Much more fundamentally, it is about how society will make decisions about sustainability, and who will pay the price of those decisions. However, if you attack us in our workplaces, if you fail to understand the jobs issue, you will create a confrontation that you cannot win. You will force us into an alliance with our employers and you, we, society and the environment will all be the losers. Workers depend on your economic success for our jobs and our future. For it is absolutely clear that without such a plan, the people that will pay 99 percent of the price of change will be the workers in the affected industries and the communities that rely on the income of those workers.
Capital can write off losses, collect insurance in some cases, and re-invest elsewhere.
Workers do not have these kinds of options. That is your choice. There is no future for our unions and the legitimate interests of our members by throwing our lot in blindly with either environmentalists or employers. We have our own legitimate perspective. We must, however, do a better job of articulating it.