 Hi everyone, sorry for the late start. My name is shore of shore car and I am with labor notes. Welcome to this event on labor and climate change solutions. We are going to be talking with Lexi from Amazon employees for climate justice, as well as David Yau from the APW you Seattle local. Um, folks are joining from both David and Lexi are from Seattle. Just to let everyone know how we'll be proceeding we're going to have both of our panelists speak for about 1012 minutes and then after that, we'll have a brief discussion, and then we'll have q amp a. There should be a q amp a function on your, your zoom. So feel free to put questions into that q amp a and then you'll be able to submit your questions and then we will take them as we get them. It looks like we have about 35 people with us today. Um, and we're really looking forward to having this conversation comes at a really crucial time as the pandemic is showing us what the future of climate change might look like and some of the inequalities that get raised in climate change and some of the factors that are going to be hopefully addressed by building worker power to remedy the problem. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Lexi. And Lexi is going to be speaking about their work with Amazon employees for climate justice. Good to make sure of. Good to see everyone here I'm really excited to learn from you all. So I'm Lexi I'm a software engineer at Amazon in Seattle. I've been organizing with Amazon employees for climate justice for about two years now. And kind of my like personal story about how I got into this work. I grew up in San Bernardino, California, which is a huge logistics hub. So I grew up around warehouses trucking. That was really normal. And so like even my first job out of high school was in a warehouse. And so after college, I moved to Seattle to work at Amazon HQ, and I really saw like the disparity between my hometown, where Amazon is the number one employer and Seattle, where I have to assume Amazon is also the number one employer, but for tech workers. And just seeing like my hometown, which is a majority black and Latinx neighborhood and like every time I go and visit my mom it's like the pollution is worse and worse every time versus like Seattle which is like clear air like super wealthy it's just like that really kind of drew, you know it really made it clear to me that like so much wealth is being extracted from my community and like brought into these like corporate spaces. Like something like 20,000 diesel trucks pass by my mom's house every day and so like that was really what made me feel like you know working at Amazon like, what can I do to make a change that will like impact my community. So, part of ACJ in our work, like one of our values is that we believe in anti racism. And so what that looks like for the climate crisis is that we believe like environmental racism is the root cause of the climate crisis and so we have to address these sort of inequalities in order to like build that just world. And so kind of like what I wanted to show with my, you know, story was that like Amazon's whole business is built on these like sacrifices zones, which are like warehouses built in places where it's majority like people of color. ACJ's done research and we've seen that something like 80% of warehouses are located in majority people of color communities. And so what we've been doing is like Amazon employees for climate justice is like Amazon is such a huge power. And so we really believe in like organizing workers and worker power to like put that in check and to like enact like transformative change. I think like kind of like a story on like why we think like we really need to address environmental racism specifically. I've had like a one on one once with a co worker and she kind of pushed back on like our like approach around like organizing. She kind of suggested to me like if you want to like solve pollution and like your hometown and your mom's neighborhood like why don't you go work on like the supply chain optimization team and stuff like that. But as many of us maybe know like when business costs go down like business doubles and so like unless we address these core inequalities like we're not going to see like the transformation we need to address the climate crisis. And so just like thinking about that and like how the labor and climate movements are connected. Like you can't separate the warehouse from the people who live in that neighborhood. These warehouses are like bill, you know, basically next to houses and like diesel trucks run through these neighborhoods. And also like the people who live in these neighborhoods are also the workers who are working in this in these warehouses right so now workers are also like shouldering the pollution burden. And so I think our group sometimes we run up against like there's sometimes attention and like organizing around like issue based organizing and like wages benefits and like working conditions organizing I think we definitely believe like we need all of it. But for our group, what we've seen is like people's interests as workers is really a lot more expansive than just their workplace people care about like their homes and their families and a crisis like the climate crisis really like touches people's humanity and like it's been really energizing to like talk to coworkers about this and really bring people into like organizing and like worker power, especially people who may not have like been in that space before. And so like I feel like even in our group we've seen people really transformed by talking about issues of like racial justice and environmental justice, and really giving people a space to work on these things. So some of like what our group has done in the past. We've had a walk out in 2019. We had like 3000 people sort of worldwide, like 2000 plus tech workers in Seattle specifically and Amazon responded with the climate pledge. We demanded like zero emissions by 2030 and investing in communities of color first so back to like how we have to address the sacrifices and built into Amazon's business. And so Amazon's climate pledge. It's like net zero by 2040 and doesn't really have sort of a justice lens and doesn't address racial justice at all. So we're still focusing on organizing that. And so currently what we're working on is a shareholder resolution around environmental racism, like asking Amazon to release data on like where their pollution is concentrated because we've done our own research and seen that the majority of warehouses aren't communities of color, but making sure that it's like tracked by the business we can like push back on that a lot more. So just thinking about like anti racism and how we, how that's core to our organizing. One of the things that we do is race based caucusing. So we have a tool where certain discussions will split into caucuses based on race. So we'll have a white caucus and a POC caucus which is person of color caucus. So in our group, we've seen that be really transformative. I remember kind of after the walk out, there was lots of like conflict sort of in our group, just like people pushing back on like, well like, should we prioritize like reaching out to people of color like how can we do that like, if people are wanting to get involved it's like, you know, sort of a like race blind approach. And now I think at least for myself like participating in a PC caucus and stuff, like