We are writing a series of Just Transition pamphlets to engage in education and base building among AEC workers. In conjunction with that, we are organizing events and workshops with allied organizations. Below is an overview of our pamplets to date!
JT 01 – We are Fossil Fuel Workers!
Like the energy sector, the building sector operates at the heart of the fossil fuel economy. Its basic functioning is ecologically untenable. Our projects entail the mobilization and consumption of enormous quantities of material, land, and energy. Even despite meaningful steps to reform, the building sector still comprises 40% of annual global emissions contributing significantly to what is finally being accepted as an existential threat to people and the planet.
Without exception, our projects are market driven, extracting value from materials and labor while shifting costs onto frontline communities and future generations. For both private and public sector projects, delivery models are shaped by a highly privatized economy.
We are caught in a bind. While our livelihoods depend on continuous construction, we have no real power to influence the larger environmental and social impact of our work. As professionals, our role as stewards of the built environment is to convince “well-intentioned” clients that incorporating more ecologically responsible strategies will pay off down the line in cost savings. However, project goals continue to prioritize budgets and code minimums. Despite the drastic need for deep decarbonization to stave off climate catastrophe, the industry lacks the agency to respond at a scale great enough to make a difference.
What would make it possible for our work to promote ecological, social and racial justice–supporting people and the planet before profit? What would make our workplaces healthy and supportive? What would it take for us to feel proud of the work we do each day?
JT 02 – Building a Union is Climate Action!
On July 21, 2022, workers at New York-based Bernheimer Architecture formed the first union at a private sector architecture firm in the United States since the 1930’s. It was a victory for the new BA Union and workers across a dozen other offices in various states of unionization campaigns, organizing under the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) through the Architectural Workers United (AWU) campaign.
Architects are organizing fast, leaving behind the atomized professionalism that has prevented us from building collective power. From a climate justice perspective, this moment is pivotal. As individual workplaces begin to establish collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) with their employers, we have an unprecedented opportunity to set clear terms for the structural changes we need across the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. CBAs typically have a set term of three to five years. To ensure the industry doesn’t fall five years further behind, we need to organize around strategies for climate action now, before we have established standards for private sector contracts. We have already missed the target to keep global warming below 1.5°C, and some regions are on track for 2°C of warming. Design workers including architects, landscape architects, engineers, and planners are particularly implicated in this because the building sector comprises 40% of annual global emissions. The threat of climate change to communities and ecosystems is unavoidable, but it can still be lessened with aggressive and immediate climate action. We must identify our terms for a Just Transition of the building sector and our strategies for meeting those terms.
JT 03 – Bridge the Divide!
The building sector is broken. Despite decades of sustainability initiatives in the design professions, little progress has been made to reduce the building sector’s outsized contribution to climate change. We have waited for market forces to reorient the sector for us, but the market has failed. Now we need a worker-led just transition to shift from extractive to regenerative economies and reduce workers’ dependence on the exploitative construction industry.
Structural changes in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry at the scale needed require alliance between building trade and design workers. While there are only 120,000 licensed architects working in the United States, there are over 3 million skilled craft workers represented by North America’s Building Trade Unions (NABTU).
Both design workers and the building trades have a stake in the fight for a just transition. Each day, construction workers across the country face life-threatening climate impacts on job sites, where conditions like extreme heat and flooding pose an immediate risk to workers’ health and safety.
This pamphlet draws on listening sessions with building trade workers from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), United Association Plumbers Union (UA), and the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners (UBC). During the sessions, workers shared their thoughts about how their work relates to the climate crisis, what they’ve accomplished with their unions, and what they envision for a just transition. These conversations are a first step toward building a cross-sector coalition.