Coal country AFL-CIO presidents agree - federal climate action must create good union Jobs

There’s nothing new about divide and conquer.

For decades, corporations and wealthy special interests have pursued a strategy to divide communities and exploit their resources. These bad actors have attacked workers’ rights on the job and dismantled environmental protections jeopardizing local communities. They’ve tried to set working people, environmentalists, and racial justice leaders against one another with a false choice: You can have good jobs or fight climate change, but you can’t have both. 

A thriving economy and sustainable environmental policies are not mutually exclusive. Actively addressing climate change must go hand-in-hand with economic and environmental revitalization.

Now is the time for working people and their unions, community activists, environmental and racial justice organizations to come together and demand of our elected officials a better future that puts working people and their communities first. A coalition born in the heart of coal country, ReImagine Appalachia, shows that we can and must have economic opportunity and environmental sustainability. 

We — the presidents of the State Labor Federations of the AFL-CIO in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, and Kentucky — know that federal climate infrastructure investments must include robust labor and community standards to benefit working people and communities across the region.  

In May, we joined ReImagine Appalachia to release its newest report, “Maximizing Value — Community and Labor Standards.” The report is full of real-world examples that show how these standards have created good jobs in the past — and can do so throughout Appalachia. 

Following the ReImagine Appalachia plan would create over half a million well-paying, family-sustaining jobs in our four states alone. It would modernize our electric grid and repair the damage left behind by absentee corporations. It would invest in the jobs of the future by expanding universal broadband and growing clean, efficient manufacturing. It would restore communities neglected by deindustrialization and historically marginalized by outright discrimination. 

ReImagine Appalachia understood that the national climate debate needed to engage working people across our region and address their desire for better jobs — because “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu.”

To give our region a seat at the table, ReImagine held months of listening sessions and discussions with union members, community activists, dislocated coal workers in the industry, and labor leaders. 

What did we learn? To succeed and build the future we want, we must invest in Appalachians. 

Federal infrastructure investment must require strong union rights and good wages on permanent jobs — e.g., manufacturers — and on construction projects, including apprenticeship slots that provide on-the-job training. 

On construction, collective bargaining agreements that last throughout a project, “project labor agreements” (PLAs), are the gold standard. For example, Cincinnati and surrounding municipalities used their demand for electricity to drive investment in a utility-scale solar project in Appalachian Ohio. This is one example showing that, when done right, climate infrastructure investment will create good union jobs and a pathway to the middle class. When we invest in workers, our communities prosper inside Appalachia and across the country.  

ReImagine Appalachia’s newest white paper also highlights other examples from Cleveland, Columbus, and Pittsburgh that could be scaled up and replicated across our region. 

We’ve seen in the past when industries evolve, working people and the most vulnerable get left behind. Public policy has focused too exclusively on bridging dislocated workers to retirement or retraining them for lower-wage, non-union jobs they don’t want in places they don’t want to move to. 

To revitalize local communities requires a targeted, first-source hiring model that gives priority to dislocated coal miners and other workers in the industry, women, and people of color for good, union jobs. In recent decades, significant projects across the country, multi-billion-dollar investments in public transit or other infrastructure, have incorporated targeted hiring programs for women and workers of color. It’s time we ensure that all workers have equal access to opportunities to build a better future for themselves and their families.

Now we need to ensure that all of the climate infrastructure provisions proposed by President Biden — including labor and community requirements — are included in the budget reconciliation package which is now being drafted by congressional committees. And we expect every member of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation to support these provisions and to vote in favor of the Build Back Better package and the bipartisan infrastructure bill when they are considered this fall.

Richard W. Bloomingdale is the president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO.

Tim Burga is the president of the Ohio AFL-CIO.

William J. Londrigan is the president of the Kentucky AFL-CIO.

Josh Sword is the president of the West Virginia AFL-CIO.