seeing my leadership get backed, I think even in like the corporate space being from somewhere like San Bernardino, which is like the sort of where the full people are I always felt like that was sort of detriment but seeing that like celebrated and really trusting the leadership has been transformative for me. And giving people like in white caucus a place to like work on their own anti racism has been really like energizing for people and so we've seen lots of people get more involved with these like changes that we've been doing. And I think kind of one of our like core ideas is that like, we lose a lot more people by not addressing racial justice than we do by, you know, avoiding the issue of racial justice. And like, just knowing that our coworkers and warehouses are like majority like black and Latinx like being able to like work with them and like show that we are actually enacting anti racism has been really powerful like with our resolution with frontline communities in San Bernardino like frontline organizers. And so I think like that is possible because of our like commitment to anti racism. And yeah, I think that's like my, I guess my like main main ideas is like thinking about solutions to the climate crisis like we need to talk about racial justice especially in the United States and like, especially with Amazon. Amazon recently like released their racial breakdown of their workforce and so you can really see that like the corporate employees are majority white and Asian and then warehouse employees are like majority black and Latinx and so like, even in the corporate space that is really fell. And so like, we need to be working with people who are like closest to the issues to get like the right solutions. Yeah, I think that's my, I'll stop there. I'd love to hear what David has to say. Thanks so much like see. And yeah, folks, feel free to put your questions in the Q&A in advance. I see we have one there already. And now we will turn to David Yau who's the Vice President of the Seattle local of APWU who are postal workers in the Postal Service. Thank you. Yeah, thanks everybody for being here and being interested in this topic. I'm interested in the topic of climate change for a long time and personally made a decision to buy a car that say hybrid Chevy Volt the 2013, we run mostly on electricity and we changed our houses gas furnace over to a heat pump which runs totally on electricity and relies on almost no fossil fuel because we're fortunate enough to have almost totally renewable energy in our electricity sources here in Seattle. So anyway, I work for the Postal Service and the Postal Service issues every year a sustainability report. There are some reports full of wonderful phrases such as they're mindful of our environmental footprint. We considered our responsibility to be good stewards of the environment. We set aggressive targets for energy use water use and greenhouse gas emissions. The report talks about things like recycling, they have lots of little pilot projects, but if you really crunch the numbers and dig down into the report, you'll see it's where it really counts in terms of addressing climate change, the amount of fuel they use for the transportation of mail throughout the country. The Postal Service is basically greenwashing their performance. And I'll give you an example of the, they set a target for 20% drop in petroleum use, and the Postal Service has 230,000 delivery and transportation vehicles that they operate. So they've a very largely, it's the biggest source of their carbon footprint. They set a goal for 20% drop from 2005 to 2015, instead of decreasing their petroleum use, the petroleum use went up by 20%. It went up another 10% by 2018. So in 13 years, the Postal Service went from using 140 for a million gallons of gasoline to using 186 million gallons of gasoline. This is, you know, very deep in the report. So basically the employer is BSing on their commitment to stopping climate change. In fact, they don't even use the words climate change in the report. However, 2021 present a golden opportunity to change all this stuff, because of the 200,000 actual delivery vehicles, a lot of who are really old, over 400 of them had caught on fire, they were so old, they need to be replaced. And so there is a major contract was going to be awarded to replace as many as 160,000 of these delivery vehicles. And it came down to two finalists and companies that were bidding for the contract, one would make electric vehicles and one would make gasoline vehicles. Well, President Biden came out with a, a sort of announcement that he wanted to electrify the entire federal fleet, of which the postal fleet is a subset. When it came time to award the contract, the Postal Service awarded to the company was going to build a gasoline power fleet, and maybe 10% of that would be electric. So this caused a big fewer. And it's, it's been a big issue. Our union a couple of days later in testimony before before Congress came out in favor of electric vehicles, our president Mark Demis being very progressive. We were fortunate to have him issue testimony basically in support of funding for the Postal Service to electrify their fleet. In fact, Congress did pass a bill. The House of Representatives passed the bill in 2020 that would have provided money for the Postal Service to electrify their fleet and provided for public charging stations at every public post office for use by employees and the public. Very progressive thing. And our union came out publicly in favor of that. So the, the question hasn't been settled. There are a lot of objections in Congress to, to this, the awarding of this contract to, you know, basically building in fossil fuel use into the postal infrastructure for, for decades to come, literally. The Biden administration's infrastructure bill does have money that would provide for the electrification of the postal fleet. And so we're really hopeful that that can stay in there and get passed in Congress. That's, that's a very big issue. Let me talk a little bit about the, about education around climate change in my union. In 2019 at a national educational conference attended by a thousand union officers and stewards and members. We had our first climate change session. I was asked to, to help conduct that as well as our vice president, Debbie Saretty. And in this workshop, we, one of the things we did was ask people who attended their stories that relate that relate to their personal experiences with the effects of climate change and extreme weather. And of course, very recently we'd had quite a series of fires drought floods and so forth. And we had members who were in attendance who talked about having to be evacuated because of the fires in California people who lost their houses to fires. People who, who had lost their houses to floods in the south. And so I think, listening to the members stories about their personal experiences was sort of help solidify in the minds of people who are there that this is really a problem. Well, we also did was our union printed up a survey based on a survey that's written up by the labor network for sustainability. And we passed it out to as many of the other of the attendees at the Congress that we could. We got several hundred responses back basically asked a number of different questions and let me give you some of the responses. So, 62% of the people who responded to the survey felt that climate change events had increased in frequency and intensity. 