing Partnership, and philanthropies like the Tamalapais Trust.
Preparing community members to take on $160,000 in debt has been equally challenging. Requirements written into most conventional loans — even subsidized homeownership programs — make it difficult for most Native families to qualify. HUD’s Indian Home Loan program, for example, requires applicants to have a decent credit score and debt-to-income ratio as well as three months of savings. If you have a few missed credit card or car payments, tough luck. If, like many people on the reservation, you deal primarily in cash, you need not apply.
“Some of those conditions and programmatic requirements are not realistic” for Native Americans living on reservations, said Joan Timeche, executive director of the Native Nations Institute at the University of Arizona and a member of the Hopi Nation. “Most of the folks we work with are at that area of extreme need.”
Thunder Valley CDC tries to be more lenient with its requirements while also being a responsible lender to community members. Their housing team has also trained more than 800 Oglala in financial literacy, at least a third of whom are under 18. The hope is to create a culture of saving, and a big part of that is helping community members like Jealous break free from cycles of poverty.
Yet, the 33 homes opening this year as part of Thunder Valley’s development will meet less than 1% of current housing demand on the reservation. For Tatewin Means, the hope is that cultural change amplifies the impact of those homes — that the families who secure mortgages and the young people who find work and start to save set an example for friends and relatives.
Jealous is, in a way, a test case for this grand social experiment. His example shows what it might mean for the Oglala to rebuild in the wake of a humanitarian disaster.
One morning before I depart, I rise at 6 a.m. to join Jealous on the job. In one of the unfinished homes at Thunder Valley, I meet up with his crew: Kalo Garrett, 30, Aaron Black Bull, 21, and Donavon Good Shield, 42. The guys turn down the Metallica blaring from their radio and take a short break to talk.
I ask them how Alan is as a boss. “It feels good to see him fulfill his dream,” Garrett said of Jealous. “And he’s younger than me too, so damn!”
“Not working for a white man in the city, working for our own people — it’s a really good feeling,” said Good Shield.
“It’s a blessing to give back to the people,” said Black Bull. “Little kids are going to be growing up in these homes.”
The group turns the Metallica back up, and I linger awhile to watch them work. Black Bull takes a tape measure to mark out cuts in the lumber. Garrett returns to nail-gunning seam-backing into walls. Jealous and Good Shield step aside for a quick chat. The steady thump-thump-thump of nail into wood, the sound of a home slowly but surely rising on muddy turf where there had not been one before — thikaga — fills the air.
CORRECTION: the piece was amended to clarify the number of houses Thikaga was tasked with building. For more content and to be part of the “This New World” community, follow our Facebook page. HuffPost’s “This New World” series is funded by Partners for a New Economy and the Kendeda Fund. All content is editorially independent, with no influence or input from the foundations. If you have an idea or tip for the editorial series, send an email to thisnewworld@huffpost.com.
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