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NY Times Op-Ed, FEB. 7, 2017
Labor Leaders’ Cheap Deal With Trump
By NAOMI KLEIN
For progressives, Donald J. Trump’s presidency so far has been a little
like standing in front of one of those tennis ball machines — and
getting hit in the face over and over again. Yet looking back, the blow
that still has me most off-kilter didn’t come from the new president
himself. It came two weeks ago, when several smiling union leaders
strolled out of the White House and up to a bank of waiting cameras and
declared their firm allegiance to President Trump.
Sean McGarvey, president of North America’s Building Trades Unions,
reported that Mr. Trump had taken the delegation on a tour of the Oval
Office and displayed a level of respect that was “nothing short of
incredible.” Mr. McGarvey pledged to work hand in glove with the new
administration on energy, trade and infrastructure, while one of the
other union leaders described the Inaugural Address as “a great moment
for working men and women.” When Mr. Trump issued executive orders to
smooth the way for construction of the Keystone XL and Dakota Access
pipelines, the same leaders rejoiced.
A new administration can always count on many organizations to issue pro
forma statements expressing a nonpartisan willingness to work with the
new leader. Let’s be clear: This was not that. This was a new alliance.
As Terry O’Sullivan, head of Laborers’ International Union of North
America, put it on MSNBC: “The president’s a builder. We’re builders.”
But the edifice that Mr. Trump is building is rigged to collapse on the
very people these unions are supposed to defend. His cuts to regulations
will make them less safe on the job, and he may well wage war against
the National Labor Relations Board, an agency that recently ruled that
Mr. Trump violated the rights of the workers in his Las Vegas hotel to
unionize and bargain collectively. His proposed cuts to corporate taxes
will eviscerate the public services on which they depend, not to mention
public sector union jobs. He supports “right to work” legislation that
poses an existential threat to unions. His pick for labor secretary, the
fast-food magnate Andrew Puzder, has a long record of failing to pay his
workers properly, and he has praised the idea of replacing humans with
machines.
Indeed, the more cleareyed unions are openly questioning whether their
organizations will survive this administration. The Labor Network for
Sustainability, in a report, warns this could be “an ‘extinction-level
event’ for organized labor.”
All this is an awful lot of ground to lose in exchange for mostly
temporary jobs repairing highways and building oil pipelines.
And it’s worth taking a closer look at the implications of those
pipelines, along with the rest of Mr. Trump’s climate-change denying
agenda. A warming world is a catastrophe for the middle and working
classes, even more than for the rich, who have the economic cushions to
navigate most crises. It’s working and precariously unemployed people
who tend to live in homes that are most vulnerable to extreme weather
(as we saw during Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy) and whose
savings, if they have any, can be entirely wiped out by a disaster.
It’s natural to ask: In times of insecurity, why shouldn’t unions worry
more about jobs than about the environment? One reason is that
responding to the urgency of the climate crisis has the potential to be
the most powerful job creation machine since World War II. According to
a Rockefeller Foundation-Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisers study,
energy-efficient retrofits in United States buildings alone could create
“more than 3.3 million cumulative job years of employment.” There are
millions more jobs to be created in renewable energy, public transit and
light rail.
Moreover, a great many of those jobs would be in the building trades —
jobs for carpenters, ironworkers, welders, pipe fitters — whose union
leaders have been so cozy with Mr. Trump. These unions could be fighting
for sustainable jobs in a green transition as part of a broad-based
movement. Instead, they are doing public relations for the mostly
temporary jobs Mr. Trump is offering — those building oil pipelines,
weapons, prisons and border walls, while expanding the highway system
even as public transit faces drastic cuts.
The good news is that the sectors that have made common cause with Mr.
Trump represent less than a quarter of all unionized workers. And many
other unions see the enormous potential in a green New Deal.
“We must make the transition to a clean energy economy now in order to
create millions of good jobs, rebuild the American middle class, and
avert catastrophe,” George Gresham, president of 1199 S.E.I.U., the
largest health care union in the nation, said in a statement two days
after Mr. Trump’s pipeline executive orders.
Other unionized workers, like New York’s Taxi Workers Alliance, showed
their opposition to Mr. Trump’s travel ban by refusing fares to and from
Kennedy Airport during the protests.
For a long time, these different approaches were papered over under the
banner of solidarity. But now some union heads are creating a rift by
showing so little solidarity with their fellow union members,
particularly immigrants and public sector workers who find themselves
under assault by Mr. Trump.
Today labor leaders face a clear choice. They can join the diverse and
growing movement that is confronting Mr. Trump’s agenda on every front
and attempt to lead America’s workers to a clean and safe future.
Or they can be the fist-pumping construction crew for a Trump dystopia —
muscle for a menace.
Naomi Klein is the author of “This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs.
the Climate” and “The Shock Doctrine.”
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