AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said Tuesday that he opposes the Green New Deal championed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and promoted by liberal Democrats.
Trumka said that the proposal didn’t represent the interests of labor members.
Asked during a forum hosted by the nonprofit Economic Club of Washington, D.C. about the proposal, Trumka said that “as currently written” the proposal was a bad idea that he could not support. “We weren’t part of the process [in drafting the proposal] so workers’ interests weren’t completely figured into it,” he said.
The labor movement, which usually allies with others on the left of the political spectrum, has to represent the people who work in the fossil fuel industry and the industries that depend on it. The Green New Deal proposes to eliminate the need for them, although it also calls for guaranteeing workers jobs through the federal government.
In a speech last September at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco, Trumka warned that while the labor movement backed a clean environment, it would oppose any proposal that did not address the concerns of workers in the energy industry and related sectors.
“Simply demanding that plants, industries and projects be stopped or shut down, with no plan for the people who are put out of work, no call for shared sacrifice, and no dialogue or solidarity with those whose lives and communities are dependent on carbon-based fuels, that poisons the well politically,” he said.
