Jake Johnson at Common Dreams writes—Ocasio-Cortez Demands Solar Company Rehire Workers Fired After Unionizing With Green New Deal in Mind:
After learning that the solar energy company Bright Power fired a dozen construction workers who were inspired to unionize by the transformative vision of a Green New Deal, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Friday demanded that the corporation immediately rehire the terminated employees and formally recognize their union contract.
"Many have told me they think the pro-justice and worker provisions in the Green New Deal are 'unnecessary,'" Ocasio-Cortez, the lead sponsor of the Green New Deal resolution in the House, tweeted Friday. "Yet this example is why a just transition is vital. Without it, oil barons turn into energy barons, and workers are hurt all the same. Bright Power must be held accountable."
As Motherboard reported Thursday, the New York City construction workers voted in April to form one of the first unions in the burgeoning solar energy industry.
"Workers decided to unionize following a couple work accidents and pressure from management to work outside in extreme weather conditions in the winter," according to Motherboard. "When workers announced their intention to unionize, Bright Power hired Littler Mendelson—the world's largest labor law firm representing management with ties to the Trump administration—to handle its union negotiations."
On Monday, in the middle of negotiations for the first union contract, Bright Power announced its decision to fire the 12 workers—who made up the company's entire in-house construction crew—and replace them with subcontractors.
Bright Power denied that the firing had anything to do with the unionization effort, but one of the fired workers dismissed the company's claim.
"This is obviously retaliation for union organizing," Chris Schroth, a solar installer from Bright Power, told Motherboard. "The total hypocrisy of their progressive mission as a green energy company is disgusting. They did everything that a big bad union busting company does. This is exactly what a coal company or any other evil company does." [...]
QUOTATION
“A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
~~ John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848
TWEET OF THE DAY
BLAST FROM THE PAST
At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Incoming GOP House not interested in jobs:
Atrios made this point a week ago:
During exchanges on the twitter, it occurred to me that even Republican challengers didn't for the most part run on the bad economy/unemployment. They ran on issues more separate from peoples' lives (stimulus spending, deficit) and on being the great defenders of Medicare.
It was a surprising point, but one that rings true nonetheless. Republicans might argue that all the deficit hysteria was job-related, but only insofar as they've transferred blame for Wall Street's excesses onto the government for obvious ideological reasons. It turns out that Republicans really didn't run on creating jobs, but on demonizing government efforts to stimulate job growth (the stimulus, auto industry bailouts, TARP, etc). And by the time the votes were cast, even TARP—a Bush initiative—belonged to Obama.