A2. Green Unionism

Farmworkers and allies march through Palm Beach in 2023, celebrating the Fair Food Program and calling attention to extreme human rights abuse that continues to occur outside the FFP, including modern-day slavery and sexual violence. The center-piece of the march was a papier-mâché globe depicting the world of protections inside the FFP, and the dark and opaque world of violence and abuse beyond the reach of the FFP. Lawsuit alleges extreme abuse, yet again, on fields beyond the Fair Food Program’s Presidential Medal-winning protections;  How much longer will Fair Food Program holdouts Kroger and Publix continue to turn a blind eye, refuse to join only social responsibility program proven to end abuse?

For over a decade, Kroger and Publix, two of the largest grocery chains in the United States, have refused to join the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program, insisting — year after year, trafficking case after trafficking case — that their current vendor codes of conduct and occasional audits are sufficient to prevent the risk of extreme human rights abuses in their respective supply chains. 

Meanwhile, just weeks ago, farmworkers in North Carolina filed a class action lawsuit against their employer, alleging a series of extraordinary human rights violations, including wage theft, threats, confiscation of passports, predatory recruitment fees, and the failure to provide bathrooms, drinking water, or care when workers suffered debilitating heat stress. The lawsuit was filed under the Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 1581 et seq. (TVPRA), and the North Carolina Human Trafficking Law, N.C. Gen. Stat. § 14-43.18 et seq.

Following the publication of the lawsuit, and using publicly available information, the CIW has found that Kroger and Publix buy produce from the company where the plaintiffs in the lawsuit say that they worked, Jackson Farming Company.

We will share those details below. First, however, we wanted to provide some context to understand just how unconscionable the grocery giants’ ongoing refusal is — especially given the leadership of companies like Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s, Walmart, Giant, Stop & Shop, and Fresh Market, all Fair Food Program Participating grocers that have put the power of their purchasing orders behind the protection of workers in their supply chains for years.

A brief history of two Fair Food Program holdouts

This case marks the fourth time in five years that Kroger has been linked to allegations of labor trafficking and extreme abuse in the fields. In 2021, an investigation from the LA Times revealed Kroger to be buying tomatoes from a Mexican farm subject to a Withhold Release Order (WRO) from the U.S. Government due to indications of forced labor, and in early 2023, the Department of Labor publicly outed Kroger as a buyer of watermelons harvested by modern-day slaves. Shortly thereafter, Kroger was linked to Maria Patricio, one of the lead defendants convicted in the “Blooming Onion” human trafficking ring. The CIW uncovered the ring, the largest modern-day slavery operation in US history, and the connection to Kroger was laid out in an investigative report in the journal The Lever.

As the London-based Business and Human Rights Resource Centre put it after the Blooming Onion case was connected to Kroger in 2024:

… The question before Kroger — its executive leadership, its board of directors, and its shareholders — is simple: Is having a case of modern-day slavery almost annually over the last 4 years an acceptable level of risk for Kroger, as long as the produce continues to arrive on shelves at the right time, in the right quality, and at the right price?  

If the answer to that question is yes, then Kroger needs to break its silence and own the outrageous failure of its social responsibility approach so consumers can know the company’s true thinking when it comes to the human rights of the men and women who pick its produce.

But if not, then Kroger needs to join the Fair Food Program — the universally-recognized gold standard for preventing forced labor and protecting fundamental human rights in corporate supply chains today — without further delay…

As for Publix, its refusal to join the FFP in the face of nearly annual modern-day slavery prosecutions in Florida’s fields goes even further back. In December of 2010 — shortly after the Fair Food Program was launched at an historic press conference announcing the new partnership between the CIW and the Florida Tomato Growers Exchange — Publix spokesperson Dwaine Stevens told The Bulletin, an Alabama newspaper, when asked if Publix had any intention of joining the promising new initiative:

“We don’t have any plans to sit down with the CIW,” Publix’s Media and Community Relations Manager Dwaine Stevens said, also citing that the company sells around 36,000 products in the stores and it cannot get involved with each product’s labor issues. “If there are some atrocities going on, it’s not our business. Maybe it’s something the government should get involved with.”

That statement — “If there are some atrocities going on, it’s not our business” — didn’t sit well with the growing consumer movement supporting the CIW’s Campaign for Fair Food at the time. Rabbi Bruce Diamond penned a powerful call to action for people of all faiths in the Fort Myers News Press in light of Publix’s cruel indifference, accompanied by a guest editorial cartoon drawn by Casey N. Kindle, a Southwest Florida Fair Food activist:

Publix’s stone wall starting to crumble

Jon Esformes, operating partner of the family-owned Pacific Tomato Growers — one of the largest growers in the nation — quoted Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s famous dictum, “In a free society, few are guilty, but all are responsible,” when he announced an agreement with the 4,000-member Coalition of Immokalee Workers to implement a penny-a-pound raise for the workers and to improve their working conditions. (“Tomato grower, harvesters strike historic accord,” Oct. 14)…

… [Stevens’ statement is] a far cry from the idea that “in a free society, few are guilty, but all are responsible,” and the principle of fairness to working people that is shared by all the world’s great religions…

For sure, a coalition of subsistence workers taking on America’s largest privately owned supermarket chain seems a daunting if not impossible battle.

But men and women of faith know that when are you on the side of the angels, nothing is impossible!

Today, 15 years later, the Fair Food Program has built an unrivaled track record — not only remedying abuses from sexual harassment to forced labor, but preventing them altogether. In light of that success, the continued refusal of retail giants like Kroger and Publix to use their purchasing power to protect farmworkers in their own supply chains is simply unacceptable.

Details of the class action lawsuit Screenshot from the initial complaint, with highlights

The working conditions at the Jackson Farming Company farm as described in the court documents are both deeply troubling and all too common outside the protections of the Fair Food Program. Below is an excerpt from the class action lawsuit, which was filed on April 17:

“Plaintiff and his co-workers worked at Jackson’s Farming Company of Autryville pursuant to temporary foreign worker visas, called H-2A visas. First-time employees were charged an illegal recruitment fee to be put on the list to work for Defendants Alvino Avilez and Avilez & Sons Harvesting, LLC (“Avilez Defendants”), and all employees were charged fees throughout their travel to the U.S. Once the employees arrived in North Carolina, the Avilez Defendants confiscated their passports and Social Security cards with the explicit goal of keeping them from leaving their employment. Rodriguez Luna and his co-workers also experienced a number of wage violations while working in North Carolina. 

Rodríguez Luna and his co-workers were not timely reimbursed for the costs of their visas, travel to and from North Carolina, or associated costs, as required by the H-2A visa program. Defendants did not pay workers at the promised H-2A wage rate, and they created false payroll records purporting to show that the workers were properly paid. The Avilez Defendants also deducted money from the workers’ pay for their Social Security cards. When Plaintiff Rodríguez Luna suffered a work-related injury, Defendants sent him back to Mexico and did not give him his final paycheck.”

Farmworkers with the class action lawsuit further allege that the farm labor contractor being sued also threatened workers if they tried to leave before their contract ended.

The lawsuit is filed on behalf of all farmworkers who were brought to the U.S. by one or more of the Avilez Defendants to perform agricultural work at Jackson Farming Company under H-2A contracts, who performed work during the ten-year period immediately preceding the date on which this action was filed. This could mean well over 100 farmworkers were subjected to comparable conditions to those alleged in the initial complaint, since the Avilez defendants have handled the H-2A petitions for Rodney Jackson, President of Jackson Farming Company, since 2019, with each petition requesting dozens of seasonal workers to harvest a variety of crops.

The farm itself is no stranger to allegations of abuse. Its founding President, Brent Jackson, weathered multiple lawsuits from farmworkers, including one from 2003 where a farmworker suffered a heat stroke so severe that it left him in a permanent “vegetative state.” In the present day, 22 years later, conditions do not appear to have significantly improved on the farm. According to the newest complaint, one farmworker “fell ill while working due to the heat. Because of this he was sent back to Mexico. Other workers who were impacted by the heat were sent to rest in a bus in the field that lacked air conditioning. Those workers were not paid for the rest of the day.” 

Kroger and Publix linked to Jackson Farming Company 

Kroger, through its regional subsidiary Harris Teeter, has itself stated that customers looking to buy produce from Jackson Farming Company can find it on their shelves today. Harris Teeter’s own website indicates they source sweet potatoes, cantaloupe, strawberries, broccoli, and melon for Jackson Farming Company. Meanwhile, the plaintiff in the civil suit alleges he was made to harvest melons, sweet potatoes, and broccoli on both his 2024 and 2025 H-2A contracts. 

Further, a North Carolina Department of Agriculture post from 2020 profiles Jackson Farming Company and states that consumers can find their crops in Harris Teeter and Publix. Because the civil suit’s time span includes those farmworkers with Jackson Farming Company during the 2020 harvest season up until 2025, there is a risk that crops harvested under conditions of extreme abuse have, for at least half a decade, been bought by both Kroger and Publix, and sold to unsuspecting customers.

At the same time, Brent Jackson — founding president of the company and a North Carolina state senator — sponsored legislation that would have weakened workers’ ability to sue for retaliation.

By contrast, farms participating in the Fair Food Program operate under what The New York Times has described as the country’s “best workplace-monitoring program,” where strong anti-retaliation protections are rigorously enforced and workers themselves serve as frontline monitors of their own rights.

