Labor Day is always a good time to reflect on not only the fundamental role that labor plays in a healthy economy, but also the critical role that Labor interests play in progressive coalitions. When Labor unions are strong, and when pro-Labor politicians are numerous and powerful, all progressive causes usually benefit. Advancement of a progressive agenda requires broad political coalitions and Labor will always be a major anchor for any such movements.
As an environmentalist, I am keenly aware of the need for making Common Cause with Labor, and with the attempts by business and free-market idealogues to drive a wedge between our groups with the "jobs vs. envirnoment" trade-off myth. At no time will the need to bridge this gap be greater than in the coming debate over climate change policy.
As the climate change debate shifts from "Is there a problem?" to "What do we do about it?" opponents of real solutions will hammer on the idea that doing anything drastic will hurt the economy and cost "millions of jobs." It is essential that we start laying the groundwork now for refuting such claims, before the public starts viewing it as a "given."
To start with a simple example, auto workers (and the Michigan politicians they elect) are convinvced that raising fuel-economy standards will cost jobs. On the surface it seems ridiculous that building better cars that more people want to buy should require fewer jobs. But apparently the assumption is that raising CAFE standards will increase the price of cars and people will buy fewer of them, even though there seems to be little evidence for either part of that equation. Nevertheless, we can't just wave off such concerns and claim everything will be fine. We need to work through the problem together and work out policies to mitigate any costs that do actually turn up.
A more fundamental, economy-wide concern is that reducing carbon emissions will require reducing energy use, and this will translate directly into lower economic productivity in all sectors. This is a much more complex concern to address, and may require some careful framing along with thorough research and information sharing. We need to really sell the fact that if we "do it smart" through increased energy efficiency and the use of only the most cost-effective renewable energy sources, the long-term effect will be a streamlined economy and increased competitiveness. Renew the faith in American Ingenuity, and the fact that American Ingenuity requires American jobs.
There are many examples of specific policy packages for helping to reduce carbon emissions, including EnergizeAmerica and GlobalWarmingSolution.Org's "Rosie Revisited". The more we can sit down with Labor groups and go through specific calculations showing the expected net result on job creation from these policies, the faster we can build a strong coalition. Even better if Labor is included in the coalitions writing up these policy packages in the first place.
A few basic concepts come to mind that should be part of any such calculations:
- Improved energy efficiency will increase productivity.
- Energy-efficient and renewable-energy technologies are often more labor-intensive than large-scale, wasteful power generation. (For example, see here)
- The best renewable energy sources usually must be produced locally, in America, and therefore the jobs they produce have to stay in America.
- More jobs will be created by developing technological solutions in America and selling them to other countries, than by waiting until other countries develop the solutions and then having to buy from them.
Making common cause with Labor on global warming policies means not only demonstrating job benefits and addressing mitigation needs for any transition costs, but also helping with the entire Labor agenda. To participate in the broad political coalition necessary to solve climate change and many progressive issues, workers need to feel secure in the fact that their concerns are being addressed. As Eban Goodstein states in his book on "The Trade-Off Myth:"
There are two ways to defuse the jobs-environment issue. One is to lay clear the facts.... The second is to take the concerns of workers seriously. Even if environmental protection is not to blame for job loss, in this era of growing employment instability the United States needs a set of policies that address, among other issues, decent job retraining and labor-law reform to help protect workers from the ravages of globalization. With such policies in place, the jobs issue will lose some of its bite in policy debates.... However, in the absence of greater economic security for American workers, the fiction of a widespread jobs-environment trade-off will continue to reemerge as a political fact.