Mario Cilento, president of the New York AFL-CIO, spoke Monday to the state’s Climate Action Council as a new member and the first member representing organized labor.
“This council has been working for two years without labor representation … and it is incumbent upon me to share labor’s unequivocal goal in this process, and that is simply this: to combat climate change while protecting workers,” Cilento said.
Gov. Kathy Hochul said in March that she planned to appoint a labor representative to the council and announced Cilento as its newest member in early May.
Cilento said the council’s work should ensure a commitment to workers “in the most concrete and enforceable terms” to ensure that new jobs created by the climate and energy transition are “good union jobs.” And any worker that loses a job from that transition, he said, must “promptly, if not immediately” be re-employed “at the same rate of pay or greater.”
He called for estimates on new job creation and job losses identified in the council’s draft scoping plan to be more specific. The council’s study of the jobs needed to counter climate change — with a focus on buildings, fuels, electricity, transportation and lands — found that through 2030, 21 subsectors will add 211,000 jobs, and seven subsectors will experience “displacement of 22,000 jobs.”
“The intangible nature of projected job creation is somewhat understandable, but job loss is fully and completely tangible, particularly to those who know that their livelihoods, their ability to support themselves and their families is at risk and most likely finite,” he said.
To better understand estimates for jobs created and lost, he said the council should ensure more detail is provided on rate of pay, benefits, work locations, skills, responsibilities, and the employers that will create and eliminate jobs. Of the 211,000 new jobs employers could create through 2030, the council’s study said half were identified in the buildings sector, while about half of the job losses were at conventional fueling stations.
All jobs data related to the transition also should be tracked and updated at least every six months, according to Cilento.
For those jobs that are created, he added, workers need “robust” organizing rights and protections.
“All projects moving forward should include language that specifically calls for labor peace and project labor agreements, prevailing rate, buy American, buy New York and worker training funding,” he said.
While the council’s Just Transition Working Group has addressed labor concerns for the draft scoping plan, Cilento said it is necessary to “build on that work with as specific and definitive measures as possible.”
“The labor movement intends to be a committed partner in this historic endeavor … and I do strongly believe that anticipating and addressing as many of [labor’s] concerns as possible during this process will increase the [Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act’s] likelihood of long-term success,” he said.
The council accepted public comments on its draft scoping plan through July 1 and will review comments this summer before proposing approaches to address them in the final scoping plan due in January.