Additionally, on the website for Publix, customers can currently buy George Foods-branded petite microwavable sweet potatoes. George Foods is one of the brands of sweet potatoes marketed by Jackson Farming Company. 

There is only one human rights enforcement program in agriculture that is proven to end forced labor, coercion, and retaliation, and that mandates rigorous heat stress protections: the Fair Food Program. 

In light of these apparent connections to the class action lawsuit out of North Carolina’s fields, the question before Kroger and Publix is simple: How many more farmworkers in their supply chains must be subject to outrageous farm labor abuse before they join the Fair Food Program, the only human rights program proven to prevent it? 

The post Nurses Continue to Urge Congress to Pass a Fair Farm Bill appeared first on ANHE.

The post Protect Health: Oppose Rollbacks to Zero-Emission Vehicles appeared first on ANHE.

Towards a transformative response to the fossil fuel energy crisis

Photo: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:War_is_a_racket_u_know_-_it%27s_time_for_peace!.jpg

The US/Israeli war on Iran looks like it will be lengthy. Trump’s announcement of an indefinite ceasefire while maintaining an equally indefinite blockade indicates that

1. the US/Israel are not able to impose their terms because a ground invasion aimed at regime change would not be viable. The apocalyptic threat of bombing Iran back into the Stone Age would call forth counterstrokes from Iran and a political fallout too devastating to risk.
2. Nevertheless, the consequences of backing off now, even while declaring victory, would be a visible defeat that would be too damaging to their capacity to project power elsewhere.
3. Therefore there is likely to be a prolonged stalemate based on overlapping blockades of the Gulf. This will cause enormous environmental and economic damage globally, on top of what is already done; and it will manifest more strongly in the coming months, growing stronger the longer it goes on.

The only question is how severe this will be. This poses a series of overlapping crises and challenges that the climate, peace and labour movements have to face up to, have answers for and mobilise together to achieve.

Fossil Fuel supply/price crisis–

1. Increased prices for fossil fuels and their derivative products which will lead to increased prices across the board
2. Increased profits for fossil fuel companies
3. Increased short term viability for investment in fossil fuel extraction
4. Increased costs for everyone else for everything else that has to be transported
5. Shortages of some energy products (jet fuel, CO2) and food supply
6. Increased imperative to transition away from fossil fuel dependence to reduce costs and political leverage
7. Increased attractiveness of EVs and domestic solar panels for those that can afford them.

Responses

The response from the Right has been fast and hard and dressed grifting for fossil fuel companies and US global energy dominance up in the language of the common good.

1. Reduce taxes on fossil fuels (which in past experience benefits retailers not people having to fill up with them)
2. Reduce windfall taxes on FF companies, even as they are making gigantic windfall profits
3. Invest in new North Sea oil and gas, even though they know this will make no difference to costs, a tiny difference to supply, and will not halt the decline in jobs as the basin dries up; and/or put fracking back on the energy agenda, even though they know that the UK is geologically unsuitable for doing this viably
4. Relax mandates on car companies to transition to EVs and developers to build homes that aren’t expensive to heat or don’t use gas to do it
5. Push hard for more investment in nuclear power, which is the least flexible “back up” available, produces electricity at a cost greater than that of fossil fuels and renewables; and would take too long to build to have any impact at all.

This is all nonsense, but it is loudly and perpetually repeated by the Right and their associated media outlets in an attempt to drown out reality and paint anyone who recognises the reality of climate change and/or wants to put forward solutions that

1. Accelerate the transition and
2. Do it in a way that creates millions of jobs, is socially equitable – and therefore transformative

as “swivel eyed eco fanatics” from an “elite” determined to impose “eye watering costs” on ordinary people to deliver their “net zero obsession” (which, if you do the maths, would be £80 billion cheaper than the new investment in FFs that they have in mind). 

To combat this tsunami of misinformation and misdirection, the climate, social justice and labour movements need the most honest, clear and coordinated set of responses that we can put together, and all be proclaiming it with relentless positivity.

From the Greener Jobs Alliance, we’d like to propose four basic principles that we can all sign up to, within which we can collectively develop appropriate specific demands.

1. To stop the crisis we need to stop the war – so the government should give no support for it in any form and press for peace instead on the same lines as the Spanish government.
2. War profiteering is unacceptable and all windfall profits should be taxed at 100% to fund short term targeted measures like energy price caps to support people through the immediate crisis, and accelerate investment in the transition. Similarly, faced with a crisis on this scale, putting any additional investment into war preparation is, as well as wrong in its own right, a luxury we can’t afford. Freezing military expenditure at its current level and using the funds earmarked for increases to accelerate the energy transition, including restoring climate funding in overseas development, will be better for national security in all respects too.
3. The transition is the solution All possible measures should be taken to get off fossil fuel dependence and this can only effectively be done through collective measures, e.g. an accelerated effective insulation campaign requires properly funded local authority direct labour organisations with workers properly educated on the climate crisis as well as technical skills, targeting areas in fuel poverty as a social measure and not cutting corners as private sector micro companies all too often do. Similarly, even if the ban on new investment in North Sea FFs is lifted, it will have a marginal effect and won’t stop the erosion of jobs; so the solution has to be a planned retraining and redeployment alongside increased investment in accelerated deployment of renewable energy. This could most effectively be done through public ownership.
4. Crisis measures must be social justice measures. Rationing by price is inherently inequitable. ATM people who drive are managing by putting less fuel in their tanks when they “fill up”. This can only go so far. So, for example reduce FF demand (and therefore prices) by banning private jets, slashing public transport fares (even the Lib Dems have proposed a 10% cut and states from Tasmania to the Punjab have made it free) to encourage a shift. Pre-emptive limits on purchases of key food items in limited supply, to ensure equitable distribution of what there is.

This is not set in stone. It’s a catalyst to get a debate going that starts us all moving in the right direction and comes up with things that none of us have thought of yet.

So, in the next two weeks we’d like feedback on these principles and suggestions for specific proposals so we can pull them together into a public statement that could provide the basis for a campaign that can build up through the deepening of the crisis.

Online Thursday April 23 – 5.50 – 7.00 We’ll see you there! Join Us

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The post Towards a transformative response to the fossil fuel energy crisis first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.

By Jeremy Brecher,
Senior Strategic Advisor, LNS Co-Founder

Listen to the audio version >>

Radical, unanticipated developments in electrification, storage, distribution, and other technologies are transforming not only the way energy is produced but also the way it is used. Like the transformation in energy production, these advances in energy consumption are transforming economies and creating new opportunities to protect the climate and improve our lives.

Nissan LEAF charging at the Freedom Station in Houston, TX. This is an eVgo Network station with both Level 2 and DC fast chargers. Photo credit: evgonetwork (eVgo Network). Original image was trimmed and retouched (lighting and color tones) by User:Mariordo, Wikemedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.

In the previous commentary we examined the impact of the Greentech revolution on the production of energy. But energy production is only one side of the Greentech revolution. The other is providing that energy where it is needed when it is needed, shifting energy consumption from fossil fuels to electricity, and using that energy more efficiently so less of it is required. As the FT wrote in “The Reshaping of Energy Consumption,” “Just as important as the development of new wind and solar farms to generate electricity without carbon dioxide emissions” is “the overhauling of vehicles, heating systems, and factories.”

Energy Storage

After energy has been produced it often must be stored until it is needed. Enter the Greentech revolution in energy storage. Over the past 15 years the cost of energy storage has dropped 95%. In 2025, Chinese batteries appeared headed for a further 30% decline. In 2025, the world was expected to add eighty gigawatts of grid-scale storage, eight times as much as in 2021.

More change is at hand. For example, sodium-ion batteries are safer than lithium batteries and do not require destructive extraction of materials like lithium, cobalt, phosphorus, and copper. Materials for sodium batteries are far cheaper those for lithium batteries. BYD opened a sodium-ion battery factory in 2024, and is producing a large sodium-ion battery energy storage system (BESS) called MC Cube-T. Sodium-ion storage is likely to make it possible to replace fossil fuels with electricity in such until-now intractable areas as heavy trucks and long-distance shipping.

This is only one of several impending battery breakthroughs. For example, long duration energy storage is increasing today’s typical storage time of about 4 hours to many times as long. Google recently announced investment in long duration energy storage (LDES). “Through a new long-term partnership with Energy Dome, we plan to support multiple commercial projects globally to deploy their LDES technology.” Toyota has developed an all-solid-state battery that provides EVs with smaller, more durable batteries that charge in minutes and deliver longer ranges between charges.

Energy Distribution

Construction workers build the frame for a one-megawatt solar microgrid project at Fort Hunter Liggett, Calif., Dec. 22, 2011. Photo credit: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Sacramento District Licensing, Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain.

After energy has been produced it needs to get to where it is needed. Led by China, there is a revolution in long-distance power transmission. One ultrahigh-voltage Chinese power line stretches more than 2,000 miles from the sparsely populated far northwest to the populous, industrialized southeast — the equivalent of sending electricity from Idaho to New York City. This is one of 42 long-distance power lines, each able to carry more electricity than any utility transmission line in the United States. China’s transmission technology is far more efficient than others. And China plans systematically; it is now building the world’s first nationwide grid of ultrahigh-voltage power transmission lines. By 2050, China plans to have three times more ultrahigh-voltage routes in operation.