76% had family members who had been affected by extreme weather recently, and 30% who responded said that they had personally suffered health problems that were exacerbated by extreme weather. 83% said they thought it was better for the union to engage in the fight against climate change, and 87% felt our employer postal service had failed to communicate the impacts of climate change, either on the postal service, or on their work location that is basically a topic that our employer is ignoring. So I think the survey method is something that people can use to sort of raise awareness and the survey results were published in our national newspaper. And I think when people see that there's a big consensus of opinion around this issue among their coworkers. I think it helps empower them not only to do something about it but it empowers the union leadership. And one of the things that I and other activists have done is try and get resolutions passed. So we passed resolutions in favor of the Green New Deal at the state and local level. The letter carries union passed the resolution in favor of electric vehicles. And I think the resolution process can be educational for the people who are participating in it. It also, I think, can be used to push a union leadership to do something, or if you have a progressive union leadership, they can empower them to take more action because every union has its own internal politics. You've got people who are progressive on issue and people who just don't really care. So I think these resolutions can be useful. On the other hand, resolutions can be just pieces of paper that are put in a book and filed away if you don't actually have people following up and pushing to take action on this. So a couple of things my union has done. There's a grand alliance to save our public social service, which my union was instrumental in initiating about 80 different organizations that work to preserve the public social service and Greenpeace and the Sierra Club to environmental organizations are part of that effort. So really try to broaden our reach to get as many different kinds of public organizations and nonprofits to support our efforts. One of the things I think we could improve in is in decreasing employee commute times because that's the climate change issue. It's also an issue of convenience and a benefit for individual members. So there you don't have to be, you know, just preaching on a big issue. If you talk about things that affect members in their own personal life, that's really important. I just had a member who bid from a job where I work to a work location that would reduce certain new time by over an hour day. And we do have good transfer rules in the postal service, but they could be better right now management can turn down transfers. And I think that's one of the things where individual members who aren't looking at big picture that they can see a benefit to themselves. If you're pushing for something that that both reduces their commute time and and also obviously reduces the transportation their transportation impact and their carbon admissions. So I guess. Let's see. Well, one more thing I'd like to talk about. A little speed bump we hit along the way, I should say. So my union in 2016. We put forth a resolution in favor of electric vehicles and for the postal service, right. And the wording basically said that, you know, post the electric vehicles may cost more to purchase initially, but they save the organization money in the long run because there's lower fuel costs and less maintenance. My union represents the maintenance workers who maintain these vehicles, and they have their own craft and they have their own meetings. And they saw that resolution. They did not like it. They did not like the fact that these vehicles would have less maintenance. And the basic problem is that right now they're not getting the training they need to maintain the vehicles that they're supposed to maintain. They're they're just they're short handed. They're not getting the management doesn't want to spend money on training. So they're thinking, wow, we're going to lose our jobs because they're not going to see this stuff. So that division of our union voted voted against that resolution and basically torpedoed it's being passed by our union. And it kind of shows I think the importance of thinking through things like these resolutions and how they'll affect members concretely. And doing the education, having discussions needed before you sort of take some of these moves because this was, you know, obviously in hindsight was it was not thinking through how one section of our workforce would react to that and not addressing their needs or concerns. So, yeah, so anyway, I guess that I'd sort of sum up by saying, you know, what things that you could do you can research your, your employer's carbon emissions, you can try and get your union to address these issues. You can do resolutions, and you can try to educate the members knows are kind of just general advice I would give on this issue and I certainly be happy to hear. I'm sure we all will be happy to hear from other folks experiences in working on these issues in the labor movement. Thank you. Thank you so much, David. And thanks to both of you I think you both raised some really important issues in the context of the labor fight against climate change, both in terms of racial justice work, as well as the need to have a just transition for workers that are disproportionately affected by a transition to clean and green environment and workforce and employment schemes. As I mentioned before, folks who are attending can submit questions through the Q&A function on zoom. So we have a couple of questions so far and I'm going to turn to one of those now. This question is for Lexi and it's from Felix and the question is love hearing about this work Lexi and the way you're centralizing racial justice in this curious to hear more about the walk out sounds like you won some of your demands from that would love some nuts and bolts on how you did it and what your next steps will be. Thanks for the question Felix and thanks David hearing about all the work y'all have been doing it's really great. Yeah, I think about the walk out, maybe some like nuts and bolts and how we did it actually to kind of echo what David had mentioned around like resolutions. So kind of started for us around a shareholder resolution for Amazon to release their environmental impact, because they didn't have any like public data on like what their emissions looked like at all at that time so that was in 2019. And so that actually was like a really great starting point because I think like a lot of you know our coworkers thought like yeah like going through this like evolution process like this is kind of like how we can make change in the system and then just seeing that like oh wait like Amazon will always have a majority in this and they can always like be the ones to like strike it down if it doesn't like fit their interest. And so I think that was really agitational for people. And after that we also had like an open letter to like Jeff basis about Amazon's like climate impact. And we got like something like 8,000, like tech workers signed on to it and so I think like these like building blocks were really like what led to the walk out. And for the walk out specifically it was a lot of going through