The Big Labor bosses who pull the strings in the Democrat Party are pushing back on freshmen Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, predicting the socialist overhaul would lead to catastrophic job losses for members in a variety of industries.
The 29-year-old socialist partnered with Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey to debut the plan they claim would create jobs through government run programs similar to President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. Despite endorsements from all Democratic candidates for president, details of the Green New Deal proved to be fantasy, from a total elimination of fossil fuels, planes and cars to government guaranteed jobs, college, healthcare, housing, and rebuilding every structure in America to run on “clean energy.”
Now, union officials are speaking up about what the plan would entail for members working in coal, natural gas, oil pipelines, construction, automotive, aviation, health care and other industries.
The Green New Deal offers those workers a “just transition” into a different field, Reuters reports, but Big Labor bosses aren’t buying it.
“We will never settle for ‘just transition’ language as a solution to the job losses that will surely come from the policies in the resolution,” Yvette Pena O’Sullivan, executive director for the Laborers’ International Union of North America, told the news service.
LIUNA’s 500,000 members work in construction and other industries in the U.S. and Canada.
Phil Smith, with the United Mine Workers, shared a similar sentiment. The UMW represents 80,000 members in clean coal, manufacturing, health care, and corrections in both countries.
“We’ve heard words like ‘just transition’ before, but what does that really mean? Our members are worried about putting food on the table,” Smith said.
Sean McGarvey, president of the North America’s Building Trades Union, pointed out last week that members “working in the oil and gas sector can make a middle-class living whereas renewable energy firms have been less generous.”
A FAQ on the Green New Deal distributed by Ocasio-Cortez promised “economic security for all who are unable or unwilling to work.” It also stated “We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast,” Fox News reports.
The document described the Green New Deal as “a massive transformation of our society with clear goals and a timeline”
An advisor for Ocasio-Cortez falsely claimed on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” that GOP bad guys edited the document, only to later have the congresswoman’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, confirm it was indeed legit.
“An early draft of a FAQ that was clearly unfinished and that doesn’t represent the GND (Green New Deal) resolution got published to the website by mistake,” Chakrabarti posted to Twitter. “But what’s in the resolution is the GND.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, meanwhile, shrugged off “the green dream or whatever they call it,” while Senate Leader Mitch McConnell reportedly plans to hold a vote on the non-binding resolution to offer Democrats in the upper chamber an opportunity to weigh in.
Leave a Comment
COMMENTS POLICY: We have no tolerance for messages of violence, racism, vulgarity, obscenity or other such discourteous behavior. Thank you for contributing to a respectful and useful online dialogue.