Sunday, September 05, 2021

Nationwide Nabisco Strikes Demonstrate Growing Strength of the Labor Movement
Nabisco workers on strike on August 10, 2021.
COURTESY OF NORTHWEST LABOR PRESS

BY Tyler Walicek, Truthout
PUBLISHEDSeptember 3, 2021

Confronted with management’s burdensome demands for contract concessions, Nabisco workers in Portland, Oregon, instigated a strike last month that has rapidly taken on national proportions. On August 10, around 200 members of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers’ International Union (BCTGM) Local 364 walked off the job at the industrial bakery. Since then, the workforces of every Nabisco production and distribution facility in the country have followed suit, a coordinated action years in the making. The strikers have drawn on the radical energies of a recently resurgent labor movement in the United States — a momentous upswell in a key vector of working-class power.

Sweet Deals for Executives, Scraps for Workers


Nabisco, the maker of popular processed foods like Chips Ahoy! cookies, Oreo cookies and Ritz crackers, is a subsidiary of Chicago’s Mondelēz International. When Kraft Foods split into different entities to skirt antitrust violations in 2012, its snack food business was spun off and reconstituted as Mondelēz, now a Fortune 500 company with $26 billion in yearly revenue. Mondelēz CEO Dirk Van de Put was compensated over $16 million in 2020; in 2017, he was lavished with a pay package of $42.4 million989 times the median pay of a Mondelēz employee. Meanwhile, management has declined to redistribute any of its pandemic profit gains; though people staying home in 2020 resulted in a major uptick in snack sales, the company has continued angling to cut overtime and healthcare benefits. Mondelēz’s single-minded focus on squeezing every possible cent from its workforce, combined with such exorbitant executive pay, has underscored disparities between workers and management, accelerating a discontentment that has been gathering strength for almost a decade.

Since Mondelēz assumed ownership of Nabisco in 2012, longtime workers claim, working conditions have deteriorated, sacrificed to management’s ever-more relentless drive for profits. In the background are ambient threats of outsourcing and job loss: The company halved its union workforce earlier this year, with plant closures in Fairlawn, New Jersey, and Atlanta, Georgia, and the union has had to negotiate with an acute awareness that the company can make good on its threats of offshoring. Six years ago, Mondelēz transferred Oreo production from Chicago to Mexico — a move that earned it condemnation from Trump, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders alike.

Against this background, tension between capital and labor within Mondelēz-Nabisco has heightened since contract negotiations in 2016, when management attempted to eliminate pensions in favor of 401(k)s. In April 2020, BCTGM ceded that ground — only for the company to return to the table with even more extensive demands. BCTGM Local 364 vice president and 14-year Nabisco veteran Mike Burlingham says Mondelēz has displayed no interest in compromise: “They don’t want to share their wealth with the workers.… They want to come to the table, insult us with their proposal — which is more like a list of demands — and try to tell us to our faces that this is for our own good,” he told Truthout.

The Mondelēz proposal, which a spokesperson euphemistically described as an “alternative work schedule,” would require more work for less pay, at an already taxing and physically demanding job. Burlingham says that even without the proposed changes, “a lot of us are already putting in 13 to 16 hours a day due to forced overtime, day in and day out, for weeks on end.”

The previous contract afforded workers time-and-a-half pay for shifts over 8 hours and Saturdays, with double time for Sundays. Now, the company wants to limit overtime pay to those who work more than 40 hours — without taking into account which days are worked, or the lengths of individual shifts. Burlingham estimated that for some workers, the reductions in overtime pay could result in losses of $10,000 per year.The past few years in the United States have seen a historic groundswell of labor actions, coinciding with the highest public favorability toward unions in decades.

The plan would also establish a two-tiered benefits system, under which new hires would also be charged more for health insurance — a well-worn tactic for stoking internal division within unions. This management overreach led to a breakdown in negotiations. It was Mondelēz-Nabisco’s continued intransigence that led BCTGM to trigger the Portland action, the first strike at the company in 52 years.