like the connections people had made like at the shareholder resolution meeting. And like people who had signed up on the signed up for the open letter like people who maybe worked in the same building as them, and doing lots of like one on one connections, honestly, and like conversations we kind of did like a, what's the word like preceding of the walk out. And I think that's really important because when we announced like our call like we already had like hundreds of people signed up that we like reached out to individually and we're like, you know, what is important to you about like this like fight like what's your like self interests for like climate justice and like building that when we announced we're able to get like a lot more people signed up because like just seeing the numbers and feeling more safe for something like like a walk out. I think was really what built it. And then some of our demands. So for the walk out our demands were like true zero by 2020 or not 2020 sorry that happened already true zero by 2030, and also investing in communities of color first. So with the climate pledge we did win like a part of that which was they committed to zero by 2040. And I don't know if you've seen the climate pledge in the news but they have like other companies signing on to it which I think is like good but there's still no justice lens and 2040 is still like not soon enough just like based off the science of you know about the climate crisis. So kind of our next steps is like we're working on the resolution that I mentioned again around environmental justice now to try and get like you know push for Amazon to make commitments about their environmentally racist impact. So that's kind of like how we got to walk out how does it affect our work now. I hope that was helpful. Thanks Lexi. So, for the next question. I think either or both of you could take this. Keith, who asks Keith from you a w 2065 who asks, what could it look like to escalate from Union resolutions and demonstrations to worker actions that use our power over production to pressure bosses and government into climate action. Well, let's see that's a that's a very good question. And I think the demonstrations thing actually hasn't been played out very much because you don't see a lot of demonstrations of workers on climate issues do you. I think it would be really interesting if people in their workplaces had did it did a rally at a work site at a job site over particular climate issue, just like the folks at Amazon did. If multiple workplaces would make this an issue and do public displays, I think that would be huge building block, because, you know, it's interesting that that a major employer without a representation union would have a walk out because of the activists of these folks, whereas the traditional unions it's, you know, I hope folks can bring up some examples but it's a very rare thing to do that on a climate issue. So, I would say worker power would start with educating workforce and sort of replicating what the Amazon workers would do I would call that as a, you know, a very good basic stepping stepping stone initial point to work on. Yeah, I think I love that and I think bringing up just kind of like the in place, like, or like in person stuff I know we've been, at least for tech workers we've been working remotely for the past year. And so it's kind of limited some of our, like, you know, things that we can do that we could do previously like other things that we did do leading up to the walkout is that we would like do like our work together and like the lobby of a building and just have a sign up that was like, oh we're like walking out for climate justice like ask us questions. And like, we just got a lot of people like really interested just like passing through that we're like coworkers that we might not have reached and then people, you know came up to us and asked questions so I definitely think you know being what you can do and being, you know, just like trying different things. That's super. And we have another question from Aiden McNally, who says, Thanks to you both. And for the great examples. Have there been any discussions about incorporating climate demands into bargaining. I think this question should probably go to you David. I was trying to remember what was in our bargaining demands from our last contract. But one of the things that our union has tried to do is, is what's called bargaining for the common good, where you ask for things that will benefit local communities, things that go beyond the workforce. And this would certainly be one of those kinds of issues. Certainly there's a lot of other industries teachers and nurses are come to mind really quickly as unions that have the potential and have successfully done bargaining for the common good, you know, for on behalf of students are on behalf of their patients. And also service. We have tried that we, we have, we have wanted to expand postal services to a postal banking is actually been a big issue that our union has promoted that I mean, sort of incidentally we provide, we would provide jobs and work works, you know job security for our workforce, but postal banking, if you actually look at it would help folks by giving them alternatives to predatory lenders, payday lending, and also give banking, give inexpensive banking services to folks who live in banking deserts and areas where banks have closed their branches don't find it profitable that sort of thing. So we, we do believe in bargaining for the common good. I don't remember any climate change demands in our last contract, our new contract is coming up in our negotiations starting very soon. So I would also be interested in seeing if we have something that's climate change related. Thanks so much, David. Lexie I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add to this question or not. I mean, as far as like have there been discussions. Not too sure but should there be like, I think 100% we've definitely like worked with like co workers in warehouses like in like San Bernardino for example and just like hearing stories about like the pollution that they face and like their kids like having asthma or like the park being next to like a major really hard and stuff like that like I definitely think like, these are things people care about and would be really like in their self interest and really motivated and energized to work towards. So, I have a question related to the question of worker power, which is, and I think this applies to both the all but especially to the work that Amazon employees for climate justice is doing. Since you're working in a, in a non union context. How is working on climate justice helped you to build an idea of workers working together as a body of labor action, rather than a group, just a group of interested people, working on an issue that you want to all be interested in. Like what makes climate justice a labor issue for the folks that are involved and has there been anything in the process of working on it together that has led people to become more invested in this. And I think also David if you wanted to answer this in a union context I think that also could apply but I was particularly interested in it from a non union context. So that's a really interesting question that I'll have to think about. But I guess, things that that does make me think of is that like for you know the tech workers space where they're like aren't