On Stopping or Shaping Change
There is a truism that change is inevitable. We all experience it, most of us are wary of it and some of us believe we can stop it. Working people today are being buffeted by change from a thousand directions. If you’re a coal miner, these are fearful times. If you build batteries or computer chips, the future seems bright. This was starkly evident in a Coke Plant gate the other day, when an “old head” angrily said “they want to shut it all down”. He wants the union to stop the attacks on Coke Plants. That’s the only way he sees his future security.

I’ve lived through the decline of America’s steel industry. My co-workers and I had to decide how we would deal with unexpected changes. Fight them or adapt? It wasn’t an either/or choice. Some of the change was the natural outcome of a mature nation that was reducing its need for our products and new technology that used less workers. Some was induced by the greed of the financial guru’s, who found it more profitable to have America’s steel needs fulfilled in other countries where they could exploit workers, the environment and weak governments. We had to adapt to the smaller market and technology, but continue to fight the profiteer’s version of a global economy.

The” just stop” change is a natural response to the fear coming from an unknown future. Any worker whose jobs depend on the fossil fuel industry or whose products generate greenhouse gasses, face a public that increasingly calling for their workplaces demise. There is talk about a “just transition”. They don’t see their stories, their value, their importance to the economy heard or considered. They feel like sitting ducks.

Workers have a mighty tool in any effort to get heard in the wind tunnels of change. It’s their unions. Unions have been, and can be the “shapers” of change that working people need. That collective voice, that is the heart and power of a union, is also a way to get win-wins for working people from the inevitable changes that we are being tossed around in.

Oh no, you groan. Not those self-centered, greedy unions! We’ll never make progress if we have to listen to them! This is the flip-side of the “just stop it” attitude. What’s really being said is that the only way forward is full speed ahead. In ignoring the voices of working people impacted by change, the proponents of change are building their own brick wall to run smack dab into.

The first step in really starting to solve the economic and environmental challenges we face is to assure workers a full voice and seat at the decision-making table and aggressively demonstrate that policies addressing change, provide a tangible “just transition”. To believe it, workers have to see it.

Even with an invite to the party, Union leadership has a daunting task. We have to convince our members, and working people in general, that unions have the power to shape change. This requires communication, education and a vision that is more appealing than “just say no”. The union movement’s leadership has to embrace its role as a change “shaper” and convince an understandably wary membership to participate.

Absent an organized voice for workers, the opportunists that pander to the “just stop it” fears, are filling the vacuum. That Coke Plant steelworker needs to understand that hydrogen technology will start replacing his Coke Plant in the next five to ten years. At the same time, the environmentalist has to know that this world can not shut down its industrial and manufacturing capacity and remain viable. In the struggle to save the planet, everyone has to know a lot more about the consequences their change proposals entail. Unions can be the shapers, messengers, negotiators, educators and mitigators that working people and the nation sorely needs.

ihg 11-18-2021
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