CJI at Labor Notes Conference in Chicago
From April 19th - 21st, five team members represented the Climate Jobs Institute at this year’s Labor Notes Conference in Chicago. The conference, organized by Labor Notes magazine, brought together unionists from across the country and world for a weekend of workshops, panels, and speeches. Throughout the weekend labor leaders such as the UAW’s Shawn Fain, the AFA’s Sara Nelson and the Teamsters’ Sean O’Brien addressed attendees. CJI’s Melissa Shetler, Avalon Hoek-Spaans, Nathan Lamm, Lexi Scanlon, and Rohan Palacios joined labor leaders, organizers, and rank-and-file activists at the 4,500-person convening.
Melissa Shetler, training and education associate, facilitated a panel in which participants discussed internal organizing in building trades unions as well as a workshop on “Theater of the Oppressed.” Avalon Hoek Spaans, assistant director of Research, led a panel discussion with organizers and workers from the Texas Climate Jobs Project on “Opportunities for New Green Organizing.” Panelists shed light on working conditions of New York's and Texas’s expanding solar industry, and how unions can utilize cutting-edge research tools to organize workers to win improved working conditions.
Additionally, CJI’s delegation attended a wide range of panels covering topics as diverse as labor organizing under authoritarian regimes in Asia, organizing in the US South, worker-led green transitions, trans worker organizing, working conditions in climate adaptation, bargaining for the common good, and much more. The team connected with organizers from partner organizations such as the Climate Jobs National Resource Center, Texas Climate Jobs Project, Unemployed Workers United, Green Workers Alliance, Labor Network for Sustainability and more. The team also connected with students from Cornell’s MILR program to reflect on their experiences at Labor Notes.
CJI will continue building relationships with union leaders and members throughout the country with the goal of building strong labor-led coalitions capable of combating climate change at the pace and scale that it demands.
