This federal neutrality in labor disputes lasted more or less until the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) strike in 1981. When the air traffic controllers went on a nationwide strike, President Ronald Reagan demanded the workers return to the control towers or they would be fired. Given the damage this would do the economy, most thought the president was bluffing. He was not. Within two weeks, 11,000 controllers had been dismissed and their jobs taken by military air personnel.
Reagan didn’t only break the strike. He also signaled to the business community that they could move aggressively against their unionized workers and expect the full backing of the president of the United States. In the decades that followed, union density plummeted and ushered in the anti-union era we still live in today.
Any invocation of the New Deal must wrestle with this history. A truly transformational Green New Deal — one that reaches every corner of the economy — must also be rooted in the right to organize. Many of the carbon-intensive industries that have drawn the ire of environmentalists grew alongside and within the New Deal order and the labor protections it provides. By contrast, newer “green economy” jobs emerged just as Reagan began his assault on the labor protections laid out in the New Deal. As a result, the types of jobs that a Green New Deal is likely to create will be the sorts of low-paid, precarious work that has increasingly defined the American job since Reagan’s administration.
For example, it’s nearly impossible for workers in residential solar installation to organize into unions. The residential construction industry is full of small employers, work is very temporary, and workers are often labeled as independent contractors to strip them of any labor protection under the law. Thanks to these conditions of precarity, workers have no job security and wages are low. According to the California Occupation Guides, solar installers make $11.50-$21.00 per hour. Benefits are meager, if they exist at all.
Meanwhile, in sectors where strong worker protections still prevail, green jobs are high-paying jobs. Research from the UC Berkeley Labor Center shows that electricians installing utility-scale solar farms in California benefit from strong labor agreements and earn on average, $78,000 per year, or $39 per hour, with good health and pension benefits. Their labor agreements also include apprenticeship programs that allow a paid training pathway to these remunerative careers as electricians.
Without strong worker protections, including the right to organize, a Green New Deal will both exacerbate income inequality and alienate a vital constituency. If this crucial piece is omitted from Ocasio-Cortez’s bold platform, the left will be left wondering why the working class isn’t happy about their new low-wage green jobs.
Lauren Burke is an Atlantic Fellow for Social and Economic Equity. She works on labor-led climate initiatives with the Labor Network for Sustainability. Previously, she was a worker organizer with UNITE HERE! for over a decade.