unions right now. I think it's just really been like transformative for workers to like engage in like the struggle of organizing for example and like where the target is Amazon right like it's not just like people thinking about like sustainability in the United States it's the impact that like the company that we're working at is making and so I think that's like the kind of important piece because like so many people, especially from our campaign now that we've heard from, like, are from places that are already experiencing this is like, I mean, for example, like, I'm Indonesian I have family in Bikasi, which is outside of Jakarta. And like, there's already like floods like regularly and like I don't know if people have heard but like Indonesia's moving the capital from Jakarta to East Amazon, which is like safe from flooding but like so many people like have stories like that where they see like either family like impacted by like climate change already. And so I think like engaging people in that struggle and then knowing that Amazon has such a huge impact. And that like as workers like we have the power to move Amazon and to check that like huge power, I think is really like, you know, been transformative for people and seeing like the power of like collective action and like worker organizing and stuff like that. Yeah, was that was that interesting. So yeah, just a reminder to everyone that you can submit questions through the Q&A. We do have one more question through that. This is from Eric Meyer, who asks about the Climate Union Jobs Act. What unions are, what are unions doing to pass it and save thousands of union jobs and a quarter of Illinois clean electricity. I'm not very familiar with that legislation, but I thought I'd open it up to both of you in case you are. Well, I am not familiar with that legislation and you know legislation is a funny thing because the Postal Service is affected by a lot of legislation because we're federal employees right and our union tries to get people involved in that. It's interesting because it's an interesting question because things are so far away in Washington DC and motivating individuals in such an atomized act, you know, call your representative call your senator and people do that I do that right. But it's not quite collective action in the way that maybe builds sort of sort of a sense of solidarity. And, you know, on the other hand, legislation is really important right now and having had a climate denier president and now having a president who is certainly saying the right things and looking more like a green more of a green sense and we had thought he would be perhaps before the selection. I think that if we're going to get some legislation passed that's pro union and environmentally friendly, we've got kind of a two year window to work with. And it's important to get that stuff done. So the legislative arena is pretty important. It's sort of strange that there's a dichotomy between the legislative arena and the arena of workers power right and even though, you know, both have their own place, their own role to play in this whole dynamic. Thanks David. And we have another question. This is from Adam Schills, who says David Britain has postal banking. My first account was a post office savings account. And Lexi on the walk out. Can you please talk about the nuts and bolts how long was the walk out. How many people participated. What did workers do during the walk out. Thanks, Adam. Should I start for this one. Yep. Cool. Yeah, how long was the walk out. Nice. So our walk out was in conjunction conjunction with the global climate strike, which was like a youth led sort of movement, especially by like sunrise, for example. And so what we did is that like we met in kind of like the center of our like Amazon campus like HQ. Marched from there to like meet the youth marchers because they were also doing like a walk on strike with like Fridays for the future. And then we all walked marched down to like city hall. So how many people participated I think it's like somewhere on the magnitude of like 3000 I think in Seattle though we had like 2000 plus people. What did workers do during the walk out so we had like a rally first, where he had like people speaking about like their stories and like why this is important. We did some like, you know, chanting. We had like signs for people to hold of course, I think it was really fun just saying like engineers like do champs and stuff like that. And yeah, I guess how long was a walk out. I think the march was probably a mile from like the spheres in Seattle, down to like Seattle city hall, and probably about like halfway along that March we met with like the youth movement at like an intersection and continued marching with them. Yeah, and then oh and then there was another rally at City Hall. David I don't know if you wanted to comment on postal banking. Postal banking is good. But we actually used to have postal banking in this country back. If you recall in the 1930s if you know your history during the depression the banks failed people didn't trust the banks to the post office was a bank we didn't have postal banking in the United States people don't know that okay. And in 1966 I think during the 60s, the banks the commercial banks got together and persuaded the, the government to persuade Congress to revoke postal banking so we, they took away postal banking because that was, you know, a low price competitor. So we have a history of postal banking and that we hope to to bring back just to comment on the climate strike issue. So I'm a postal worker it's illegal for me to strike even though postal workers founded our union with the giant with the largest wildcat strike in American labor history in 1970. I don't know that our union founded on an illegal strike. Having said that, it would be very difficult these days to persuade people to to strike at the post office and I wouldn't want to do that. However, there are people who better place to do that. And I think it'd be really interesting, particularly in areas like in California which have been so seriously affected by wild wildfires and evacuation of summer after summer. In those areas or if you're in a profession, maybe teachers can do something like this with their students. If I would really like to see labor unions participate locally in climate strikes, even if it's just only in a symbolic way to say that you know labor and working unions are part of this concern about about, you know, climate change. It's a very serious issue that's going to affect us all. And I think, you know, the hard work of educating people as to how important this is could be leading up to this or it can be sort of assisted by people The unions have a contingent of climate strike. Maybe we're not asking you to leave your job, but this is why we're doing it. We're out here, at least symbolically representing you. Of course, you know, obviously be better if you could, if you could, if you're in a position to have a walk out. And, you know, that would sort of elevate the level of publicity and consciousness raising you could do. Thanks, David. Thanks. So we have another question. This is from Julia McCrae, who says, I sometimes think we should be really radical and try to bargain some climate provisions and forgo wage raise requests. It is an emergency. Also really aren't raises part of the capitalist system constant growth. If you'd like to reflect on that I would