At the opposite end of the scale, microgrids are providing new ways of distributing energy locally. According to the Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a microgrid is a group of “interconnected loads and distributed energy resources that acts as a single controllable entity with respect to the grid.” It can connect and disconnect from the grid to operate in grid-connected or island mode. It can therefore keep a local grid running even when the wider grid fails. Microgrids allow coordination and synergism among small-scale, local energy infrastructure like generators, renewables, and batteries. That allows them to save costs, reduce the need for energy, and make money by selling excess electricity.

Microgrids are now being used in hospitals, universities, neighborhoods, and many other venues. In Petaluma, CA for example, the newly constructed 131-unit Meridian at Petaluma North Station affordable apartment complex includes a solar and energy storage microgrid. The net-zero project will generate and manage all its energy onsite. Its microgrid includes a 1-MW solar array consisting of rooftop-mounted panels and solar canopies in the parking lot. A 4.3 MWh battery is designed to support the complex for three to four days during a power outage. Parking spaces with bidirectional EV chargers directly wired into the microgrid will allow EVs to charge from the solar array — and provide electricity back to the building when needed.

Transportation

The largest shift so far from fossil fuel burning to electricity is the replacement of gas guzzlers with electric vehicles (EVs). Not only do EVs use electrons rather than gasoline; they use 2-4 times less energy than their fossil fuel counterparts. Sales of EVs have been rapidly growing globally, increasing by over 33 times, from 0.5 million (1% of all car sales) in 2015 to over 17 million (more than 20% of all car sales) in 2024. EVs now account for almost half of all car sales in China, 20% in Europe, and more than 10% in the USA. EV sales in Asia and Latin America increased by over 60% in 2024 to almost 600,000. Electric vehicles made up 80% of Norway’s new car sales last year. Electric car sales in 2025 were expected to exceed 20 million worldwide, more than a quarter of all cars sold.

EVs are only part of the Greentech transformation of transportation. Electrification and system reorganization have the potential to transform rail transportation: In the English town of Aldershot, solar collectors are directly delivering electricity to drive trains; the developer says, “If you are a railway, this is the cheapest electricity you can buy.” In China, 30,000 miles of high-speed rail lines run on electricity. Buses, subways, light rail, and other public transit can now be provided at far less than the cost of auto transportation due to electrification and technological improvements. Due to emerging battery technologies, ships and planes may be electrified at competitive cost. At the other end of the scale, electric bikes providing “micromobility” are already a rapidly expanding transportation niche. One recent example is a four-wheeled bike for individual and commercial cargo haulers.

Agriculture

Solar is growing in Alaska, ACEP is helping the industry and communities. Video credit: Alaska Center for Energy and Power | UAF

Agricultural techniques are turning farms from producers to reducers of greenhouse gases. For example, regenerative agriculture provides farming and grazing practices that withdraw carbon from the atmosphere by restoring degraded soil biodiversity. New technologies are allowing farmers to grow crops underneath solar panels. The New York Times recently featured an “agrivoltaics” installation in Houston, Alaska, adapted to the farm’s extreme northern location. “The rows of panels on the 45-acre site are set 50 feet apart, much wider than at lower latitudes, and they collect solar power on both front and back in order to capture the maximum amount of summer sunlight as the sun dances across the horizon all day and all night.” The electricity produced from such agrivoltaics can run farm equipment and be sold to provide an extra source of income for farmers; the food produced can help meet local food shortages.

As in so much Greentech, China is creating radical advances in agrivoltaics. For example, the Chinese company GCL says it has combined four new agrivoltaic technologies: Bifacial solar panels harvest sunlight from both sides, enabling them to assume a space-saving vertical position when needed. Tunable solar panels that enable more or less light to pass onto crops can be adjusted to a range of 15-40% light pass-through. Elevated racks can be raised to 9 feet with tracking capability to optimize the sun-collecting angle. Advanced system management integrates meteorological data, crop growth sensors, inverter analytics, and AI algorithms to optimize module tilt and irrigation schedules.

Greentech Unlimited

There are thousands of Greentech goods, services, and systems that have been introduced or are in development around the world that will increase efficiency and reduce GHG emissions – far too numerous and diverse to review here. For a knowledgeable review, see Mark Jacobson’s Still No Miracles Needed. A few of the most important additional sectors of Greentech advance:

• Climate-safe factories are now being built around the world. For example, Ford has opened a carbon neutral assembly plant in Cologne, Germany, to produce EVs for the European market. According to Ford, the plant uses “digital advancements that connect machines, vehicles and workers” including “self-learning machines, autonomous transport systems, and big data management.” New technologies are even reducing the carbon released in steelmaking, one of the most intense greenhouse gas producers on earth.
• Circular reuse and recycling include the upcycling of waste materials into new products, promoting a cycle of continuous use, and GHG-reducing waste management practices like composting. It can include air and water filtration systems, waste-to-energy technologies, and methods for safely disposing of or repurposing industrial waste.
• Public transit may well be the most cost-effective single way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
• Green construction is substituting low-carbon materials like hempcrete and recycled steel for more climate-destructive materials.
• Greentech building decarbonization is creating carbon-neutral buildings.It includes insulation, electrification, and on-site renewable energy. Improved heat pumps can produce three or more units of heat for every unit of electricity they use.
• Protecting and restoring ecosystems can rebuild degraded lands, preserve endangered species, and support sustainable agriculture practices.

These are only a few of the many examples of Greentech transformations of consumption. More are being implemented every day.

Infographic: Who has pledged an INDC so far, and what percentage of the world’s emissions are covered. Credit: Rosamund Pearce, Carbon Brief, based on EU data. Only UN parties have been included in the emissions total. Greenland is an autonomous territory of Denmark, not covered by the EU’s INDC. It is not a UN party. Taiwan is also not a UN party. Source: Carbonbrief.org

Reducing energy consumption can make an important contribution to the transition to climate-safe energy. For example, the IEA’s modelling of a world on track to meet the Paris agreement targets for GHG reduction shows final energy consumption falling by as much as 15 percent compared with current levels by 2035, even as GDP continues to grow. That’s because of electrification and other energy efficiency measures such as better insulation.

As shown in this and the previous commentary, Greentech production and consumption are now far more efficient and therefore far less costly and more competitive than fossil fuel-based systems. This Greentech revolution will have profound effects on the future of the US as well as the rest of the world.

Donald Trump and his MAGA allies are determined to reverse the Greentech revolution. Their success would mean catastrophe for the US economy and the American people. Conversely, the Greentech revolution has enormous potential benefits for the US economy and for the American people. Subsequent commentaries in this series will explore what the Greentech revolution means for the American people – and how we can take advantage of it.

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The post Greentech Revolution: Energy Consumption first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

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The post Latest Newsletter first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Carlos Torrealba currently is the Network and Formations Manager at Taproot Earth, where he’s helping build the Gulf South to Appalachia Formation, a powerful 17-state network of over 100 frontline organizations.

For the past decade, Carlos has been building the new while fighting the bad; from creating community-led disaster response systems to deepening and building labor and climate justice solidarity across local, regional, and national movements. His work leans heavily on not only building local alternatives but also linking them to regional, national and international movements of decolonization, anti-neoliberalism, and anti-imperialism. His political roots were shaped in undergrad while engaged in pipeline fights and Palestinian Solidarity work in Vermont. Carlos is also deeply engaged in Latin American solidarity and food sovereignty efforts. Outside movement work, Carlos enjoys travelling, early French Modernist Literature, and vinyl collecting.

The post May LNS Spotlight: Carlos Torrealba first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

What does a Black climate activist say when interviewed by someone who describes themselves as a “Redneck Gone Green”? Here’s how LNS executive director started his rap:

“I appreciate as a black Southerner the idea of starting with joy. In my old church tradition they’ll say, “Out of all the things I’ve been through, I still have joy.” And I think that joy and love are still the key attributes of what is to be done. This radical notion of love, love that calls you to a responsibility of taking care of yourself and the ones around you. The responsibility of this moment, of this political moment, this socioeconomic moment, this rise of authoritarianism. And if we don’t start practicing that love and moving our boots and moving our asses, then we just may be in the dystopian future that we fear.”

Watch Joshua’s “Same Boss, Same Enemy” interview on “Redneck Gone Green” here.

The post Same Boss, Same Enemy first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

Photo credit:Yasmin Gabriel, LNS Development Manager

My kids are climate justice leaders in our household, always looking for ways of reducing our carbon footprints. They see themselves as stewards of the planet and I am aware that it is crucial for us to alleviate disproportionate energy burdens and reduce exposure to environmental hazards. According to ScienceDirect.com, Black families emit 20% less CO2 than average households but we suffer higher energy costs and poorer health outcomes, making sustainable action a key strategy for health and financial equity.

As a family, we chose a solution that would reduce our financial obligations and carbon footprint. Over the winter break, I researched how to safely get around with two kids. We settled on a cargo bike, allowing me to transport multiple kids, pets, and plants, all at the same time. According to the Guardian, bike riding reduces your carbon emissions by 90%, compared with electric vans that reduce by one-third. We are able to demonstrate to our community what reducing a family’s carbon footprint actually could look like – choosing to ride a bike around town instead of driving.