Coordinated by BCTGM International, the strike expanded to an interstate scale. Mondelēz has three factories (Chicago; Portland, Oregon; and Richmond, Virginia) and three distribution facilities (Aurora, Colorado; Addison, Illinois; and Norcross, Georgia) — all six of which are now on strike. These workforces were already stretched to breaking point. The frustrations expressed by strikers at the Portland bakery are far from isolated concerns, and were echoed by those at other Mondelēz facilities. Interviewed by Jacobin, utility operator April Flowers-Lewis, who has worked at the Chicago plant for 27 years, described deteriorating conditions: brutal schedules, rescinded benefits and an attitude of disrespect from management. In July, Mondelēz was also cited by the city of Chicago for failing to pay out sick leave.

A Mondelēz spokesperson, quoted by CBS, stated that the “alternative work schedule” proposals are intended to “promote the right behaviors” among workers. Elsewhere, the company described the goal of its proposal as “setting up our U.S. bakeries for future investment and long-term success.” At present, the company is busing in nonunion workers (colloquially, “scabs”) to continue production.

Meanwhile, as the action enters its third week in Portland, strikers have earned the resounding support of many in the community. Mohammed Mohammed, a production worker on the picket line, spoke to Truthout as a cacophony of celebratory honks from passing cars threatened to drown out his words: “I’m grateful for the city that’s shown us a lot of support. We got a lot of union support; a lot of local businesses bring us food.… People know we’re essential. We’re strong because of each other.”

Such expressions of solidarity have been plentiful, from supporters both on the ground and online (including Danny DeVito). A strike support GoFundMe has raised over $50,000, and BCTGM has urged a boycott of all of Nabisco’s enduringly popular snack foods. On the picket line, demonstrators have been joined by members of over a dozen other unions, including the AFL-CIO and UFCW. At one point, confirmed Mike Burlingham, union railroad conductors in Portland reversed their train and refused to cross the picket line to deliver their freight of confectionary ingredients to the bakery.

Strikers in Portland, as well as those in Atlanta, Richmond and Chicago, have received the aid of their local Democratic Socialists of America chapters. Portland DSA has helped coordinate solidarity rallies, marches and strike support, as has Portland Jobs with Justice, a labor and community activism coalition. Organizers entered a Fred Meyer grocery by the dozen to make shoppers aware of the boycott. Jobs with Justice co-chair Russell Lum told Truthout, “It’s a cry out to Nabisco, sure, but it’s also a cry out against a broken economic system…. The bleeding of these jobs [by outsourcing] is Mondelēz’s business model, and the signal to the workers is, ‘You’re next.’ That’s how Mondelēz wants to bargain, with the workers feeling like they’re on a knife’s edge.”
Demanding More Than Crumbs

The past few years in the United States have seen a historic groundswell of labor actions, coinciding with the highest public favorability toward unions in decades. 2018-2019 were particularly militant years; notable developments include the late 2019 major strike at GM and the Red for Ed wave of nationwide teachers’ strikes. Strike activity reached a 30-year-high in 2019. Some Bureau of Labor Statistics data gave the impression that work stoppages dropped off precipitously at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis — though, it’s worth noting that these numbers do not reflect actions involving under 1,000 employees. During that period, amid complicating factors like layoffs and social distancing, there was an enormous number of small-scale pandemic-safety walkouts by essential workers. Alternate data better captured these stochastic, nontraditional actions. In other words, solidarity, organizing and radical energies persisted throughout the pandemic. And though the virus is still exacting a devastating toll, the return to major strike activity in 2021 indicates a potential for sustained worker militancy.

BCTGM’s modest size makes its members’ boldness all the more impressive. Amid a national climate hostile to unions, BCTGM, further beleaguered by offshoring and plant closures, fell from over 114,000 members in 2002 to about 63,900 in 2019 — making it one of the smallest production worker unions. Historically, the union has not been particularly militant. Like many manufacturing strikes, BCTGM’s actions have tended towards the defensive: protecting existing wins, rather than breaching new territory.BCTGM’s bold actions of the summer of 2021 are an indicator that unions in the United States, resurgent to a degree unseen in decades, will sustain their struggle into the future.

