Portside

They are among America’s most vulnerable laborers. They are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job.

With atmospheric carbon dioxide levels having reached the 400 ppm point - way above the 350 ppm considered to be the upper limit for avoiding environmental catastrophe - organized labor is struggling with the tension between the immediate need for jobs in a crisis-ridden economy and the perils to humanity's future of avoiding the sacrifices required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The following two articles discuss those tensions from different angles.