I know the cargo bike saved us money, but what about the impact it has on our family joy? Our bike recently broke, devastating to me, but my 4-year-old daughter offered to ride her bike to school and my 8-year-old son offered to walk the 2 miles to school, so we could continue to spend time with each other and do our part for the planet. The impact on our family’s quality of life is immeasurable, and yet so clear! If you are interested in talking or learning more about cargo bike journeys, feel free to reach out to me via email at yasmin@labor4sustainability.org.

Happy working to ensure everyone has a livable wage on a livable planet,

The Gabriel Family

The post Stewards of the Planet first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

LNS invites you to a national webinar on May 5 at 4 PM ET, co-hosted by Taproot Earth and the Hotel & Gaming Trades Council (HTC), in partnership with U.S. Climate Action Network, Labor Network for Sustainability, and Just Transition Alliance.

As Climate Week NYC approaches, we’re deepening solidarity between the climate justice and labor movements. With the NYC hotel workers’ union contract set to expire this summer, this moment offers a powerful opportunity to align our values and actions. This session is designed for decision-makers and operations leads at climate organizations participating in Climate Week NYC. We’ll explore how to show up in solidarity and support workers in their fight for a fair contract.

Click here to register.

The post Solidarity in Action: Mobilizing Labor & Climate Justice at NYC Climate Week and Beyond first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

LNS and our partners were happy to have had a successful Transit Equity Week 2026. We are excited to continue growing our transit equity work and organizing riders and workers everywhere towards a just and sustainable future.

For a brief video report on Transit Equity Week 2026: https://www.instagram.com/reel/DWpBnPQiOA4/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA%3D%3D.

The post Transit Equity Rolls On first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

The Labor Network for Sustainability has joined many other organizations around the country to support the campaign to close the county-owned HERC (Hennepin Energy Recovery Center) incinerator in Minneapolis. Shutting down the incinerator, which burns toxic trash in the center of a Black and working-class community, has been the goal of a long-running local campaign. Shutting the incinerator was one of the demands of the first union-authorized strike on climate issues in the US by janitor members of Service Employees International Union Local 26.

In 2023, Hennepin County Commissioners unanimously approved a resolution to create a closure plan — but it does not actually require HERC to close. The Zero Burn Coalition, an alliance of environmental and labor groups, wants the board to hold a public vote this year to close the HERC by 2028. Local environmental justice advocates held a hunger strike calling on Hennepin County Commissioners to close their incinerator; at press time they had fasted for nearly two weeks.

Local labor organizations that are part of the campaign include:

• MAPE – Minnesota Association of Professional Employees
• MNA – Minnesota Nurses Association
• MFE – Minneapolis Federation of teachers
• SPFE – Saint Paul Federation of Teachers
• AFSCME – Local 2822
• AFSCME – Hennepin Healthcare Local 2474
• CTUL – Centro de Trabajadores Unidos en la Lucha

The post Hungering for Environmental Justice first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

More than 8 million people joined more than 3,300 organized events across the country on March 28 for No Kings Day to protest the Trump administration’s growing authoritarianism, attacks on immigrants, and war in the Middle East. It was the largest single-day protest in American history.

Major unions with millions of members including SEIU, AFT, and NEA supported the day of action, and local unions around the country played a major role in organizing local events. Endorsing the mobilization, Liz Shuler, President of the AFL-CIO, said:

Since Inauguration Day, the radical pages of Project 2025 and the fever dreams of America’s corporate billionaires have come to life with a relentless assault on America’s workers. The Trump administration has committed the single biggest act of union-busting in history, attacked good jobs across the country, launched a brutal assault on immigrants, ripped health care from millions, jeopardized the essential services that working families rely on and threatened our fundamental freedoms. But America’s labor unions have been leading in our courts, on Capitol Hill, and in our streets to fight back– and our movement will be there on No Kings Day to peacefully and powerfully say that our government doesn’t answer to a king. It answers to working people.

The post 8 Million People—And Labor—Say “NO KINGS” first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

By Yasmin Gabriel, LNS Development Manager

As a 6th generation Louisianian, I am always in awe when I see different members of my community serving as change agents. In mid-April, I was able to witness the combined organizing power of Earthworks, St. James Rising, Healthy Gulf, Concerned Citizens of St. John, Green Army, Louisiana Against False Solutions, Sierra Club-Delta Chapter, and Lake Maurepas Preservation Society as they challenged a proposed carbon capture project.

As storms, heat waves, fires, floods, and other devastating effects of global warming have grown, more and more people in Louisiana have become convinced of the need to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions into the atmosphere. “Carbon capture” is proposed as a solution, but it is unproven, costly, problematic for health and the environment, not a job producer, and ineffective for climate protection. The Air Products company has proposed a 38-mile carbon dioxide pipeline — running from Ascension Parish to Lake Maurepas — as part of a carbon capture project. It is dangerous for so many reasons. Here are two major reasons: Sorrento Primary School and the Orange Grove subdivision situated within ½ mile of the proposed pipeline.

There is something special that happens in a community when people pull together across fault lines and work for a common goal. There is often a level of social connection that can provide a sense of support for families, even during the toughest of times. The changemakers in parishes of south Louisiana are working to stop the project from being built because of pollution, noise, traffic, and other unjust impacts.

Follow this link for more information about the Blue Hydrogen Project and how you can support the fight.

The post “Carbon Capture Does Not Belong in the Boot” first appeared on Labor Network for Sustainability.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s war against Iran has unleashed a cavalcade of global economic disruptions. Most severe is the impact of the blockage of shipping through the Straits of Hormuz on worldwide oil prices, and supply chains for other commodities (including natural gas, fertilizer, and chemicals). Even though Canada produces far more oil. Gas, and fertilizer than we use, the resulting price spike has hit us, too – as a result of our policy choice to tie domestic prices (even for our own energy) to that global roller-coaster.

In this CBC national radio interview with host Piya Chattopadhyay, Centre for Future Work Director Jim Stanford discusses the impacts of the war (on top of the disruptions from Trump’s tariff policies) on Canada’s economy, in the lead-up to the federal government’s spring fiscal update.

What the government's policy playbook might mean for your pocketbook.

The post CBC Sunday Morning Feature Interview: Trump’s War and the Macroeconomic Outlook appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

We need clean, renewable energy to protect our health and to drive down energy costs. As organizations representing public and environmental health as well as frontline healthcare professionals, including the American Lung Association, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments, Concerned Health Professionals of New York, and Physicians for Social Responsibility, we urge Governor Hochul and the New York State Legislature to ensure that renewable energy investments remain a central priority in this year’s state budget negotiations.

At a moment defined by rising energy costs, worsening air quality, and increasing climate-driven health risks, failing to fully fund wind, solar, and geothermal energy would be a profound mistake; one that New Yorkers cannot afford. Our organizations see firsthand how pollution and climate instability harm our communities. Fossil fuel combustion remains a leading contributor to increasing asthma attacks, worsening COPD exacerbations, cardiovascular disease, and premature death across New York State. Rising temperatures and poor air quality have led to more emergency room visits and hospitalizations. These burdens fall disproportionately on low-income communities, communities of color, children, and older adults, populations who already face systemic health inequities.

The fossil fuel-based energy system has created both a climate crisis and a public health crisis that demands courageous and equitable policy action now. Renewable energy is a public health intervention that can help improve patient outcomes. Expanding wind, solar, and geothermal infrastructure will reduce harmful air pollutants, decrease hospitalizations, and improve quality of life for millions of New Yorkers. At the same time, renewable energy is one of the most effective ways to bring down long-term energy costs for everyday residents. Unlike fossil fuels, which are subject to volatile global markets and geopolitical disruptions, renewable sources like wind and solar provide stable, predictable pricing once infrastructure is in place. Investing in these technologies now will shield New Yorkers from future price spikes while reducing reliance on imported fuels.

For example, geothermal systems offer households consistent, efficient heating and cooling, cutting utility bills significantly over time. Leaving these investments out of the state budget would mean locking families into higher, less predictable energy costs for years to come. Renewable energy development drives economic growth and job creation across the state. From offshore wind projects along our coasts, to solar installations in rural and urban communities alike, these investments support thousands of good-paying jobs while strengthening local economies. They also reduce strain on our healthcare system by preventing illness before it begins, an often overlooked but critical form of cost savings.

New York has already positioned itself as a national leader in climate action through the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA). But leadership requires follow-through. If renewable energy funding is weakened or omitted from the state budget, it will not only delay progress toward our climate goals, it will also jeopardize the health and financial stability of New Yorkers. Governor Hochul and state legislators face a clear choice. Invest in a cleaner, healthier, and more affordable energy future, or allow short-term budget decisions to undermine long-term wellbeing.

The evidence is overwhelming. Renewable energy saves lives, reduces healthcare costs, and puts money back into the pockets of working families. For the sake of public health, economic stability, and environmental justice, New York must not leave renewable energy behind.

Authors:

Max Micallef, NYS Advocacy Manager – Clean Air Initiatives, American Lung Association
Bryanna U. Patterson, MS, FNP, RN-BC, Fellow, Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments
Carmi Orenstein, MPH, Program Director, Concerned Health Professionals of NY
Zach Williams, MPH, Associate Director, Environment & Health, Physicians for Social Responsibility

The post For Public Health and to Save Money, New York Needs Renewable Energy appeared first on ANHE.