That said, “there are a lot of signs that even manufacturing union workers are increasingly fed up with employer demands for concessions,” says C.M. Lewis, an editor at the labor publication Strikewave. The Mondelēz-Nabisco strikes are preventative measures: “We’re not on strike to secure huge gains. We’re on strike to keep what we’ve already got,” Cameron Taylor, BCTGM Local 364’s business agent, told HuffPost. However, taken with a string of recent BCTGM actions, they’re a component of a positive trend. Says Lewis, “That Nabisco workers [are] striking in multiple states is rare and encouraging, and could be a sign of increased militancy down the road.”

BCTGM members are finding their footing: They organized a workforce of several hundred at a Tennessee brewery in December 2020. And in July, BCTGM members took on the titanic PepsiCo, striking at a plant owned by its subsidiary Frito-Lay in Topeka, Kansas, over concerns analogous to those at Nabisco. The 19-day strike ended with a renegotiated contract — which didn’t meet every BCTGM term, but still held ground and won some gains. Though short of unmitigated victory, that strike still helped bolster the confidence of Nabisco workers in Portland, as Mike Burlingham related to Truthout: “There was a show of solidarity” with Frito-Lay employees, he said, and “it was really good to see those workers were able to come to an agreement … and were successful.” Burlingham added, “There’s been an influx of strikes around the country … people are paying attention to what’s going on. It’s getting to a point where people are saying, ‘It’s enough of the corporate greed. Enough is enough.’”

BCTGM is up against a company that has proven willing to go to great lengths to further exploit workers and ensure the flow of profit. Mondelēz’s threats of offshoring have weight behind them, thanks to free trade agreements and loosened restraints on capital mobility. Mondelēz also maintains massive production capability at a “superplant” in Mexico — ostensibly, the “world’s largest cookie plant” — giving the company enormous leverage in its threats to shift production to workforces in Mexico that are even more callously exploited. (Relatedly, the company, along with Nestle, Cargill, Hershey, and others, has also been named in a class action lawsuit alleging that it “knowingly” utilized forced child labor. That’s far from its only scandal.)

With corporate power further entrenched by the depredations of neoliberal policy and the dismantling of labor laws, workers often find themselves struggling to preserve a status quo. Yet, as C.M. Lewis says, “Successful strikes build confidence and power, and Nabisco workers are experiencing firsthand what potential power they hold in their workplaces. Although this is a defensive strike for the moment, holding the line now is a good start toward going on the offensive and raising standards instead of managing declining working conditions.”

Unions across the country are demonstrating a greater willingness to strike when companies go beyond the pale. The Nabisco picketers all shared that sense of last-straw frustration. Said Oreo production line worker Nicole Bertholomey, “They’re being greedy. We work so hard for this company, and we have families at home. They’re making so much money, and they still want to take everything away from us.”

The 2021 Nabisco strike sits at the intersection of two intertwined forces: growing union confidence, support and strike activity, in correlation with widespread austerity and egregious demands from the ownership class. The interests of capital, at Mondelēz and elsewhere, are not only unwilling but are structurally unable to pursue any end but endless profit. As Nabisco employee Mohammed Mohammed told Truthout, echoing his coworker Mike Burlingham, “It came to a point where enough is enough.”

That phrase could be heard from many others up and down the Nabisco picket line, and the sentiment has lately found purchase throughout the country, from coal mines to the offices of The New Yorker. “Labor” is not a monolithic entity, and there are of course complex challenges impacting unions’ ability to take on corporate power. Still, it’s evident that workers are increasingly unwilling to capitulate — and less hesitant to deploy the strike.

Hope lies in the fact that an embattled populace has, in recent years, been reminded again and again that organizing is the real vehicle of working-class power. BCTGM’s bold actions of the summer of 2021 are an indicator that unions in the United States, resurgent to a degree unseen in decades, will sustain their struggle into the future.


Hardesty, Rubio stand with striking Nabisco workers

Nabisco strike in Portland spread to other cities



by: KOIN 6 News Staff Posted: Sep 4, 2021 / 

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — Portland City Commissioners Jo Ann Hardesty and Carmen Rubio joined the picket line outside the Nabisco bakery facility in Northeast Portland on Saturday.

They rallied with workers in front of the bakery as passing cars honked their support. Nabisco bakery workers have been on strike for nearly a month and their action has now spread to Nabisco facilities in Denver, Chicago, Atlanta and elsewhere.

