Environmental Organizations Need to Walk the Talk on a Just Transition

While most non-profits state their commitments to environmental, racial, tenant, and immigrant justice, Oregon has seen a surge in efforts to unionize nonprofits as staff attempt to protect themselves from the very injustices their employers claim to stand against.

Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7901 has supported many of these non-profit unions, including workers at Causa, CASA of Oregon, Our Children’s Trust, OPAL Environmental Justice Oregon, the Center for Sustainable Economy, the Community Alliance of Tenants, and others. Many Breach Collective board and staff were employees at organizations who unionized with the help of CWA Local 7901 and will continue to affiliate in the new organization.

Many workers at these organizations were surprised to find that their supposedly progressive employers could be enormously hostile to unionizing efforts, some even going so far as to hire union-busting law firms to intimidate workers and challenge their rights to unionize.

When Breach Collective launched, one of the first acts of the board of directors was to pass a resolution in support of the employees’ rights to unionize in whatever manner they see fit and to affiliate with any union of their choosing, emphasizing the “overriding need for worker and climate justice”. Breach board members and staff believe that joining the labor movement will dramatically improve our ability to succeed in important campaigns, like the just transition away from fossil fuel infrastructure and the advancement of a Green New Deal. In this moment in history, it is especially important that environmental justice and conservation organizations align themselves in practice with anti-racist values and worker justice. Forming a union advances these efforts as well as the general struggle for all oppressed people, by helping ensure that the workplace is always a fair and supportive environment for the most vulnerable employees.

A.J. Mendoza, who serves as president of CWA Local 7901, had the following to say about recent non-profit labor struggles:

Our Union has expended great effort to organize ‘mission-driven organizations’.  Regrettably, CWA has come to know all too well the dissonance that can grow between ‘who we say we are’ and ‘what we do’ after repeated incidents where Management at those organizations have chosen to call in union-busting law firms.  Breach Collective could not be more well-named; it is representative of both a meaningful break from a soul sick nonprofit industrial complex where burnout so endemic as to be a meme...and also, beautifully... a hope in the possibility of new synthesis. These workers, each one with a story leading them to an intersection of the Labor Movement and the Climate Justice Movement, along those many paths were changed for the better, gaining a profoundly deep and complimentary commitment to each. May every worker know and be so changed by solidarity in this lifetime. The fight for workers’ rights is the fight for environmental justice! Together - we can create a world where the norm is walking the talk with integrity, demanding the means to meet the needs of all and live full lives, vibrant democratic participation at work and throughout society, leaving the bleakness of an extractive and abusive economy through a just transition and toward a sustainable future.

Not only will Breach ensure that its own workers are protected and supported, but will actively support other non-profit employees who seek to unionize. 

“Solidarity is an essential component of our work at Breach Collective,” said Meg Ward, Director of Communications at Breach. “We do not believe that we can succeed in our mission unless we are raising the standards for workers while we reduce greenhouse gas emissions and transition to a truly sustainable energy system.”

At Breach, we understand that we are a part of the labor movement and we stand firmly in solidarity with our fellow workers in the struggle for a better future.