A farmworker takes a break to drink water. Fair Food Program farms comply with mandatory heat stress protections that include the provision of water, electrolytes, rest breaks, training, and the ability to stop work and seek medical treatment without fear of retaliation. The Washington Post called the FFP’s standards “America’s strongest workplace heat rules” in a 2024 front page report. Dr. Joaquin Alfredo-Angel Rubalcaba, lead author on study of the FFP: “We do show that mothers are getting healthier… Their health, in terms of gestational diabetes and hypertension, [is] improving.” Jon Esformes, CEO of Pacific Tomato Growers and first grower to join the FFP: “At the end of the day, when someone shows up to do a job, they want to go to the job, do their job, earn their money, know that they’re safe and go home.”

A few weeks ago, we shared some remarkable news from the Fair Food Program with you: a multi-state, peer-reviewed public health study found that mothers working on Fair Food Program farms gave birth to healthier infants than their counterparts on non-FFP farms — a powerful reminder that when workers are protected, entire families thrive.

This landmark research — published by Duke University Press in the widely respected journal Demography — is the first to demonstrate that a Worker-driven Social Responsibility program can generate population-level public health gains by guaranteeing fundamental human rights on the job. Its findings suggest that the protections embedded in the Fair Food Program — and similar worker-driven models — can reach far beyond the workplace, functioning as targeted public health interventions in communities long exposed to extreme labor exploitation. 

Today, we are proud to share a feature-length article that takes a deeper look at this study, tracing how the Fair Food Program’s worker-drafted human rights standards, backed by multi-layered monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, translate into something profoundly human: healthier families and stronger communities. The feature comes courtesy of The Packer, the nation’s leading produce industry news outlet, which has for years documented the evolution and expansion of the Presidential Medal-winning Fair Food Program.

Written by The Packer’s Produce Editor Christina Herrick, the article brings forward new insights from the study’s lead author, who explains that beyond the reduction in low-birth-weight births, the program is also linked to decreases in diabetes and hypertension. These conditions, long prevalent among farmworkers, are closely tied to birth outcomes but also carry serious, lifelong consequences of their own — underscoring how the same protections that support healthier pregnancies are improving overall health in farmworker communities. The story also features reflections from Laura Safer Espinoza, Executive Director of the Fair Food Standards Council, and Jon Esformes, CEO of Pacific Tomato Growers and the first grower to join the FFP back in 2010. At a glance, the piece offers a deeper understanding of the FFP’s win/win impact, showing how its protections safeguard workers’ health while helping participating growers recruit and retain employees by becoming employers of choice.

We’re excited to share the article in full with you below. If you’d like to read the article on The Packer’s website, click here.

New Research Links Better Pay and Safer Conditions to Healthier Babies A peer-reviewed study finds that infants born to farmworkers on Fair Food Program farms are 10% less likely to be born at a low birth weight.

A peer-reviewed study published in the journal Demography has found a direct link between participation in the Fair Food Program and improved birth outcomes for farmworkers. Infants born to farmworker mothers on Fair Food Program-certified farms were 10% less likely to be born at a low birth weight.

Low birth weight, the Fair Food Program notes, is closely linked to perinatal mortality, cognitive development, chronic disease risk and more.

Joaquin Alfredo-Angel Rubalcaba, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of public policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, says low birth weight is a good marker to track, as it’s a sensitive indicator of the “health spillover” for both mothers and infants.

“We do show that mothers are getting healthier,” he says. “Their health, in terms of gestational diabetes and hypertension, [is] improving.”

Quantifying the Health Spillover

Birth weight, which has already been measured and validated through public health research, would also be a way to quantify how the Fair Food Program influenced maternal and infant health outcomes.

“It’s not just the income; it’s all of these other things that go along with that,” Rubalcaba says, noting that improved working conditions create a positive health spillover that extends beyond the individual.

“When you’re healthy, you don’t have to worry about your child being malnourished,” he says. “When you don’t have to worry about the things that we take for granted on a day-to-day basis, you’re able to focus on the things that make you productive.”

Rubalcaba says this spillover effect continues beyond just a nuclear family and into communities.

“The community is thriving as a result of the efforts, at least, in my opinion, in my survey of the data, and the fact that we were able to see a result in publicly available data, in the birth records data, was pretty remarkable,” he says.

Moving Beyond the Paycheck

While the data is remarkable, the three drivers of these health outcomes — safer conditions, higher wages and reduced stress — manifest in personal ways for the workers.

Wage premiums and stricter enforcement against wage theft for farms in the Fair Food Program raised worker incomes by 24%. Legal protections against sexual harassment, forced labor and verbal abuse helped decrease maternal stress levels. The program’s focus on safety standards also helped to reduce physical strain and environmental hazards.

Workers clock in with a timekeeping system–a mandatory feature on Fair Food Program farms that ensures workers are paid for each minute they work

Laura Safer Espinoza, a retired New York State Supreme Court justice and executive director of the Fair Food Standards Council, says the study’s outcome highlights the strong correlation between improvements in overall working environments and increased birth rates.

Safer Espinoza says more than $50 million has been distributed to workers on Fair Food Program farms. What’s more remarkable, she says, is that retailers and brands have pledged to support this program.

“They have agreed to commit their market power and put those purchasing practices to work to incentivize good practices at the bottom of the food supply chain,” she says.

More Than Just Better Pay

Safer Espinoza points to other successes within the program that speak to the broader themes of family. These include requiring workers to be paid at call time, which she says resulted in later starts.

“For the first time, workers who were called to the field at a later time were able to eat breakfast with their children. They were able to walk their children to school,” she says.

As researchers surveyed workers in Immokalee, Fla., about the benefits of the Fair Food Program, it wasn’t only better pay; it was more family time, says Safer Espinoza.

“Families reported that their children were healthier and happier, and parents were delighted to be able to have that precious time with their children in the morning,” she says. “And that’s simply because the law was being enforced.”

Safer Espinoza says this study shows tangible benefits when women working on Fair Food Program farms earn more through increased pay or the elimination of wage theft. She says eliminating sexual harassment and verbal abuse reduces stress and tension, too.

“When mothers can work and expectant mothers can work in an environment where it is safer, where they are treated with more respect, where they don’t have to be fearful and stressed every day, this is the proof that it makes a huge difference,” she says.

And she says the study’s results aren’t necessarily an expected outcome that she and the Fair Food Standards Council members thought would happen on participating farms. She says the survey’s results show a greater impact on the Fair Food Program. 

“We were not necessarily thinking, ‘This will increase birth rate and be transformational across generations in the way that it obviously is and has been proven to be,” she says. “It will make a huge difference for the children who are born to workers on Fair Food Program farms. They’ll be healthier and have better futures, and that’s something that I don’t think was necessarily contemplated when we set out, but it is a very beautiful result of this collaboration.”

A New Standard for Growers Lucas Benitez with John Esformes, CEO of Pacific Tomato Growers DBA Sunripe Certified Brands as the CIW and Pacific agree to join forces to launch Fair Food Program in 2010

Jon Esformes, CEO of Sunripe Certified Brands and the first grower to join the Fair Food Program, says he’s proud of how his company has become an employer of choice thanks to the positive culture created on his family’s farm. He says a couple of years ago, when he was on a panel about labor shortage with then-Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, he had to say that he had no trouble recruiting and retaining workers as an employer of choice.

“That spoke to over a decade of bridge building and creating what we call a safe and fair work environment where everybody understands their rights, everybody feels safe and making complaints, everybody feels like the company is open to evolution, and that’s been the history of the relationship with the coalition,” he says.

And that’s truly what workers want, Esformes says.

“At the end of the day, when someone shows up to do a job, they want to go to the job, do their job, earn their money, know that they’re safe and go home,” he says.

And this study, Esformes says, helps highlight the intangible benefits from creating this type of workplace culture quantitatively.

“People tend to be evidence-based and need that evidence to convince them to keep doing something,” he says. “We didn’t need that for ourselves. For us, we knew what was happening. But in the meantime, it’s good for the general population to have a greater understanding of the efficacy of this type of program and its impact on the community.”

The economic impacts of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran were felt by Canadians within hours of its launch. Prices for gasoline, diesel, and home heating oil (widely used in Atlantic Canada) shot up very quickly. This is both surprising and infuriating—since those products were produced, refined, and delivered long before the war started. Why do consumers have to pay more, given the war had no impact on the cost of production?

Centre for Future Work director Jim Stanford pursued this question in a commentary originally published in the Toronto Star.

Policy Choices, not Market Forces, Explain Why We’re Getting Soaked at the Pump… Again By Jim Stanford

For beleaguered consumers, it’s déjà vu all over again. War breaks out on the other side of the world. Within 24 hours, gasoline prices take off – rising up to 50 cents a litre on average across Canada since the war started. Natural gas and heating oil prices will follow, along with costs for anything that uses petroleum intensively (like transportation services, food, and construction).

It’ll get worse when the Bank of Canada jumps into the fray with higher interest rates to counteract renewed inflation. Then the victims of oil-fired inflation will be punished again.

We’ve seen this movie before. Sadly, we haven’t learned its lessons.

