The New York Times headline reads “Rift between labor and environmentalists threatens Democratic turnout plan,” but the reality is more complicated. The rift is as much within the labor movement as it is between labor and environmentalists—as the story attached to the headline shows:
The rift developed after some in the labor movement, whose cash flow has dwindled and whose political clout has been increasingly imperiled, announced a partnership last week with a wealthy environmentalist, Tom Steyer, to help bankroll a new fund dedicated to electing Democrats.
That joint initiative enraged members of the nation’s biggest construction unions, already on edge about the rising influence of climate-change activists. The building-trades unions view Mr. Steyer’s environmental agenda as a threat to the jobs that can be created through infrastructure projects like new gas pipelines.
Got that? Some unions are upset because other unions are partnering with Tom Steyer. This is not a new divide in the labor movement. Unions are not a monolith when it comes to environmental issues. In 2012, the Laborers’ International Union was enraged by the Obama administration rejecting the Keystone pipeline, while several other unions were partnering with the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. In 2013, the divide came through in an AFL-CIO statement calling for “comprehensive energy policy focused on investing in our nation’s future, creating jobs and addressing the threat of climate change”—but also pipeline investment.
The building trades unions do tend to be more conservative than other unions, but when it comes to pipelines, they’re thinking jobs. At a time when infrastructure investment is pitifully low in the United States, pipelines are big projects that would employ thousands of construction workers, and these unions are tasked with getting their members good jobs. But to the extent that this is about jobs and not some dedicated support for climate change, there’s a simple answer to this “rift:” Serious investment in clean energy infrastructure, creating thousands of good union construction jobs. Or, for that matter, serious investment in mass transit, creating thousands of good union construction jobs. Or investment in water and sewer systems, or school buildings, or …
As long as Republicans control Congress, it’ll be a cold day in hell before any of that happens. After all, we’re talking here about two things Republicans hate—job-creating infrastructure investment and clean energy (or mass transit, or whatever other public good would be created by said infrastructure investment). But it highlights the way this rift is created by the Republican politics of scarcity and division. The challenge is to look past the immediate pressures created by Republican obstruction of job creation measures and see that the longer-term answer, to jobs concerns as well as environmental ones, is to elect a whole bunch of Democrats who’ll bust through the “no we can’t” Republican ethos and put Americans to work strengthening the power and water systems (and bridges and trains and schools, etc.) this country needs.