Two years ago, Business Manager Christopher Erikson introduced the membership to the organization Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED). His discussion was part of the excitement that the United States and other counties along with national and international unions would coalesce to participate in a collective that would shift the worlds energy consumption off fossil fuel use, thus lowering carbon emissions to a renewable energy plan that would provide new jobs in a new industry. Renewable energy manufacturing could start a realistic replacement for the manufacturing jobs (in unrelated and related industries) lost to international trade deals and automation. Considered decent work, and when compared to the shrinking workforce needed in the highly dangerous fuel extraction industries, renewable equipment demands a skilled workforce that would return American workers to the status once understood as the norm in unionized middle class America.
The definition of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy found on its website is “a global, multi-sector initiative to advance democratic direction and control of energy in a way that promotes solutions to the climate crisis, energy poverty, the degradation of both land and people, and responds to the attacks on workers’ rights and protections.” The principle tenants of TUED is to Resist, Reclaim and Restructure the existing energy provision in regards to natural resource barons who span and scan the globe in speculation and extraction at the cost of workers, communities and the natural environment in many developing nations. Furthermore, with the fairly-recent discovery of natural gas resources in the United States, the increased extraction routine at home has viciously divided communities. TUED pushes back against privatization, deregulation, and expanded speculation driven by energy utilities.
Following Business Managers Erikson’s report, an Electrical Union World article reinforced the imperative for urgent action to reverse the damage already subjected on the planet by fossil fuel use which imperils the perpetuity of the human relationship with earth.
Around the world $300 million per year is slated for investment in renewable forms of energy provision and that allocation is expected to grow despite favorable deals made last year with the oil industry and pushed through the U.S. Congress by its Republican majority. Consistent scientific proof supports a growing global consensus that climate change is accelerated by carbon emissions. In the U.S., global warming is understood as an imminent threat to national security.
A result of an eleven day United Nations summit in 2015, The Paris Agreement was signed in December of that same year as a promise by 195 nations to partner and commit to transition off oil and coal while assisting underdeveloped nations build their emerging economies with renewable equipment. Also, the accord will assist in recovery from the devastation suffered by severe weather patterns partially attributed to global warming. If adhered, the accord will be an inclusive economic global shift with socioeconomic benefits for nations rich and poor.
Donald Trump has been elected President of the United States with part of his campaign platform promising to double down on coal mining. Along with coal being the dirtiest of fuels, its mining operations do not support the work force that it once did. Mountain Top mining, where tops of mountains are dynamited into dust and heavy equipment then sifts the debris into trucks, once required hundreds of miners, yet now, uses a few workers to set detonators and few heavy equipment operators. Pension Plan insolvency is the one-two punch travesty for miners. Miners are victim to the insidious affliction of Black Lung disease, while there are less workers contributing pay into the health and pension plan.
Where mining is performed the old-fashioned way with miners descending miles below the Earth’s outer crust, black lung disease is on the rise. Now called Progressive Massive Fibrosis there is element of silica increasing the debilitating strength of the fatal villainous black lung. It seems that instead of improving the lives of miners their health consequences are becoming more intractable.
Not much good has come for the miners: miners still suffer unfair union busting tactics due to the asymmetrical labor law favoring mining companies, and mining companies see increased profits coupled with subsidies or tax exemption.
Over the last 40 years and with increasing speed, access to the essential utilities (energy and water) are being removed from the public domain and placed in the decisions of private companies. The perspective that power and water are a human right cannot be denied; corporate executives and their minions argue against this position, but denying people the right to energy and water subject to personal wealth is an unacceptable condition that must be settled in favor of service over profit.
Indeed, over the last 100 years when supervised by a properly funded and well-staffed government agency, public utilities have served the nation with equanimity.åÊ
The California natural gas energy company ENRON is the quintessential example of the dangers of increased deregulation and privatization on an energy utility. The notorious “ENRON Scandal” as it has come to be remembered, was where a private energy provider enjoying autonomy saw company executives and accountants embezzle money and fraudulently claim higher profits. Executives essentially cooked their accounting legends falsely increasing shareholder profits while the public suffered poor service. When the ENRON bubble collapsed, employee 401k’s were neck deep in ENRON stock and subsequently suffered unrecoverable financial ruin ending retirement plans and hopes.
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