Portland City Commissioner Jo Ann Hardesty joined the picket line at the Nabisco facility in Portland, September 4, 2021 (KOIN)

“I know the sacrifice you make, I know what it’s costing your family,” Hardesty told the striking workers. “This is happening all across the country because of you.”

Nabisco’s corporate parent, Mondelez International, posted a new contract offer to the workers on their website. The offer, made Thursday, offers a $5000 ratification bonus, a 60-cent-per-hour raise and a 401K match increase, among other items.

Mondelez said the offer expires September 7.





Nabisco Workers Strike Could Cause Supply Issues

No more buttery Ritz Crackers until some negotiation happens

SEPTEMBER 2, 2021

Thanks to a heated labor battle, the Triscuit supply could run drier than the actual cracker. Grocery stores are stocking up on Nabisco treats because of a production slowdown at bakeries and distribution facilities around the country.

Why is production slowing down? On August 10, about 200 employees at a Nabisco bakery in Oregon put down whatever makes Ritz crackers so buttery and went on strike. Since then, workers in four other states have joined them.

What do they want? Workers want their pensions back after the company switched to a 401(k) plan in 2018. They’re also angry about a July proposal from Mondelez International, Nabisco’s parent company, that would increase shift length but cut overtime pay.
Employees have also expressed concerns about the company’s outsourcing of work to Mexico after two recent factory closures in the US.
Mondelez has denied those claims and said that, while it is moving some workers to 12-hour shifts to handle the recent spike in demand, employees are well compensated.

Zoom out: Workers have been gaining leverage in a labor market where qualified employees are hard to find. This Nabisco standoff will test the limits of that resurgent power. – MM

Nabisco worker calls for boycott of company’s snacks amid strike

Alexis Christoforous
·Anchor
Wed, September 1, 2021, 

Steven James has been working as a machine operator making Oreos, Chips Ahoy! and other Nabisco snacks at a plant in Richmond, Va. for 20 years.

On Aug. 16, James joined about 1,000 of his fellow union members in five states and walked off the job to protest what they say are “unfair” demands for concessions in contract negotiations with Nabisco's parent company Mondelez International (MDLZ). James, who isn't working another job, said he plans to stay out of the plant until a fair contract is signed.

“We're not asking for a lot,” James told Yahoo Finance Live. “We just want a fair contract.”

As America’s appetite for snack foods has grown during the pandemic, James said he and his colleagues on the frontlines have been working 12-hour shifts, seven days a week.

“It was just constant. Never had time to spend with the kids. Never had time to spend with the family,” he said.

The walkout began on Aug. 10 at a biscuit bakery in Portland, Ore., and has since spread to Aurora, Colo., Richmond, Va., Chicago, Addison, Illinois, and Norcross, Ga. Union members in those states have been working without a contract since May and are represented by the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union (BCTGM).

James said he was given one-time “hazard pay” of $300 earlier this year for working long hours during the pandemic while “some of the supervisors, they got $10,000."

"We had some management working from home. So, of course they were good, they were safe. We risk our lives coming out every day working all those hours,” he added.

The strike has not affected Nabisco’s ability to churn out popular snacks during the pandemic, since Mondelez International has been using non-union workers at plants where there have been walkouts.

James said he and his union members are asking customers to show their support by boycotting the snack giant.

“We try to tell everyone, do not buy any Nabisco products at this time, because we are on strike,” said. James. “The community has really shown us some support. We have businesses and our local brothers and sisters have really been giving us a lot of support, and they are with us walking on the line as well.”


Union workers are asking customers to boycott Nabisco snacks like Ritz Crackers. Credit: Mondelez International

In a statement, Mondelez said, “Our goal has been — and continues to be — to bargain in good faith with the BCTGM leadership… while also taking steps to modernize some contract aspects which were written several decades ago.”

'Keep our jobs here in the U.S.'

Union workers also want Mondelez to restore their pensions, which were replaced by a 401(k) plan in 2018.

Striking workers are also protesting two factory closures in February in Atlanta, Georgia and Fair Lawn, New Jersey, a move the union says is part of a larger plan to transfer low-wage jobs to Mexico.

“They closed two of our plants and they sent the product to Mexico,” said James. “We just want to keep our jobs here in the U.S.”

