DATE: July 26, 2010

TO: All U.S. Affiliates of the International Transport Federation

FROM: James C. Little, International President, Transport Workers Union of America, AFL-CIO “WeMoveAmerica” RE: TWU Supports Resolution 1, “Responding to Climate Change,” and the work of the ITF Climate Change Working Group

The TWU, representing more than 200,000 active and retired members, is proud to be JAMES C. LITTLE InternationalPresident one of more than sixty (60) ITF affiliates from around the world supporting Resolution I submitted to the 42’’ Congress of the ITF. While we acknowledge the HARRYLOMBARDO concerns expressed by TCU President Robert A. Scardalletti in the Position Paper he InternationalExecutiveVice circulated to the ITF and its U.S. affiliates, we believe that paper ignores fundamental President realities with which the science of climate change confronts our movement. To protect our members and the planet we share, we must have the courage and vision to JOSEPH C. GORDON InternationalSecretary-Treasurer lead. Organized labor must join with other social movements in seizing the opportunity to make the changes climate science demands of our species. In short, we SUSAN RESCH must evolve or dissolve. Here’s why: AdministrativeVicePresident I) Organized labor is in a desperate struggle for its very survival in the United States JOHN M. CONLEY and many other parts of the world. Our survival requires, among AdministrativeVicePresident other things, that we change as the world and the nature and very definition of work change. As even the TCU acknowledges, “the is JEFFREYL. BROOKS,SR. science of climate change real.” AdministrativeAssistantto the InternationalPresident 2) Jobs are involved in many sectors that produce Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions and adversely impact the environment, not just transport. These include jobs2 in offshore drilling; strip mining and mountain top removal; industries that overproduce plastics; and many others. Then there are the untold numbers of jobs

The oil, coal and other transnational corporate interests have a TRANSPORTWORKERS that linancial stake in the scale UNION OF AMERICA downplaying of the climate crisis have painted a misleading public portrait of’the AFL-CIO Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a sort of environmental advocacy organization. In fact, the IPCC has a reputation of being conservative and erring on the side of caution. That is one of the reasons it was so stunning and signilicant that it was under the auspices International Headquarters of the IPCC that 2.0(X)of the world’s leading scientists. aller years of exhaustive research. & Offices of the Railroad produced the now famous 2007 report recognizing the potentially devastating consequences of Division & Transit, Utility, climate change. Universities and Service Division 2 One of the better definitions of Greenhouse Gas comes from the New Zealand Ministry of 1700 Broadway,Floor2 Economic Development: New York,NY10019 GHG is a collective term for those gases 212.259.4900 which reduce the loss of heat from the earth’s atmosphere. and thus contribute to global warming and climate change. The greenhouse gases most commonly used in calculations of global warming potential include carbon dioxide (C0 Regional Headquarters Air 2). methane (CH nitrous oxide hydrofluorocarhons (HFCs), perlluorocarhons Transport Division 4). 2(N0). (PFCs) and 1791 HurstviewDr. sulphur hexafluoride (SE-,). Hurst, TX76054 Available online at http://www.mcd.eovt.nz/ternplates/StandardSummarv 38150.aspx. 817.282.2544 Retrieved July 20, 2010.

www.TWU.org

19 altected not by climate change but by technological changes. The question is not whether we address these changes, hut how.

3) The just demand for and inevitability of GHG emission reduction must be approached as an opportunity to re-tool and re-engineer the economy and secure just futures for our members and for organized labor. The ITF Climate Change working Group document is a comprehensive, integrated blueprint for transport adaptation and mitigation measures that

a) The science of climate change demands, and h) Are necessary to ensure the survival of the labor movement and the dignity of work in the coming decades.

Our fiduciary duty lies with the survival of our species and the growth of our movement. It is in our members’ interest to transition to a sustainable transportation industry, because ii is in our members’ interest for our movement and our planet to survive.

4) While it is inevitable, the transition away from the energy sources and transportation policies that are destroying workers’ health and the future of our planet towards renewable and sListainable sources of energy will take decades. Union members moving coal and oil are unlikely to be affected for many years to come, and then only gradUally. This means that, while we must begin to act now to save our planet and our movement, we also have the opportunity to carry out our duty to protect jobs by engineering robust “just transition” policies that maintain income and benefits for the workers who will be transitioning to safer and more sustainable work. The Reduce-Shift-Improve model proposed by the ITF Climate Change Working Group points us towards a process that will ensure a just transition. A just transition doesn’t favor some affiliates over others, it builds our movement as it saves our planet by adding good union jobs in sustainable industries such as mass transit and rail and protecting workers who are transitioning into those 3industries. 5) Cutting emissions by reducing the level of unsustainable and low-wage transport will lead to MORE unionizedjobs in freight and passenger rail, and also in public mass transit, even assuming there is a reduction in the tonnage of coal transported by 4rail. One major source of job creation is the shift from road-to-

We have solid models to draw from in the history of unions that have protected their members in the midst of profound industry transitions. For example, as automation and containerization transformed the shipping industry, the ILA protected its members with initiatives such as the Guaranteed Annual Income program, the Job Security Program and the Rules on Containers. These protections have endured, often in the face of vehement employer opposition.

This analysis just focuses on transportation—it does not even begin to take into account the increased tonnage of freight rail transport that is likely to result from a shift to environmental sustainahility in sectors of the economy outside the transport sector.

