by A just transition to a green economy cannot happen without a mass working-class movement — that’s why the DSA Green New Deal Committee has taken on the fight to pass the PRO Act.
Gustavo Gordillo, a leader of DSAs National Ecosocialist Caucus, spoke to why ecosocialists are taking on the PRO Act campaign. “To enact and implement a Green New Deal, we need to radically transform essentially the entire economy, and we need organized workers at the point of production who can create a crisis in those sectors of the economy in order to win our demands, and right now the working class faces really desperate levels of disorganization” (The Dig).
The PRO Act, if passed, will break down some of the largest barriers in labor law that keep workers from forming and maintaining strong unions (such as “Right to Work” legislation).
An unlikely alliance between ecosocialists and organized labor has led to an impressive outreach campaign that’s responsible for pushing two of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate, Joe Manchin (WV) and Angus King (ME), into co-signing the PRO Act with the majority of their Democratic colleagues. All in all, DSA members have made nearly 1 million calls to legislators who had not yet signed on to the PRO Act.
The DSA’s outreach campaign was even praised by the former president of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, who had historically not been very friendly to the radical left. DSA’s ecosocialist fight for the PRO Act is an important step forward in overcoming the long-standing divide between labor and the environmental movement, which has been a result of big business sowing divisions by falsely blaming environmentalists for job losses. Environmental leaders have often exacerbated this by failing to link calls for climate action to calls for green jobs and social spending.
Though the flipping of these two Democrats is extremely impressive, and the alliance between organized labor and ecosocialists is important, the battle for the PRO Act remains an uphill one. Winning the PRO Act will not just come through phone banks; we need a mass protest movement, both to win the PRO Act, but also to remove the largest obstruction to its passage — the filibuster. Without a massive pressure campaign led by the working class to eradicate the undemocratic filibuster, Republicans will continue to stonewall attempts to win labor law reform and environmental justice alike.
DSA is well situated to lead a militant, class conscious fight against the corporations responsible for the colossal environmental destruction that’s heating up our planet. The demand for a Green New Deal must be made by organized labor, and this movement is opening up a new arena for socialists and labor unions to partner in defense of both good jobs and a greener future.
Why Workers Need The PRO Act
The union campaign loss at the Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama was a blow to the working class. Amazon put a lot of money into busting the unionizing efforts of its workers. They lied to, bribed, and threatened their workers into voting no. They were allowed to do this because of the draconian labor laws our country has enacted, primarily the Taft-Hartley Act. This law, also known as the Labor Management Relations Act, was enacted in 1947 as part of the ruling class’ McCarthyite “Red Scare.”
Matt Huber in his article “Why the Green New Deal Has Failed — So Far” published in Jacobin, writes that the PRO Act “would limit employers’ ability to intervene in union election campaigns, impose steeper penalties for employers who break the law, make it harder for employers to drag out negotiations and refuse to bargain with certified unions, legalize currently outlawed forms of union solidarity such as secondary boycotts, make it more difficult for employers to misclassify workers as ‘independent contractors,’ and forbid so-called ‘right to work’ laws.” If the PRO Act passes, it has the potential to dramatically change the landscape of worker power, making it much easier for workers to organize.