be interested to hear it. David would you like to go first. Raises are part of the capitalist system, but they're, you know, they're an amelior tour. They're a positive part, at least for our members. So I don't think that our members would want to want to forgo raises. You know, there's the philosophy America as dictated by our fire capitalist employers is to consume more stuff, you know, and the postal service is part of the transport mechanism for people to consume more stuff. People are ordering a lot of stuff online. It's part of our business. And I think it's part of our maybe responsibility to try and figure out how to make that that the actual operations of it more environmentally friendly, you know, and go beyond our sort of employers platitudes. Our employer is basically interested, nothing but the bottom line, you know, they, they ordered the gasoline power delivery vehicles because it's cheaper. Right. So we need to be able to push beyond the, you know, and it's going to be difficult because business employers are all about the money. Right. So as far as for going wage raises in favor of environmental concerns, you know, it's, it's, I don't think we have to do that or we should we should settle for that. You know, we want better, better things for the workers. We also better things for workers includes, you know, better environment for our families. And I think the more that that unions or workers can place these kind of demands in their collective bargaining with their employer puts pressure from them on that side. And if you publicize, you know, if you're burning for the common good, especially in the environment, you'll get a lot of sympathy from from people in the public who are also aware, you know, and I think it's a very pro union movement. So if you move to bargain against climate change against your employer, because your employers don't care about climate change, all they care about is the bottom line. Yeah, I love everything David just said, I think especially like a company like Amazon, like, they, we can, we should be able to get it all right and we should ask them to give us all of it. What I had was, have there been any examples from your own industries, or outside of them internationally that you found particularly inspiring. Have you connected like David have you connected with postal workers. I know they're in the chat. Someone had mentioned the Canadian postal workers or Lexi of you connected with Amazon workers outside the United States working on climate change issues. Well, I'd say in the past, we have our union locally here in Seattle, we used to meet with the regional Canadian postal workers union and have had joint educational sessions we call them solidarity meetings. We met well for about 10 years and then leadership change and we stopped doing that. The Canadian postal workers union is very progressive union. They have some very good ideas, including, let's see, I believe community power is one of them and I was mentioned in the chat and I'm much familiar with that I've met some of the postal workers at the labor knows conferences. But I do think that that there's definitely opportunities for our employers to improve in in some ways that maybe people have people haven't thought of the postal service actually has solar panels on their processing facility in Los Angeles which they point to as a great example, and they're doing a couple more pilot projects elsewhere. Community power is an idea I'm not sure exactly what the shape of it is in Canada, but in the United States. There's so many postal buildings that could have solar panels that could create power to mitigate local power draws that they do to produce their own power even either to to run electric vehicles out of their own facility, or just to create power for the community. And so that's an idea that I think can be expanded on because you know where does the power come from is really important. If we have electric vehicles but it's all coal powered electricity, that's not going to be a huge help right. So the process of transforming our, our electric sources is kind of a different question from what we're talking about. But, you know, when you look at the fact that our buildings can create electricity through solar power. So those things can become connected. Yeah, I think as far as our group we've been really focused on like HQ and Seattle and like, like American workers, especially like we're connected with other like warehouse workers that are organizing and other companies. But I definitely think like that is so needed like international solidarity because like, like I was talking about with like sacrifice sense in the United States, and like black and Latin X communities like that is happening worldwide. So, yeah, I think the need is definitely there and we could do more on it. And I would add that we have a very large immigrant workforce as a postal service and a lot of them are in touch with their family back home or visit back home. And so, you know, climate change had a really big impact in many parts of the world. And to the extent that people see that, you know, well, we're in a wealthy nation, we're trying to, you know, we have a lot of resilience because we have a lot of resources. But if you look at other countries, you know, where our members have family, and these countries aren't doing this as well, or getting hit even worse. I think those are folks who are much more open to listening to the seriousness of climate change and why that's an issue for them and their union, as opposed to just some public policy issues they can ignore. Yeah, I think that that's a really great point like there's a lot of visa workers and in the Amazon like tech space and so like lots of people have, you know, family and other countries and so like, yeah. So I haven't been really able to follow the chat, you know, I'm sort of following the flow of discussion but I'd be really interested in hearing if some of the folks attending the workshop had something they'd like to share in terms of along the lines of our discussion, you know, things that would be of interest in the ways they've been they've had successes or tried to approach issues. You know, if we could hear back from you that'd be great. So I'm also seeing a comment from Charlie and chat I'd love to talk about it if that's cool. Sure. Go for it. Yeah. I think so our group definitely didn't invent race based caucusing I think this is like a racial equity tool that has been developed by others and like ease and so I think like our group we've seen success with it people like self identifying to caucuses so we're not like necessarily like forcing people to like participate in them and I think there's also definitely room to grow I think your point about like people of color being like a really umbrella term like I totally agree. In Indonesia and I think like a lot of the conversation recently about around like stop Asian hate I think isn't like super nuanced because like the Asian Americans is like also a super diverse group of people. And so I think like what our group is done like I think these things aren't like set in stone I think they can definitely change. We've done like Jewish and non Jewish caucusing before and seen success with it. And I think the like main thing is just that like not addressing racism is just going to make the issues worse and so I think we found that race based caucusing has been really useful and being