Top AFL-CIO Official Joins Greenpeace USA


The AFL-CIO’s third-level official announced that he is leaving to join Greenpeace USA, citing the growing importance of ties between labor and environmental organizers on climate change.

Official Tefere Gebre, vice-president of the labor federation, will become chief program officer of the environmental group on Tuesday. He will oversee all campaigns, communications, direct actions and organization of Greenpeace USA and will report to the group’s associate directors.

“I am not leaving the labor movement – ​​I am bringing workers into the environmental movement,” Mr. Gebre said in an interview.

Workers and environmental groups, fake alliances To reduce carbon emissions and ensure that green jobs pay well while providing a safety net for workers whose livelihoods are threatened by the shift. However, these coalition-building efforts are sometimes limping Climate laws like President Biden’s Build Back Better bill, which was stalled in the Senate.

Mr. Gebre will continue these efforts while taking a leading role in other environmental justice issues, such as focusing on people of color affected by pollution.

“I don’t care about little kids waking up with asthma who don’t have their own vote in corridor 110 in Los Angeles,” she said, referring to the South Los Angeles area along Interstate 110. environment, but they pay for it. We have to make it a movement for them.”

Greenpeace USA, an independent organization affiliated with the International Network of Greenpeace, employs approximately 150 people, largely made up of three million members of the organization, with annual budgets between $50 million and $60 million.

Among the group’s prominent campaigns, co-director Annie Leonard, who helped recruit Mr. Gebre, said it focused on democracy, such as protecting a right to protest. bill rush that could threaten him, and another focused on protecting the oceans. Mr. Gebre will oversee all this work.

At the AFL-CIO, Mr. Gebre has worked extensively on community and civil rights issues and was a key contact point for environmental groups, but said he was often disappointed by the lack of enthusiasm by powerful union leaders.

Internally, he argued, the looming exodus of hundreds of millions of people due to climate change could lead to xenophobia, right-wing populism and growing authoritarianism, and therefore climate is a top priority for the labor movement.

“Our movement will never grow under the authoritarian regime,” he said. “Everyone nodded, but there was no action.”

Born in Ethiopia, Mr. Gebre came to the United States at a young age after escaping to a refugee camp in Sudan in 1983. He rose to the executive director of the Orange County Labor Federation in California and became its deputy director. President of the AFL-CIO since 2013.

As a senior AFL-CIO official, he often clashed with members of the inner circle of longtime president Richard Trumka. dead in August. Mr. Gebre, your federation too focused on electoral and legislative policy and not enough on movement building and underinvestment by the organizing and labor movement in key industries such as technology.

Officials, including current president Liz Shuler said that the choice between organizing and political goals such as passing pro-labour laws was wrong, and that the federation should be successful in both.

“We are incredibly grateful for Tefere’s service and leadership as vice president,” Ms. Shuler said in a statement. “She understands that workers’ rights and climate justice can only be achieved together, and we will work closely with her in her new role.”



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