Climate justice organizing within the labour movement

·28 min·2 clips

A teacher read the IPCC report and decided to make climate organizing her labor movement priority.

The episode features an interview with Tara Erke, a teacher in the Victoria School District on unceded Lekwungen territories and a longtime labor activist with the BC Teachers Federation. Erke explains that after reading the 2018 IPCC report, she prioritized climate organizing within the labor movement. She and other teachers started by supporting youth climate strikes and then sought to build broader support, avoiding conventional routes like labor convention resolutions which often fail. Instead, they joined Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, an international group focused on just transition and democratic energy control. They networked with other BC unions in that group and organized the Labor Climate Forum in April, which attracted over 100 participants from more than 15 labor organizations. Erke describes challenges in bridging labor and climate movements, such as historical divisions and environmentalists not seeing unions as avenues for change. However, she notes shifts due to events like COVID and climate-related fires, which made climate a more pressing worker issue. She highlights examples like the Canadian Union of Postal Workers' Delivering Community Power initiative and Climate Jobs New York, a coalition of 12 unions advancing demands on climate, racial justice, and inequality. The forum included keynote speakers like Jane McAlevey, John Cartwright, and Wet'suwet'en matriarch Molly Wickham, plus workshops on topics like bargaining for climate and green investing. Erke argues that labor must engage to shape the transition, using health and safety frames and focusing on common ground. The network plans to broaden engagement and develop collective demands, aiming for coalition-based platforms akin to a Green New Deal.

As heard by us

A grounded look at the work of moving climate justice from shared principle into union practice.

Talking Radical Radio frames climate justice organizing as a matter of movement mechanics, through a conversation with a teacher in British Columbia.

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Why you'd press play

You can hear how Tara Erke and other British Columbia teachers tried to connect student climate action with union action from inside their local.

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