able to like back the leadership of people of color. Like to center voices of people who are like more affected and also kind of like build relationships and work on our own biases so I definitely suggest you know looking into it seeing if it's like good for your organization I think we've seen a lot of success with it and I think most people who have participated, would it, you know, come away with the sort of take here about like segregation, I think it's been really transformative for everyone's thinking in this space. Thanks Lexie. That's really helpful. So in response to David's question about folks who brought stuff up in the chat. Julia McCrae said, we also tried to bargain transfers between school districts to cut down on commuting. We called it a green lateral transfer. The thought of two of second. I think it says two great for teachers passing each other on the commute every day for 30 years when they could just switch jobs and save all that fuel and prevent all that pollution was interesting to us. The problem was different districts are different employers, although we bargain provincially we can, we'll try again. Just going through the chat looking for any other comments that folks have made on their own situations. Rebecca cage had mentioned the Canadian Union of postal workers has a just transition campaign called delivering community power. David I believe you discussed this earlier. It's a pretty amazing way of reimagining how postal work can drive meaningful climate solutions. And there's a link in the chat for folks who are interested in learning more. And then Julia also said, we're doing an ongoing project with our partners and teacher unions and Honduras. They're designing curricula to help kids understand why so many people are emigrating climate change that's devastating the economy etc so that kids can understand their analysis of what is happening to them. They are then more informed politically. This is development of curriculum materials that address climate change in a really interesting way we are proud to support that work in solidarity. And then finally we have a comment from Felix who said I was pretty interested in what you were talking about David regarding strengths and weaknesses of using resolutions in our locals. The way that we use resolutions and surveys seem like a way to push elected union leadership to have a conversation about the topic even more than a resolution, but also hard to know where to escalate from after a petition or a resolution actually, if you want to shift real policy. So I don't know if David or Lexi you want to respond to any of those or all of them. That's a great, great comment by Felix and people in different workplaces in different situations. You have to kind of get a feel for how things work. Petitions are great ideas, surveys are great idea. You know, you can use those to push your union leadership, or the union leadership can use that to raise a conversation, you know, depending on where you are situated in the union. So pass resolutions can be great or resolution can be totally meaningless like the labor council has lots of great resolutions how many get implemented, you know what kind of muscle do you put behind them. I mean do you do anything about them that's. Is there an actionable component. So, that's very important. So assessing your assessing where you are is good. And yes, we'd like to see lots of unions pass resolutions on against climate change, but recognizing that even though it might even be difficult to do that where you are right, but having done that what have you done, right, you've gone on record. You got to keep going after that it's it's just a step. Right it's not actually accomplishing anything until you, you know, do something concrete with it, which is certainly possible and it's certainly good for a step, but it's, it's a very good comment that that it's just one tactic you can use, along with surveys, depending on, you know, where you're situated and what your workplace is about. But they're all good for getting discussion started if you can get as many people part of that process, you're exposing the issue you make and think about it making talk, make you make them talk about it. You actually may not win the first time you bring an issue up. But I've seen my union many times resolutions come up people aren't used to the idea they don't pass the first time. The next convention, it becomes accepted it passes with very little debate because people, you know, have come to understand the point you're trying to make to them. So a good comment about that. And I also liked the comment about the, the teachers in the different school districts because we have similar, you know, it's sort of bureaucratic reasons why to post employees can't like transfer here and there. And what I like about you get, you get very few issues where it's a wing wing and all around if you can change it. It helps the employer it helps the employees. It's good for the environment how many of those are there should be easy right except it's not because we have these, we have districts we have burn units we have installations all these structures. And so it takes some pushing, but the fact that directly affects the members, you know, people drive incredible amounts of time of distance for good union jobs. Right. And especially the way our cities are, they're more expensive. Seattle very expensive people drive an hour and a half to get to a postal job or union job. Maybe I'll stop. Thanks, David. And thanks to the dog as well. Lexi did you want to add anything. I think just to echo what David was saying I think like from the resolution that's like the start of the work you know it's like then it's like really building and like talking to coworkers. And like that's, that's where the power comes in I feel. So yeah just like the value of like relational organizing and just like talking to people one on one, especially in like the tech space like people are really siloed and don't really have too much communication with each other so like building those relationships has been really like important. And I think to like our success. So it looks like we have another question. This is from Noreen Buckley, who says any thoughts of climate change affecting the building trades, or how it is an opportunity for minorities particularly women's entrance into union jobs. And I can actually comment on this a little bit, because a cover climate change for labor notes. One of the things that's been really hopeful in the last few weeks even are the number of folks whether it's building trades, people who have expressed an openness to offshore wind projects, and those projects kind of being a little bit more open to project agreements that are guaranteeing or encouraging union jobs, union benefits, union wages, or although they're not a building trade, the mine workers recently expressed an openness to climate change infrastructure projects from the federal government. And so, I think we're seeing the beginning of a real shift coming from some of the last holdouts in the labor movement on the issue of climate change I don't want to overstate it, because obviously there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of people's livelihoods and jobs are at stake. And that's something that's important to keep in mind, even as we try to address the climate change issue. And yeah, but I just wanted to point to that. And I don't know if David