Climate Justice & Action

Climate Action is Union Business

For over a century, the labour movement has driven social progress, winning key benefits like healthcare, pensions, and maternity leave. Now, with climate change as our biggest challenge, unions are taking action. From retrofitting buildings to greening school curriculums, we’re working to create a low-carbon future.

Join us in a Just Transition—a fair approach to climate action that includes workers in decision-making and ensures that the costs of change are shared by all, not just those in certain industries. Let’s build a sustainable future together.

Climate Justice

Climate change is real, and the need to tackle it is urgent, but also represents an opportunity. Unions have a big role to play in shaping our transition to a sustainable future. If we are to transform the economy to a model which is sustainable for generations to come, workers will need to be empowered.

Workers in every sector can help drive a transition to a low-carbon future. Find our how your local union can start engaging in this vita work using the Labour Guide to Climate Action. You can also get the Greenprint for Greater Toronto to learn about labour’s vision for a sustainable future in Canada’s largest urban centre.

Resources to Take Action

Share on Social Media

Download the social media kit. If we don’t act now, we’ll pay much more later.

Download “Our Union and Climate Justice”

This three-page document includes a point-by-point plan of engagement for unions, as well as a sample motion to tackle climate change. Members can use this sample motion as a guide to bring forward to conventions.

Working Green – Labour Education Centre

“Working Green” takes a research and action approach to climate change. Take advantage of offerings for activists, request a presentation at your union, or get support for setting up a Joint Management/Labour Committee on Climate Action.

Click here to see Working Green initiatives.

Greenprint for Greater Toronto

Toronto – Canada’s largest urban centre – is an amazingly complex and sophisticated space. The Greenprint for Greater Toronto outlines effective action to reduce carbon emissions in every sector of the economy. Every one of us has a part to play.

Click here to get your Greenprint Guide.

A Climate Action Agenda – Canadian Labour Congress Convention 2021

Labour’s Climate Action Agenda aims to achieve ambitious, enforceable renewable energy targets for electricity and transportation by 2030 and to achieve net-zero emissions in our economy by 2050. Crucial to this plan will be ensuring that the transition be democratic and worker-focused, leveraging the power of the public sector to lead the transition.

Click here to read the full policy paper.

Workforce 2030

Workforce 2030 is a broad cross-sectoral coalition of employers, educators, practitioners across the construction ecosystem working to collectively impact government policy, business practice and education.

Click here to learn more about building a low-carbon Ontario.