JUST TRANSITION POLICIES

"Just Transition" is a means to achieving sustainability. Just Transition is concerned with preserving and expanding the community assets of jobs, income, and tax base presently being provided by those toxic-related facilities under going transformation.

Unionization, job security, worker benefits, seniority, safety, living wage, affirmative action, training and education, and job equity are central features of a Just Transition policy. Just Transition policy is equally concerned with improving the health and safety of people exposed to the toxins produced by industry.

Just Transition policies seek to protect human and environmental health by eliminating, substituting, or reducing the chemicals used in production, changing to safer methods of production, and improving the systems of safety inside and outside of production facilities.

In instances when the only way to protect health is to eliminate the production of toxins altogether, the first concern is with guaranteeing the income of workers, offering them jobs with equivalent pay and equivalent career prospects, and creating alternative and sustainable economic development for the surrounding community.

    POLICY DEVELOPMENT (Last modified July 18, 2002)

At any point, a site may be ready to begin a process of local policy development. In addition, the Alliance participates in national and international policy processes with direct links to local concerns such as:

• labor-friendly climate change policies;
• support for legislation to hold the U.S. military responsible for environmental hazards;
• the successful insertion of Just Transition language into such documents as the UN World Conference Against Racism;
• the upcoming Earth Justice Summit in Johannesburg in 2002.