2 rail. As well as being more fuel efficient, rail transport is also more jobs— intensive than road transport. These jobs include direct employment in freight rail as well as employment5 in manufacturing (locomotives, freight railcars, shop machinery), construction (rail roadway buildings, warehouses, grading), the iron and steel industries (rail and over—the-roadtrack materials), and 6more. In addition, freight rail jobs are typically higher paying and of better quality than road freight jobs. The shift from private vehicles to public transport, which will entail a large expansion and improvement of public transport systems, will also create more jobs. Overall, several studies have shown that investment in public transportation creates more jobs than investment in new road construction and a greater variety of jobs, including in transit construction, operation, maintenance, administration and housing, retail and commercial construction near new transit.

6) In the United States and elsewhere, organized labor confronts near a fatal decline in labor market density and in popularity among communities of working people. This decline dictates a need to preserve and build partnerships with other social movements. The movement to protect the environment is probably the greatest emerging popular front. In transport, the trade union agenda and the climate protection agenda are one and the 7same. To retreat in this area, or to act as a brake, is to promote our more rapid decline into irrelevance.

7) Vision and leadership are required today, not sand to bLiry our heads in, hoping that changes and challenges will simply go 9away. The TWU has many areas of

WWF note 110, cited in ITF Climate Change Working Group, Transport Workers and Climate Change. Towards Sustainabilitv and Low-Carbon Mobility, at n. 50 (2010).

6 Full Speed Ahead, cited in ITF Climate Document, n. 53.

Transport sectors that have been most affected by liberalization and deregulation, and have the lowest unionization rates, are the ones where emissions have gone up the fastest. Thus, reducing emissions requires a strong trade union agenda that calls for the full costs of transport to be internalized.

The powerful forces opposing action on climate change arethe same anti-union corporate interests that have made the most money in the history of money off the potential destruction of the planet. “in early 2009,” writes Bill McKihben. just as Obama was getting set to unveil his energy plans. word came that 2,340 lobbyists had registered to work on climate change on Capitol Hill (that’s about six per congressman), 85 percent of them devoted to slowing down progress.” B. McKibben, Eaarth, Times Books, p. 56(2010).

Walter Reuther of the UAW provides another fine example of a visionary labor leader who. confronted with a structural crisis. transformed it into an opportunity for change. Faced with a declining demand for personal automobiles. he successfully advocated retooling the industry to support the anti-fascist movement in World War Il. Rather than bemoaning lost demand. he advocated a full employment economy in coalition with unemployed workers. and supplied the vision needed to transform the industry to meet the existential challenge of his era. Later, Reuther travelled to Memphis. Tennessee with a $50,000 check to show solidarity with striking black

3 common ground with the TCU. For example, we shai-e their view that we must prioritize the fight for adequate transit funding and aggressively advocate research and development funding for technologies that reduce emissions and produce sustainable jobs. We agree that the ITF and its affiliates should pursue a more detailed and specific analysis of the methodologies for and the numbers and kinds of jobs that will be involved in a just transition. However, to adopt the view of the TCU

that “. . .the transport of coal and oil.. .is almost perpetual, producing a renewable stream of employment,” or that we are “not interested” in retraining for workers whose jobs are transitioning, or that we oppose any reduction in tonnage,’° would be to blind ourselves to the reality of both the science of climate change and the finite supply of fossil fuels. The massive public investments in public transport required to address both climate change and people’s need for accessible and affordable transport will only occur if we push our countries and our movement to adopt an aggressive and science-based approach to emission reductions.

8) “Après moi, Ic deluge.”’ Adopting the approach of letting the future take care of itself for the expediency or ease of our lives at this moment would be potentially fatal in the climate context. As the ITF Climate Change Document points out, a landmark 2007 study on the economics of climate change concluded that global warming, if left unchecked, will lead to a massive economic downturn comparable to the combined effects of the two world wars and the Great Depression of the last century.’ We must face reality and plan for the changes the future will bring. To do2otherwise is to acquiesce in our future destruction to preserve our present comfort.

9) For all these reasons, the TWU steadfastly supports sanitation workers, understanding the historic importance of solidarity and of labors obligations and partnerships. That was hut a few weeks before Dr. King’s visit and tragic end with an assassins bullet. Reuther, like TWU President Mike Quill, made the historic choice to support the civil rights movement at a time when many in labor did not. We in labor must face the changing world and lead. We must evolve or dissolve.

10 The TCU’s position that any reduction in tonnage (in the amount of coal being transported by rail) must be opposed because it translates to a loss ofjobs, more than any other exposes that the TCU approach is based on denial of the reality of climate change and resistance to anh shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources. Even carbon capture and sequestration would reduce coal tonnage.

“After me. let the deluge come.” The phrase is often attributed King Louis XV of France. His great grandfather Louis XIV had made France a dominant empire. but also bankrupted the nation. imposing high taxes on the peasantry while allowing the nobility to pay none. Louis XV is said to have lived for indulgence and luxury as his people descended further into poverty and despair. His weak and short-sighted rule, said to have accelerated the general decline that resulted in the French Revolution, is encapsulated in his famous quote, perhaps best paraphrased as, “It doesn’t matters to me whether the catastrophe comes after my death, as long as I can live in the manner to which I am accustomed now.”

12 N. Stern, “Stern Review on The Economics of Climate Change (pre-publication edition). Executive Summary”. HM Treasury, London (2006). http://www.webcitation.or/5nCeyEYir.

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