or Lexi wanted to comment further on that question or on the question of how climate change provides an entrance point for women. Or other disempowered groups to enter into union jobs. I think the whole concept of having a just transition, you know, from one set of workplace technologies or ways of operating to a more, more environmentally friendly one. But then having it not harm either workers or workers who are in particularly disadvantaged situations because of their gender, their immigration status, their race, or the communities that they that are affected by your services. I think the concept of just transition is very important because the environmental movement for a long time has has functioned I guess from early on it was seen as sort of a province of sort of white middle class liberal sort of privilege and not taking other communities into account. Hopefully we've moved to a place where people recognize that and that, you know, that the effects on workers and communities of color and people in the job market are are all carefully considered when we're taking environmental action and so we're trying to crisis and crisis is, you know crisis can be used by the by the big employers to change things in their direction, but a crisis can also be an opportunity, you know, for us to push the other direction we're going to time to change and so I think we're in a very good time to make our concerns heard on these issues, you know, the concept is a great one. So, I think we have a lot of hopeful, hopeful things to look forward to in all this discussion. But someone topic that's come up in the chat. That's really interesting. Coming off of the discussion of resolutions is Julian McRae suggested that you could pass a resolution that funds a position in the Union for climate change action advocate or the establishment of committees with paid time to address the issue and then Linda Ray suggested that SCIU here in Northern California as a climate justice committee that doesn't have released time for members, but it does have some staff time support. And that both the Alameda and San Francisco Labor Councils have climate justice committees and have participated as labor contingents and marches in 2019. So that's some additional stuff that came from the discussion on resolutions. But climate change committee is a great idea. You know, because you're getting, I mean, you've got a group of people with a purpose and it's one purpose, right, and you can bring people in who want to work on this. Having a paid position can cut both ways because, you know, I just see the way that unions operate if somebody can run for office and get a paid position. I mean, I'm a full time postal worker and a part time union officer so maybe I'm just a little have a particular viewpoint on this thing, but I would rather see a committee of people rather than one person because it's so easy to say, that's that one person's job, rather than, you know, all of us, but you know, it would be interesting interesting to see how that worked in practice somebody who is really in passion, you know, passionate about that could do a great job in a position like that. And Linda wanted us to note that the SCIU local shoes referring to as SCIU 1021. And Julia also added that the Eco Justice Committee where she is has produced many posters for classrooms and lots of teachers post them and it creates a brand for the union as well which is a really interesting idea. So we are nearing the end of our program for the day. So I just want to put a final call for any questions that anyone has you can put them in the chat you can put them in the Q&A. See anything that you have to say. And while you're doing that I'll give David and Lexi a few minutes to say anything else that they want to say at the close of the discussion. And we'll go from there. Please. Go ahead. Okay. Yeah, so, you know, this pandemic has kind of disrupted everything in the front pages news is all about the pandemic and climate change has kind of taken a back seat. But, you know, it's going to keep, unfortunately, it's going to be back on the front pages pretty soon. You know, I'm going down to help my sister in California clear out where she lives because she's thinking of moving just because she's been evacuated so many times because the forest fires in Oregon nearby. We had, you know, a whole town wiped out by forest fires last year. And, you know, my kind of morbid joke around here is we used to have four seeds and now we have five we have fire season which is literally true. And all these N95 masks that, you know, so useful during the pandemic, we're going to be wearing them because it's summertime and we've got fires from March to October. So it's, it's an issue that people are trying to deny and people who live in, you know, people in my own union on Facebook groups we see the discussion right there, but it's going to get harder and harder to deny. And, you know, it may seem like it's difficult to get this issue some serious attention in your union or in your local or, you know, you're in your arena, but the impetus for it is there. I think more people will listen to you now having seen what's going on in just locally, then your leadership might actually estimate right the people will respond if you're, if you're trying to draw these connections. You know, this is a really important time to be doing this kind of work. Yeah, I totally echo what David said I think like a lot of things that people brought up in chat have been really interesting and so it's giving me a lot to think about coming out of this and I think just like workers having the power to press to pressure like these corporations to move on climate change and like knowing that like workers who are already being affected by this like are way closer to the solutions. And so like listening to those workers is so important, like for example, Amazon's like electrifying some of their delivery fleet. But as we've heard from our like coworkers and warehouses like the majority of the pollution is from diesel trucks and so like if Amazon doesn't actually change that and like we're not really seeing that like, you know, as big of a movement as like Amazon wants to like sell us and their PR. And so I just encourage everyone to, you know, talk about climate justice I think it's been really energizing to talk to coworkers, talk about environmental racism people have so many stories of like family and friends who like are there and are already and like we've seen it be really transformative to, you know, engage people on like sort of self interest issues based organizing and really bring them into the labor movement and like a way that I think maybe they didn't have that touch zone before. So yeah, thank you everyone. Thanks, both of you. I think it's been a really great conversation today and it's very much thanks to both of you. We've had on David yows the vice president of the Seattle local from APWU and Lexi from Amazon employees for climate justice. Thank you to everyone who joined us today. Please stay tuned for other events in labor notes, April month of trouble making. We still have a few more to go before the end of the month. We're really looking forward to seeing you there. Please stay tuned for climate related news and other labor news and union news on labor notes. That's labor notes.org and have a wonderful rest of the weekend to everyone. I hope you have a great day. Thanks so much for joining us.