The National Labor College (NLC) and the AFL-CIO’s Center for Green Jobs have launched a monthly online Green Labor Journal to outline issues of sustainability, energy use and climate change from a union perspective.

It says the journal will showcase union green initiatives and provide up-to-date information on new developments in green policy, technology and work processes.

A report in the AFL-CIO’s blog says the journal will emphasise that green jobs must pay decent wages and benefits so workers can sustain themselves and their families. All green policy initiatives also must include fair labour standards.

The online journal also will highlight the important role of unions in environmental debates.

Issue 1 includes details of NLC’s Green Workplace Representative Certificate Program. It says: “Based upon the model of the British Trade Union Congress’s (TUC) Union Green Representative program, the NLC curriculum will provide working people with a practical guide for conducting a workplace audit, organizing a ‘greening committee’ in every workplace, and working with management to make the positive changes necessary to achieve sustainability.”

TUC publishes a regular online Green Workplaces News.

Writing in the first issue of the Green Labor Journal, NLC’s Tom Kriger notes: “Research shows that sustainable workplaces are more productive workplaces.  Thus a further goal of this program is to build cooperative labor-management partnerships so workplaces become safer and more productive, enhance the competitiveness of American firms in the global economy, and contribute to the health of the planet. 

“Based in part upon the role of the health and safety committees that the labor movement pioneered in many workplaces, a workplace “greening committee” would provide the appropriate forum for discussing the results of workplace audits and negotiating steps to address issues identified in the audits.”

In its response to the findings of an official consultation into the UK’s ‘Carbon Reduction Commitment’, the government has said the assessment of good practice on “disclosure of information on energy management” should include consideration of measures to “actively engage employees to reduce energy use.”

The government’s policy decisions document notes: “Where an independent trade union is recognised for collective bargaining purposes, energy management issues are considered in these joint discussions and members actively take forward initiatives to reduce the organisation’s carbon emissions.”

A report on the Touchstone blog on the UK national union federation TUC notes “carbon pricing kicks off in April 2010 for 5,000 of our largest service sector employers, when the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC), takes effect.”

It adds CRC will put a price on carbon dioxide pollution in the service industries, with incentives to cut consumption.

The TUC blog adds: “It’s great news for the TUC and our affiliates and reflects well on the hard work and dedication of green reps. Their work will now be recognised in a CRC performance ‘league table’, which requires employers to tick an ‘employee engagement” box’…”

The TUC entry adds: “As the TUC’s latest study of 1,300 green reps points out, unions are now the real green champions in the workplace!”

The same day the Conservatives said their new Green Deal to create a low carbon economy would create more than 70,000 skilled jobs.

The shadow energy and climate change secretary, Greg Clark said he hoped 3,500 of the new jobs created through the programme could be ‘green apprenticeships’.

• TUC greenworkplaces webpages.

Union representatives who will form part of the ITUC delegation at the Copenhagen meeting met this week with Michael Zammit Cutajar, who will chair the UN negotiations.

The union side “expressed their satisfaction for seeing in the current negotiating text one of the most important demands for labour: the call for a ‘Just Transition’ for workers in the process to achieve a climate-friendly and climate-resilient society,” reports ITUC.

The union side, ITUC added, “also informed the chair about other demands being delivered to governmental negotiators, such as the need for recognising the role of social protection, the vulnerability of precarious workers and public investment in the context of adaptation, and for promoting sustainable industrial policies, dialogue with social partners and skills development policies when discussing mitigation, among others.”

 In a separate move, the UK government’s environment secretary, Ed Miliband, acknowledged the strategic value of Just Transition in his speech to the annual Congress of national union federation TUC in September.

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The discussion document, produced by the environmental thinktank Green Alliance, includes contributions from union leaders including Jack Dromey of Unite, Sally Hunt of UCU, Paul Noon of Prospect, Keith Sonnet of UNISON and Dan Shears of GMB.

Writing in TUC’s public policy Touchstone blog,  Green Alliance director Stephen Hale points to the example of the now well-established and respected US Blue Green Alliance – a coalition of environmental and union groups.
Commenting on the publication, Working on Change, he says: “The most uplifting contribution comes from Bob Baugh, executive director of the American AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council. He tells an inspiring story from across the Atlantic. The Blue-Green coalition in the US has united over six million workers and many of the key environmental groups in the US in the fight for the tremendous manufacturing and employment opportunities of the transition to a low carbon economy.

“Their efforts have yielded rapid and impressive dividends following the election of President Barack Obama, in particular through the stimulus package and the Clean Energy and Security Act.

“We at Green Alliance are excited by the growing engagement and commitment of trade unions here in the UK to the opportunities presented by action on climate change. We hope this can be the start of the creation of a movement of the American scale and impact here in the UK.”