Green Social Thought

Produce less. Distribute it fairly. Create a greener world for all.

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Topic: Labor / Economics

  • The Wobblies in their Heyday

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    by

    fitzdon

    Review of The Wobblies in their Heyday: The Rise and Destruction of the Industrial Workers of the World during the World War I Era by Eric Chester (Praeger, 2014, hardbound; Levellers Press, 2016, paperback). Staughton Lynd The Wobblies are back. Many young radicals find the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) the most congenial available…

  • The Evolution of Union Co-ops and the Historical Development of Workplace Democracy

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    by

    fitzdon

    Management at Carrier Corporation pulled Donnie Knox, president of the United Steelworkers Local 1999, and others employed by the company into a meeting on February 10th. Knox and his fellow workers were informed their jobs would be moved to Mexico. Despite remaining profitable in Indianapolis – the company boasted more than $7 billion in profits…

  • Universal, Single-Payer Disaster Insurance: A Necessity in the Greenhouse Era

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    scox
    in

    Serious problems in the nation’s flood insurance program have received heavy media coverage over the past three months. But flood insurance, like any insurance that covers a single type of (un)natural disaster, is burdened with inherent contradictions that always threaten to scuttle the system.  The root of the problem is that the only people who…

  • Energy and Climate as Labour Issues

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    briant

    Organised labour has long insisted that energy is more than an issue of electrons. Over two decades ago, the Congress of South African Trade Unions was explicit that addressing energy poverty is not just a matter of power plants, grids and transformers; it is also – and primarily – a matter of political change. Who…

  • For Those Who Know Little or Nothing about Labor: Building Global Labor Solidarity Today

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    kimscipes
    in

    Earlier this year, a collection of papers was published under the title of Building Global Labor Solidarity in a Time of Accelerating Globalization (Scipes, ed., 2016).  It was a strong effort by seven labor activists and scholars from different parts of the world to think out how workers today can support each other globally; initially…

  • The New South American Political Map

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    fitzdon

    The New South American Political Map The election results in Venezuela and Argentina, the Brazilian crisis, and the erosion of the “citizens’ revolution” in Ecuador are part of a change in political climate that puts the transformative processes underway on the defensive. In the past weeks four progressive governments in the region show unmistakable signs…

  • Wilderness areas more often a boon, not drag

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    fitzdon

    Wildland preservation is motivated by a variety of ethical, biological, cultural, and recreational concerns. Rarely are efforts to protect wildlands motivated by an interest in promoting economic growth. Those working on wildland preservation have been forced to take up the issue of local economic impacts because those supporting commercial development of those wild natural landscapes…

  • How to kill the demos: the water struggle in Italy

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    fitzdon

    On November 28, 2015, water activists from the Southern Italian region of Campania staged a massive protest in the city of Naples. Some 5,000 water activists and environmentalists, trade unionists and workers from Naples’ water works protested a recently passed regional law that aims to centralize water management and set the stage for water privatization.…

  • The Young Farmer Network Helps Shift the Ag Landscape

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    scox
    in

    Richard Nixon's agriculture secretary in the early to mid-1970s was Earl Butz, a man best known for advising the nation's farmers to “get big or get out.” And rural America has been following that advice ever since. Across most of the country, farms continue to grow in acreage and dwindle in number. Every state in…

  • Can the Climate Movement Break Free from the “Jobs. vs. Environment” Debate?

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    henryr874

    For two weeks this May, organizers across 12 countries will participate in Break Free 2016, an open-source invitation to encourage "more action to keep fossil fuels in the ground and an acceleration in the just transition to 100 percent renewable energy." Many of the month's events — pulled together by 350.org and a slew of…