In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine – a country that does not produce significant amounts of oil. World oil prices soared 65% in weeks, propelled unduly by speculative bets placed on financialized futures markets.

Prices subsided by the end of the year, after it became clear world oil supply was unaffected by that war (which still drags on). But the damage was done. The 2022 oil spike was the biggest single cause of the resulting inflation that caused such turmoil around the world.

In Canada, that surge in oil prices directly accounted for 43% of post-pandemic inflation, which peaked at 8% four months later. The indirect costs were even bigger: including price hikes on energy-intensive products, subsequent higher interest rates, and job losses as high rates chilled the aggregate economy. I have estimated that the cumulative toll for Canadian consumers from the 2022 oil price surge exceeded $200 billion over three years – a staggering $12,000 per household.

Now prices are soaring again, following U.S.-Israeli attacks and Iranian counter-attacks. Before banging their heads against the nearest brick wall over the prospect of a painful sequel, consumers should pause to ask two fundamental questions. Why must we pay so much more for oil and gas produced, processed, and consumed right here in Canada, with no connection to the Middle East whatsoever? And who benefits from this outcome?

The gasoline stored in pumps right now sells for much more than before the war started. But it was refined weeks ago, from oil extracted months ago. Canada produces far more oil than it consumes; three-quarters of our production is exported. Of the modest volumes imported into eastern Canada, almost none comes through the Persian Gulf.

So there’s no energy ‘supply shock’ in Canada. The cost of producing and refining gasoline hasn’t changed at all. Yet Canadian consumers are already being soaked. And the worst is yet to come.

Petroleum companies profit immensely from this gap between soaring revenues and steady costs. That produced historic petroleum profits after the Ukraine invasion – almost $1 trillion worldwide in 2022 alone. In Canada, after-tax petroleum profits (upstream and downstream) totaled $154 billion from 2022 through 2024, when the inflationary burst finally subsided. That propelled after-tax corporate profits to 21% of Canadian GDP in 2022 (the highest share in history), even as Canadians struggled with affordability.

This new war has roiled real oil supplies (not just futures markets), so the price shock will likely be worse and longer lasting. But it’s not inevitable that we should tolerate the resulting economy-wide inflation and higher interest rates here at home.

Regulation could curtail the speed and extent to which foreign shocks are reflected in domestic prices. Energy prices could be tied to the actual cost of production (like we already do with electricity). And accelerating the transition to hydro, wind, solar, and geothermal (none of which traverse the Straits of Hormuz!) would further protect us.

Of course, petroleum lobbyists complain that insulating Canadian oil prices from global chaos will cause price ‘distortions’. But it’s hard to imagine anything more distortionary than inflicting another pointless cycle of inflation followed by contraction on an entire national economy – one that is blessed with far more energy than it needs.

The oil industry’s preferred solution to everything – build more export pipelines – would clearly make affordability even worse. New LNG projects, in particular, will amplify upward pressure on domestic gas prices, something the Alberta government’s recent provincial budget explicitly celebrated.

Perhaps Canada can’t do much about interminable conflict in the Middle East. But we can certainly do more to protect our own economy from its fallout.

 

 

The post Speculation and Greed Explain the Price of Gasoline, not Supply and Demand appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

Compiled by Jim Stanford

Investments in sustainable energy and energy conservation are larger than investments in fossil fuel energy systems. Moreover, the work involved is more labour-intensive than fossil fuel projects (which have very small labour inputs relative to the scale of capital investments or GDP). For both reasons, the shift from fossil fuels to sustainable alternatives will definitely create far more jobs than are lost in fossil fuel industries as the economy transitions to net-zero.

This is a summary of previous research on the net employment benefits of sustainable energy projects, and other dimensions of the energy transition. It reviews several studies of the employment impacts of renewable energy and related investments in Canada, and then several international reports on parallel trends in the global economy.

