Assist Workers to Transition their Specific Skills into New Industries
Using Strategic Investment to Build the New Economy
This is the ninth in an 11-part series on labor policy for the Green New Deal. As a trade union lawyer and climate activist, I believe we need to have a bold plan for climate action coupled with rewriting the rules governing our economy. In the spirit of Bernie’s Green New Deal policy (although written independently and before its release), this series proposes specific policy solutions to advance worker power alongside environmental stewardship.
(4) to achieve the Green New Deal goals and mobilization, a Green New Deal will require the following goals and projects— . . .
(F) ensuring the use of democratic and participatory processes that are inclusive of and led by frontline and vulnerable communities and workers to plan, implement, and administer the Green New Deal mobilization at the local level;
(G) ensuring that the Green New Deal mobilization creates high-quality union jobs that pay prevailing wages, hires local workers, offers training and advancement opportunities, and guarantees wage and benefit parity for workers affected by the transition[.][1]
Assist Workers to Transition their Specific Skills into New Industries
This paper intentionally does not talk about “retraining” as part of a just transition. Instead, it proceeds on the belief that most of the skilled workers who would be negatively impacted by a Green New Deal have far more to offer us with their existing skills than the current narrative presupposes.
For example, when we talk about coal miners, who are we talking about? We’re talking about skilled heavy machinery operators, electricians, pumpers, and laborers. The United Mine Workers have always organized on a wall-to-wall basis, and the coal miners who perform the work have far more, and more varied, skills than the term “coal miner” may imply. They’re not swinging pickaxes at a wall—they’ve got knowledge and skills that we could use to build a new economy.
The United States also has a looming problem in the construction industry: a shortage of skilled workers.[1] We need more skilled workers in the construction industry already, let alone once we allocate trillions to build to the new economy.
The GND should therefore look at the workers in the fossil-fuel industry not as passive recipients of government aid, but as people whose expertise we need. The GND’s advocates should work with organized labor and employers to determine exactly what workers we are talking about, the types of skills these workers have, and what if anything they need to transition to building and running the green economy. To the extent that workers need instruction to translate their current skills into the green economy, organized labor and its registered apprenticeship programs are the preexisting solution to that problem.
For fossil-fuel workers who are already in a building trades union, advocates for the Green New Deal should work specifically with those unions to figure out what if anything is needed to transition workers from fossil fuel projects to the green economy. Most likely, nothing will be needed for them to transition, or just some limited skills refreshers, as many of those workers have gone through extensive apprenticeship and training courses already.
For fossil-fuel workers in similar jobs that aren’t unionized, or for workers in wall-to-wall or industrial unions or facilities, it may be more difficult. Workers have specific skills and knowledge, but it might be more limited to the context in which they learned it and it may not fully transfer to other areas. We should begin a series of working groups led by organized labor to figure out exactly what is needed.
For example, maybe an electrician in a coal mine or a pipe welder in a natural gas power plant needs few to no new skills. In that case, we should work with organized labor to develop skills tests to certify them as a journeyperson in the trade and join that trade’s union or to put them to work operating a clean industry facility.
Or perhaps they do need additional instruction to translate their specific skills into a more general context. In that case, we should work with organized labor to develop specific, accelerated programs in registered apprenticeship programs. That way, workers can take what they already do, translate it into the new economy, and get to work quickly because we need them and their knowledge.
By reframing the just transition conversation away from ‘retraining’ and instead towards putting workers’ existing expertise to work building the new economy, the GND is an opportunity. It is an opportunity to raise wages across the board, build labor power, and use our existing talent pool to achieve the ambitious goals we’ve set for ourselves.
If you have thoughts on this subject, I’d love to hear them. Hit me up on Twitter or email.
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[1]See, e.g., Brittany De Lea, Construction Worker Shortage Tops Sector Concernsin 2019, Fox Bus. (Jan. 2, 2019), https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/construction-worker-shortage-tops-sector-concerns-in-2019; Contractor Mag., 70% of Contractors Struggling to Meet Deadlines as Labor Shortage Persists (March 14, 2019), https://www.contractormag.com/construction-data/70-contractors-struggling-meet-deadlines-labor-shortage-persists.