On Labor Day, media outlets have traditionally featured stories about working-class struggles, chronicling the movements that won the eight-hour day, the five-day work week and the end of child labor. However, workers’ collective actions are not just about wages and working conditions. Organized workers have also built bridges across racial, class and gender divides to address critical issues like environmental climate change, pollution, racial justice, affordable housing and immigration.

In 1988, the Androscoggin River and surrounding countryside were polluted with chemicals from paper plants and other industries. While state agencies and others turned a blind eye to the brown slime on the river and the dead wildlife in nearby woods, workers in rural Maine took action. 

During the International Paper strike of 1987, the members of UPIU Local 14 in Jay began to understand how the environment was tied to their labor struggles, writes Julius Getman in the book “The Betrayal of Local 14.” Using their intimate knowledge of the land from years of hunting and fishing and their knowledge of the chemicals they used in the plant, the Jay strikers took soil and water samples, documented environmental conditions, and strategized together on how to clean up the environment. They educated each other about the environment and brought their message to the larger community. As a result of their efforts, the town of Jay passed pioneering environmental ordinances to protect its residents. 

This environmental work was rooted in the fight against International Paper, but the strikers realized how the decisions of their employer also adversely affected their neighbors, families and the surrounding environment. They understood their obligation to their community and used their collective power as organized workers to protect it.  

While they faced many challenges in subsequent years, the environmental work of the Jay strikers has much to teach today’s climate justice movement. Environmental activists and union workers have often butted heads over how to balance environmental protections with the need to sustain rural jobs, but the Jay example shows how organized workers can bridge the “labor-climate divide.” 

Thirty-five years later, blue-collar workers and environmentalists are working together to tackle climate change, the greatest crisis facing humanity.

Recently, a coalition of construction trades unions, fisheries groups and environmental groups worked with legislators and Gov. Mills to pass a new law that will allow the construction of offshore wind turbines in a way that protects fisheries and creates thousands of well-paying union jobs. Passage of this law proves that we can transition to a clean energy future that also addresses economic inequality by offering careers that provide living wages, quality health care and retirement security. When the labor movement has a voice in developing worker-friendly climate policies, it also provides the grassroots energy needed to ensure these projects get built and don’t fall victim to NIMBYism.  

Unions have also played an important role in addressing racial injustice. In the 1930s and ’40s, Maine textile and shipbuilding unions with the Congress of Industrial Organizations had robust anti-racism training programs because they understood that moneyed interests used racism to divide the working class and building interracial solidarity was critical to organizing workplaces and strikes. While some predominantly white unions refused to take part in the civil rights movement, CIO unions like the UAW stood with Martin Luther King Jr. and fought for racial justice in the 1960s.  

Fast-forward to today, Maine workers of color and their white allies are negotiating union contracts that include strong protections against racism and discrimination in the workplace, while labor groups like the A. Philip Randolph Institute – Maine Chapter have formed to educate and agitate for racial and economic justice on a broader scale. 

The Maine Union Construction Academy, a registered construction pre-apprenticeship program founded by local unions, is also helping African Americans, immigrants, women, veterans and other working-class Mainers to develop skills to prepare them for long-term, well-paying construction careers. Recent UCA graduates have included asylum seekers, formerly incarcerated women and local residents. These often marginalized workers now have the skills to enter the workforce with advantages they would not have had without the UCA program.

Our living history shows us that the voice of Maine workers moves discussions from “we can’t because” to “we can, when … .” We must recognize that if we want to effectively address some of the most critical problems we face as a society, we must listen to the voice of labor. 

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