Previous Canadian Studies

• In a report for the Pembina Institute, Kaddoura et al. (2020) forecast potential new employment in four areas of emissions-reducing investment in Alberta, over a ten-year period. The report estimated that over 67,000 new jobs would be created in the province over a decade, driven by investments in four broad areas: renewable electricity generation, public transit and electric vehicle infrastructure, energy efficiency improvements in buildings and industry, and a program of remediation and methane reduction in oil and gas extraction facilities. That is enough new employment to offset two-thirds of all jobs in the province’s existing petroleum industry.
• In neighbouring B.C., Lee and Klein (2020) estimated the employment impacts of investing 2% of provincial GDP in renewable energy and energy conservation initiatives (as proposed by Nicholas Stern in his landmark international report, 2006). They projected an investment programme of this scale would create and maintain 42,000 jobs in the provincial economy – far more than are presently supported by fossil fuel industries in that province. Due to the higher labour content of alternative energy and related products, shifting investment from fossil fuel production to renewable energy, energy efficiency, and decarbonized transportation systems generates net employment growth.
• Another provincial-focused study was published by the Ecology Action Centre (2019) for Nova Scotia. This research simulated the employment impacts of a programme to reduce provincial GHG emissions by 50% by 2030, in line with Canada’s Paris Agreement commitments. Investments in renewable energy generation, energy efficiency, and public transit would support the creation of 15,000 net new jobs in Nova Scotia – and thousands more spin-off jobs elsewhere in Canada. The province would benefit from expanded GDP growth, enhanced tax revenue, and $675 million in additional annual personal income (measured in real 2019 dollar terms).
• A project initiated by the David Suzuki Foundation modeled the investment and technological dimensions of an ambitious effort to expand and decarbonize Canada’s electricity system, through the rapid deployment of renewable power sources and conversion of heating, transportation, and industrial energy uses to electric power (Thomas and Green, 2022). The report also estimated the employment effects of this investment programme, which would achieve a net-zero electricity system by 2035. The analysis considered only direct construction and operation jobs associated with economy-wide electrification; it did not include indirect (upstream) or induced (downstream) spin-off jobs (such as jobs in manufacturing activities spurred by electrification), nor jobs in other emerging technologies (such as battery storage). In this regard, the forecast is very conservative. The report expects about 75,000 new jobs related to electricity generation and infrastructure to be created over the first 15 years of investment. Proportionately, the largest job growth is experienced in Alberta and Saskatchewan, where the GDP and employment gains from electrification are especially significant.
• Jobs for Tomorrow (Bridge and Gilbert, 2017), focused on the impacts of the energy transition for employment among building and construction trades. That report catalogued likely investments across three broad categories of emissions-reduction activity: renewable energy generation and transmission; building energy efficiency and district energy systems; and transportation. It then estimated employment impacts of those projects on the basis of previously published employment coefficients. Across those three categories of activity, the report projected that a total of 3.3 million person-years of employment would be created in construction trades by 2050. Two-thirds of that growth was concentrated in non-residential construction (as builders updated existing structures, and built new ones, to incorporate rigorous new energy efficiency standards). Clearly, the massive investments required to facilitate the energy transition in Canada and meet international emissions-reduction commitments imply very strong ongoing demand for construction trades work.
• A sequel to that 2017 report, now titled Jobs for Today, updated those projections of construction jobs arising from major investments in renewable energy systems, energy conservation, and sustainable transportation (Bridge and Stanford, 2025). This report surveyed evidence on the impacts of sustainable energy investments that are already visible on Canadian labour markets. Then it forecast the scale of investment spending that would be required to meet Canada’s official net-zero commitments in three broad areas: the full range of non-emitting energy systems (hydro, solar, wind, geothermal, nuclear, and tidal) and associated transmission investments; investments in energy-efficient buildings and community infrastructure (including new super-efficient industrial, commercial, and institutional buildings, retrofits of existing buildings, and energy-conserving district energy systems), and investments in sustainable transportation systems (including EV charging networks, urban public transit, and high-speed inter-city rail). The application of employment coefficients derived from official economic data and other published data can then translate those investment forecasts into employment projections. These investments are forecast to support the creation of 6.3 million to 9.5 million jobs years of work for construction and building trades workers – equivalent to an average of 235,000 to 350,000 new jobs on average over the next 25 years. The estimates do not include indirect or spin-off jobs in supply chains or associated manufacturing.
• A deeper dive into the impacts of the energy transition for one specific trade – electricians – was undertaken by Electricity Human Resources Canada (2023). This report compiled estimates of new jobs arising from the expansion of renewable energy generation, along with transmission expansion and upgrades. The shift to renewable energy and electrification will accelerate demand for electricians considerably. The report projects net job growth of 12,000 positions in the five years ending in 2028. That is on top of the need to replace over 15,000 anticipated electrician retirements in the same period. There is no doubt that electricians are an occupation with increasing employment opportunities in coming years. The report urged additional investments in training and apprenticeships by employers and governments.
• Another specific construction trade that will experience new job opportunities from the growing focus on energy conservation is insulators. Calvert and Crabtree (2022) and Calvert (2023) relate the experience of Local 131 of the insulators’ union (in New Brunswick), which pro-actively undertook an independent program of free energy audits for owners of commercial and industrial buildings. The goal was to highlight for building owners the operational and cost savings from upgraded insulation and energy conservation upgrades. The campaign was successful and generated significant amounts of new work for members of the union. Other insulator union locals have also launched industry awareness programs to promote energy retrofits, similarly generating new work opportunities for union members (Calvert and Tallon, 2016; Calvert, 2019).
• The positive employment effects of electrification were further explored in a report by the David Suzuki Foundation (Thomas and Green, 2022). This report mapped the investments required to support deep electrification of Canada’s economy, on the strength of massive investments in renewable energy generation, transmission, distribution and storage facilities. To decarbonize existing electricity generation (by 2035, as per existing federal standards), and then meet the extra demand for electricity from the spread of emissions-free technologies in other sectors (such as transportation and heating), an 18-fold increase in total wind and solar generation will be needed by 2050. Some 1.5 million person-years of work will be created in the construction, operation, and maintenance of new wind and solar generating capacity, and associated battery storage. The implications of this ambitious electrification strategy for carbon emissions are hopeful: this plan would reduce emissions by a cumulative total of 3.2 billion tonnes in the period to 2050.
• Clean Energy Canada has published successive reports estimating employment growth in what it calls Canada’s “clean energy economy” (Clean Energy Canada, 2019, 2021; Navius Research, 2019). The research estimated that as of 2020 some 430,000 jobs already existed in a broadly-defined clean energy sector: including renewable energy production and distribution, construction and retrofit of energy efficient buildings, clean energy transportation, and specialized clean energy industries (such as low-carbon machinery, and emission detection and control). That was an increase of over 130,000 jobs (or over one-third) from 2017. And under the climate policy outlook adopted by the federal government, clean energy jobs were forecast to grow by another 200,000 positions by 2030 – outweighing a projected decline in fossil fuel-related employment of 125,000 positions over the same time. Clean Energy Canada’s modeling confirms net gains in employment from the transition to clean energy will be experienced in all parts of Canada, including in fossil fuel-producing provinces.
• A separate report prepared for Clean Energy Canada by Dunsky Energy Consulting (2018) considered the macroeconomic and employment effects from energy efficiency improvements, as mandated in the previous federal-provincial Pan Canadian Framework on Clean Growth and Climate Change. The Dunsky modeling traces several channels of impact from the energy efficiency provisions of that federal-provincial agreement: including energy efficiency standards in new buildings, retrofits of existing buildings, new energy efficiency standards in appliances and equipment, and industrial energy efficiency. Those efficiency improvements were expected to meet 25% of Canada’s Paris commitments for emissions reduction. The economic stimulus from energy efficiency comes from two major channels: increased demand for efficiency-related goods and services (including building construction and retrofit), and reallocated savings on energy costs by consumers and businesses (which redeploy their energy savings into other forms of expenditure). Those effects more than offset the reduced economic activity associated with energy production resulting from reduced demand for the energy. The jobs impact of the efficiency improvements was estimated at an average net gain in ongoing employment of 118,000 over a 13-year period (to 2030), and a 1% increase in national GDP over the baseline trajectory.
• Xuereb and Hillel (2023) simulated the employment impacts of an ambitious programme of proposed investment in a range of energy transition and conservation initiatives, worth a cumulative total of $287 billion over five years. (The details of this investment programme are described in Lee et al., 2023.) Based on an allocation of investment spending across different components of activity associated with each project category, this research estimated that investments on this scale would support between 187,000 and 226,000 new jobs by the fifth year of the programme. The ‘low’ estimate includes only direct and supply-chain jobs associated with the new investments; the ‘high’ estimate includes downstream jobs in consumer industries, stimulated by the increased incomes (and hence consumer spending) generated in the renewable energy and related industries.
• Researchers at RBC mapped the intersectoral employment transitions and associated skills and training requirements resulting from the shift to a net-zero economy in Canada (Guldimann and Powell, 2022). Like other research, this study projected enormous job-creation potential in clean energy, infrastructure, energy conservation, and related fields. The study forecasts between 235,000 and 400,000 new jobs will be created in occupations whose tasks and qualifications have changed because of the energy transition. That total job-creation would be even larger if Canada stepped up its investments in new energy systems; the report estimates $60 billion per year in incremental capital spending estimated is necessary to meet climate targets. New work in these evolving and emerging occupations will substantially outweigh the gradual decline in employment in traditional fossil fuel energy production and use. RBC expects existing skills shortages for construction, managerial, technical, and manufacturing workers to become even more pressing as the energy transition gathers pace, and these net new jobs are created. The report calls for urgent action by governments, employers, and educators to prepare for the coming surge in demand for skilled workers in fields related to sustainable energy.
• The Centre for Future Work developed a detailed breakdown of the various channels through which employment adjustments can be facilitated during a gradual phase-out of fossil fuel production and use, and corresponding ramp up of renewable energy and energy conservation projects (Stanford, 2021). In this forecast, a gradual phase-out of direct fossil fuel-related employment (estimated at 159,000 jobs across Canada in 2019, or 0.9% of total employment) would be possible over a 20- or 25-year phase-out (consistent with reaching net-zero targets by 2050), with no involuntary layoffs. Much of this transition would be facilitated through retirements, since workers in fossil fuel industries are older than the economy-wide average. New jobs created in renewable energy and other sustainable activities (including amelioration of former fossil fuel production sites) would be important in smoothing the transition. But there are many other pathways through which fossil fuel jobs could also be replaced, including through job-creation in other sectors (such as construction, non-fossil minerals, transportation, and private and public services). Supports for the roughly 4000 non-retiring fossil fuel workers who would need redeployment each year (according to that phase-out timeline) could include income insurance programs, retraining supports, relocation incentives, and small business start-up grants. Successful transition plans in other examples of fossil fuel phase-out (including Germany’s gradual shut-down of black coal mining, or Ontario’s phase-out of coal-fired electricity) prove that gradual, supported transitions of this sort can be accomplished without lay-offs, so long as timelines are long and gradual, and affected workers are supported with a portfolio of adjustment supports.

International Research

All countries are grappling with the economic and labour market issues related to the energy transition, and there is now a large body of international research attesting to the powerful employment-creating effects of major renewable energy and emissions-reduction investments. Here we summarize a few of the more notable international research efforts:

• The International Energy Agency (2021) has developed a detailed global forecast of employment opportunities generated by worldwide investments to meet commitments to net-zero emissions by 2050. These investments will involve trillions of dollars of new capital spending on renewable energy systems, transmission facilities, energy conservation, and related construction work. These investments would create 30 million new jobs globally by 2030: 14 million positions in clean energy systems, and 16 million in construction and retrofit work. That will far more than offset the 5 million jobs expected to disappear from the fossil fuel sector over the same period, as fossil energy is gradually phased out. The IEA forecast does not include new jobs in related manufacturing activity, nor the spillover employment (through upstream supply chains and downstream consumer industries) spurred by these enormous investments.
• Annual research has been published for a decade by the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), documenting the steady growth of global employment in renewable energy activities. Its most recent report (2023) tallies 13.7 million renewable energy jobs worldwide in 2022, up 8% from the previous year – and almost double the number 10 years earlier (in IRENA’s first report). Two-thirds of those jobs are in Asia, and over 40% are in China alone (which leads the world in new solar and wind installations). The biggest single sector for renewable energy employment is solar photovoltaic power investments, supporting 4.9 million jobs worldwide in 2022. But the employment benefits of renewable energy are widespread across several other sectors, including wind, hydro, bioenergy, geothermal, and heat pumps. The IRENA tally does not include jobs in energy conservation or upgrading work, nor jobs in manufacturing renewable energy equipment. IRENA’s research highlights especially strong job-creation potential in decentralized projects, such as small-scale hydropower and decentralized solar installations.
• A project to catalogue the global employment benefits from renewable energy and emissions-reduction investments in five case-study countries was undertaken by the United Nations International Development Organization and the Global Green Growth Initiative (2015). This project estimated the macroeconomic and employment effects of an investment programme worth 1.5% of national GDP in Brazil, Germany, Indonesia, South Africa, and South Korea. The investment was divided between renewable energy projects and energy conservation and emissions reduction projects. The employment impacts of these investments considerably outweighed employment declines associated with fossil fuel production. The employment benefits of energy transition investments were greater in developing countries (due to lower wage levels and greater labour-intensity of production methods). Final employment created for each $1 million (U.S.) of investment ranged from 9.5 in Germany to over 100 in Indonesia.
• An especially ambitious modeling exercise was undertaken by Jacobson et al. (2017) to simulate a road-map for steep emission reduction (consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees C) in 139 countries by 2050. The research first compiled a plan for the scale and composition of investments required to achieve such emissions reduction. It then estimated the combined employment effects of those investments, across all 139 countries included in the project, on the basis of employment coefficients for specific types of investment spending and energy production. It anticipated a total of 52 million new jobs to be created by those investments over the period to 2050, almost double the 27 million jobs expected to disappear from fossil fuel production and use over the same period.
• A team at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has developed a template methodology for estimating the employment gains from green energy investment plans in various U.S. states, and nationally. One recent application of that template is reported by Pollin et al. (2023), describing the estimated employment impacts of three major energy-related initiatives of the Biden administration: the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, and the CHIPS Act (Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors). Applying employment input coefficients across all industries affected by the various measures in that Act, and capturing indirect (supply chain) and induced (consumer spending) effects, the research predicted an average of 2.9 million new jobs over the first five years of the measures. The construction sector alone was expected to add almost one-half million new jobs under the combined effect of the three bills.
• The C40 network of mayors of major global cities (C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, 2021) modeled the employment impacts from a proposed major green investment programme for 96 cities around the world – recognizing that large urban centres face particular challenges and opportunities in transitioning to renewable energy. Their green recovery scenario sees over 50 million net new jobs created in those city regions by 2030, powered by capital investments in renewable energy systems, urban transit, conservation and building retrofits, and other emissions reduction projects. Each $1 million U.S. in green capital spending supports 10 to 21 job-years of new employment – considerably more than conventional carbon-intensive projects and energy systems. The faster the commitment to renewable energy investments, the larger are the job benefits: in an accelerated green investment scenario (which would speed up capital spending by 2 years), some 80 million net new jobs are created in the 96 cities in the same time frame. As a case study, the C40 work also featured a focused analysis of investment and employment opportunities arising from the energy transition in Canada (Berensson et al., 2021). Their analysis forecast up to 1.8 million new person-years of employment in Canada arising between 2020 and 2030 from a major emissions-reduction investment scheme in 12 large cities, including construction, manufacturing, and operating and maintenance roles. Building construction and retrofits accounted for over half of that total.
• A group of researchers (Batinit et al., 2022) conducted simulations of the impacts of investments in a variety of carbon-neutral or carbon-sink projects – ranging from non-emitting power generation to environmental reclamation. Including indirect effects through supply chains, and induced impacts on downstream consumer spending, these projects generated strong multiplier effects, ranging from 1.1 to 1.7. Multiplier effects consistently larger than one indicate that each dollar invested in one of these projects, generates a final magnified impact on total economic output (and hence on employment), larger than the size of the initial investment. In contrast, fossil fuel investment projects have total multiplier effects less than one: ranging from 0.4 to 0.7. Climate-friendly investments thus generate more than twice as much final economic output as fossil fuel projects, per dollar invested.
• Very similar results were generated by another macroeconomic study (Shah and Wu, 2025) comparing investments in both renewable energy and energy efficiency measures, with traditional non-eco-friendly investment projects. In this study, as well, renewable energy and energy efficiency projects generate multiplier effects consistently greater than one in the medium-term, indicating that the final impact on GDP is larger than the amount initially invested. The multiplier impacts were somewhat stronger for energy conservation initiatives (such as building retrofits), ranging up to 1.3, than for renewable energy projects (1.0-1.1). Investments in fossil fuel projects and other non-eco-friendly investments were much lower than one (in the rang of 0.3 in the medium-term), reflecting their low labour intensity.

