Developing a Pro-Worker Civilian Climate Corps

By Saul Levin

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are being sworn in today. If they were elected on a platform featuring a Civilian Climate Corps (CCC), Senators can support one too. The key for Biden’s first 100 days will be committing to public investments and heavy allocation to frontline communities to reduce suffering and spur climate action. Reimagining the CCC, one of the most successful first 100 days projects in history, is exactly the type of popular move that could put both workers and the environment first - doing so would represent a tidal shift from the last four years.

To confront the dual crises of high unemployment in a pandemic and escalating climate change, we urgently need an updated version of that New Deal gem to create hundreds of thousands of jobs. An updated program could employ thousands while explicitly reversing the grave racism and sexism that tarnished the 1930s program and weakened it by excluding women and people of color. This is not a novel idea. With Democrats having fleshed out several CCC proposals in congressional legislation and campaign platforms, there is potential to develop an aspirational and passable jobs program that goes far beyond planting trees. 

The call for a CCC was a central pillar of several Democratic presidential campaigns this cycle, including the Biden Campaign as part of their Build Back Better plan. An excellent precedent to follow, the original CCC trained and employed millions of Americans in conservation work over a decade beginning in 1933 and transformed the parks and infrastructure of our country. The program put 250,000 young people and veterans to work within three months, and participants eventually planted billions of trees and created more than 700 state parks, among other achievements. Data for Progress polling has shown reviving a CCC to be extraordinarily popular, with 85% of Democrats and more than 60% of all voters favoring the idea.

It is high time we reimagine a CCC to meet the moment: we need to establish a unionized and unequivocally anti-racist Climate Corps to create safe jobs with family-sustaining wages to rebuild our economy, empower communities of color, and make urgent progress on the climate crisis. This new CCC would provide jobs requiring diverse skills across varied contexts, but all work would be designed following social distancing guidelines so workers can feed their families without bringing risk home. 

Using the New Deal program as a model requires a careful look at how it could be better in a new iteration. How can the program unapologetically support current and new workers, expand equity, and make urgent climate progress? In the 1930s, the Roosevelt Administration named Robert Fechner, then Vice President of the International Association of Machinists, to lead the organization. We would need a workers’ champion again to do the job right. Moreover, while Fechner brought labor sympathy and expertise, he discouraged unions amongst his workers. Union organizers were kept out of the program’s camps and workers were kicked out if they joined a union. Workers in a new CCC would need to be able to join a union upon hiring or safely organize. The work would need to be additive to ensure an expansion of organized labor instead of competition with union jobs. Workers could come from a mix of union hiring halls while others could be trained with new skills. All jobs must feature the living wages, strong benefits, and safety standards needed more than ever during this pandemic. Leadership by knowledgeable worker allies will make this possible within the timeline of hiring hundreds of thousands of workers within the administration’s first 100 days.

Equitable access must be emphasized and meaningfully addressed from the outset. For all it’s popularity and success, the original Conservation Corps’ segregation cannot be ignored. A new program must take concrete steps to proactively include and empower Black, Indigenous, and other marginalized groups disproportionately affected by escalating climate impacts and coronavirus. Local hiring requirements will ensure the Climate Corps creates and supports jobs for frontline community members to repair and prepare their own communities for the future. Indigenous people will once again be offered some of the first jobs and will be supported by high minimum hiring thresholds in states like Alaska and New Mexico. 

Lessons learned since the original Conservation Corps must be heeded so mistakes aren’t repeated. Unemployed and underemployed workers in manufacturing, transportation, energy and other relevant sectors will be invited to apply for jobs, while related unions should be involved to advise sectors relevant to their expertise and invite those workers into their unions. The work of organizations who have done this work since, including the California Conservation Corps, the Joint Apprenticeship and Training Committee, the South Korean Forest Service and the CorpsNetwork, will be reviewed as modern cases and consulted as sources of information and inspiration. Criminal justice reform advocates and workforce development experts must be in the room to ensure veterans, formerly incarcerated individuals, youth, and other groups have equitable access to jobs.

A $250 billion investment in this new CCC will expand the more than $850 billion in annual consumer spending on outdoor recreation, and thus overall GDP, creating millions of jobs that can remain steady through the economic trials of the pandemic and beyond. Moreover, the emergency conservation work of the CCC will begin to reduce the billions of dollars lost to climate impacts in the form of soil erosion, “natural” disasters, sea level rise, and heat every year. Congress has already complemented this work by using current military funds to protect us from climate catastrophe by completing deferred Army Corps of Engineers climate projects and work with new bipartisan funding for eliminating backlogs in parks in the recent Great American Outdoors Act. The program could be funded by redirecting harmful fossil fuel industry subsidies at the Office of Fossil Energy to further subsidize this low-carbon work.

Guest UserClimate, Taxes and Spending, Workers Rights, Economy