References

Batini, Nicoletta, Mario Di Serio, Matteo Fragetta, Giovanni Melina, and Anthony Waldron (2022). “Building back better: How big are green spending multipliers?,” Ecological Economics 193, March.

Berensson, Markus, et al. (2021). Canada: The Case for an Urban Green and Just Recovery, Technical Report(London: C40 Cities), https://www.greenpolicyplatform.org/sites/default/files/C40%20Cities%20(2021)%20Canada%20-%20The%20case%20for%20an%20urban%20green%20and%20just%20recovery%20(Technical%20report).pdf.

Bridge, Tyee, and Jim Stanford (2025). Jobs for Today: Canada’s Building Trades and the Net-Zero Transition, Centre for Civic Governance, https://ccg.eco/wp-content/uploads/2025/09/Jobs_for_Today_Report.pdf.

C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group (2021), The Case for a Green and Just Recovery (London: C40 Cities), https://c40.my.salesforce.com/sfc/p/#36000001Enhz/a/1Q000000gRCH/24OgSbRwj1hZ305yJbyPMZJQKhXXWNYE8k8sr2ADsi8

Clean Energy Canada (2019). Missing the Bigger Picture (Vancouver: Clean Energy Canada), https://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Report_TER2019_CleanJobs_20190516_v3_ForWeb_FINAL.pdf.

Clean Energy Canada (2021). The New Reality (Vancouver: Clean Energy Canada), https://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Report_CEC_CleanJobs2021.pdf.

Dunsky Energy Consulting (2018). The Economic Impact of Improved Energy Efficiency in Canada: Employment and Other Economic Outcomes from the Pan-Canadian Framework’s Energy Efficiency Measures (Montreal: Dunsky Energy Consulting), https://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/TechnicalReport_EnergyEfficiency_20180403_FINAL.pdf.

Ecology Action Centre (2019). Nova Scotia Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act:  Economic Costs and Benefits for Proposed Goals (Halifax: Ecology Action Centre), https://ecologyaction.ca/sites/default/files/2022-06/EAC_GP_Climate%20Jobs%20Report_Sept2019_0.pdf

Guldimann, Colin, and Naomi Powell (2022). Green Collar Jobs: The skills revolution Canada needs to reach Net Zero (Toronto: RBC Canada), https://thoughtleadership.rbc.com/green-collar-jobs-the-skills-revolution-canada-needs-to-reach-net-zero/.

International Energy Agency (2021). Net Zero by 2050 (Paris: International Energy Agency), https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/deebef5d-0c34-4539-9d0c-10b13d840027/NetZeroby2050-ARoadmapfortheGlobalEnergySector_CORR.pdf.

International Renewable Energy Agency (2023). Renewable Energy and Jobs Annual Review 2023 (Abu Dhabi: IRENA), https://www.irena.org/-/media/Files/IRENA/Agency/Publication/2023/Sep/IRENA_Renewable_energy_and_jobs_2023.pdf.

Jacobson, Mark Z., et al. (2017). “100% Clean and Renewable Wind, Water, and Sunlight All-Sector Energy Roadmaps for 139 Countries of the World,” Joule 1(1), pp. 108-121, Supplementary Tables Available at https://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S2542435117300120-mmc1.pdf.

Kaddoura, Saeed, et al. (2020). Alberta’s Emerging Economy: A Blueprint for Job Creation through 2030(Calgary: Pembina Institute), https://www.pembina.org/reports/albertas-emerging-economy.pdf.

Lee, Marc, and Seth Klein (2020). Winding Down BC’s Fossil Fuel Industries: Planning for Climate Justice in a Zero-Carbon Economy (Vancovuer: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), https://www.policyalternatives.ca/sites/default/files/uploads/publications/BC%20Office/2020/03/ccpa-bc_Winding-Down-BCs-Fossil-Fuel-Industries.pdf.

Lee, Marc, Caroline Brouillette, and Hadrian Mertins-Kirkwood (2023). Spending What it Takes: Transformational Climate Investments for Long-Term Prosperity in Canada (Ottawa: Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives), https://policyalternatives.ca/publications/reports/spending-what-it-takes.

Navius Research (2019). Quantifying Canada’s Clean Energy Economy: An Assessment of Clean Energy Investment, Value-Added and Jobs (Vancouver, Navius Research), https://cleanenergycanada.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/2019-03-13-Clean-Energy-Economy-FINAL-REPORT.pdf.

Shah, Syed Sadaqat Ali, and Kai Wu (2025). “How effective are green spending multipliers? Eco-friendly vs non-eco-friendly spending in OECD economies,” Energy Policy 204, September.

Stanford, Jim (2021). Employment Transitions and the Phase-Out of Fossil Fuels, (Vancouver: Centre for Future Work), 113 pp., https://centreforfuturework.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Employment-Transitions-Report-Final.pdf.

Thomas, Stephen, and Tom Green (2022). Shifting Power: Zero-Emissions Electricity Across Canada by 2035(Vancouver: David Suzuki Foundation), https://davidsuzuki.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Shifting-Power-Zero-Emissions-Across-Canada-By-2035-Report.pdf. 

United Nations International Development Organization and the Global Green Growth Initiative (2015). Global Green Growth: Clean Energy Industry Investments and Expanding Job Opportunities (Vienna: UNIDO), https://gggi.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/2015-06-Global-Green-Growth-Clean-Energy-Industrial-Investments-and-Expanding-Job-Opportunities-Overall-findings.pdf.

Xuereb, Slias, and Inez Hillel (2023). Job Creation Through Transformational Climate Investments: Assessing the Impact of Proposed Climate Investments in Canada (Ottawa: Vivic Research), https://vivicresearch.ca/work/employment-impacts-of-spending-what-it-takes

 

The post Annotated Bibliography on the Net Employment Benefits of the Energy Transition appeared first on Centre for Future Work.

Rail Union calls for Free Fares to cut cost of living in response to war on Iran

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Transport and travel union TSSA has called on the government to take immediate action to help the public with the cost of living in the face of ongoing economic volatility related to the US/Israel conflict with Iran.

This includes making public transport free at the point of use for the next year.

Read the full statement on the TSSA site here.

TSSA’s Earth Day Blog Rails of change: why public transport is our climate lifeline assesses the rising impact of the Transport sector on carbon emissions, the opportunities presented by rail nationalisation to join up transport policy, boost electrification, shift freight and for City Mayors to run with this agenda.

 On this Earth Day, as the sun sets through a haze of Saharan dust, let us look not to the sky for salvation, but to the railway tracks. The solution to the climate crisis is not a sci-fi technology; it is a reliable, frequent, electric train. Let’s fight for it.

Read the whole blog here. Online Thursday April 23 – 5.50 – 7.00 We’ll see you there! Join Us

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The post Rail Union calls for Free Fares to cut cost of living in response to war on Iran first appeared on Greener Jobs Alliance.