In a statement, BCTGM International President Anthony Shelton said union workers “are telling Nabisco to put an end to the outsourcing of jobs to Mexico and get off the ridiculous demand for contract concessions at a time when the company is making record profits.”

Mondelez International’s net income climbed 98% in the quarter ended in June to $1.1 billion, while sales climbed 12.4% to $6.6 billion, compared to the same time a year ago.

Mondelez denies that any jobs went to Mexico as a result of the recent factory shutdowns in Georgia and New Jersey. Company spokeswoman Laurie Guzzinati told Yahoo Finance that production at the shuttered facilities has been absorbed by existing bakeries in Portland and Richmond. Some Oreo production was shifted to Mexico in 2016, a move that Donald Trump criticized as a presidential candidate.

Growing (with) Muskeg Oil Sands Reclamation and Healing in Northern Alberta

2021, Anthropologica

26 Pages
Scientists working for oil companies in the Athabasca region are developing methods by which to reclaim muskeg (boreal peatlands) on land disturbed by oil sands extraction. The Alberta government requires companies to reclaim disturbed land by achieving equivalent capability of the landscape to support an end land use. Indigenous community members instead define reclamation as establishing not only quantifiable ecological functions, but also relationships to their traditional territories. Tensions emerge as Indigenous concerns are often subsumed within bureaucratic discourses that favour scientific classification and quantification of land uses in reclaimed areas. Divergent responses to muskeg in reclamation activities are informed in part by these competing emphases on quantifiable landscapes as opposed to those that are relational and growing. This article traces this multiplicity through the examination of government and scientific literature and ethnographic fieldwork with Indigenous communities in northern Alberta. Muskeg is used as an analytical tool to explore competing conceptions of land reclamation. Mistranslation of polysemantic terms like muskeg occur on an ontological level, and settler colonial relations and power imbalances between competing languages and knowledge systems proliferate in reclamation activities.


'Entire world is short-staffed': Food prices to climb as labour shortage crushes food industry

Whether it's fruit pickers, slaughterhouse workers, truckers, warehouse operators, chefs or waiters, the global food ecosystem is buckling due to a shortage of staff

Author of the article:
Bloomberg News
Elizabeth Elkin, Mai Ngoc Chau and Agnieszka de Sousa
Publishing date: Sep 02, 2021 •
A farm worker picks tomatoes in Massachusetts. 
PHOTO BY ADAM GLANZMAN/BLOOMBERG FILES


Across the world, a dearth of workers is shaking up food supply chains.


In Vietnam, the army is assisting with the rice harvest. In the United Kingdom, farmers are dumping milk because there are no truckers to collect it. Brazil’s robusta coffee beans took 120 days to reap this year, rather than the usual 90. And American meatpackers are trying to lure new employees with Apple Watches while fast-food chains raise the prices of burgers and burritos.

Whether it’s fruit pickers, slaughterhouse workers, truckers, warehouse operators, chefs or waiters, the global food ecosystem is buckling due to a shortage of staff. Supplies are getting hit and some employers are forced to raise wages at a double-digit pace. That’s threatening to push food prices — already heated by soaring commodities and freight costs — even higher. Prices in August were up 33 per cent from the same month last year, according to an index compiled by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization.

The coronavirus pandemic has helped spark a labour shortfall for many parts of the economy. But the impact is particularly stark in food and agriculture, which are among the world’s least-automated industries. Food security is a sensitive issue in many parts of the world and thin margins mean rising costs generally pass through to buyers, according to Boston Consulting Group.


“Almost certainly there is disruption,” said Decker Walker, BCG’s agribusiness expert in Chicago. Effects vary among locations and products, he said, but “the general theme seems to be: The roles with the least desirable working conditions are actually the ones that we have the most pain with.”

There are signs the labour shortfall is curbing supplies. In the United States, wholesale distributors like Sysco Corp. and United Natural Foods Inc. are reporting production delays and slowdowns for items ranging from bacon and cheese to coconut water and spices. In the U.K., some stores are running low on staples like bread and chicken, while McDonald’s Corp. ran out of milkshakes in August.

I have been in this business since the '80s, but I have never seen a situation like this
MICHELE FERRANDINO, FARMER

“We have family-wage, great jobs that have been open, that we’ve been recruiting really hard for and have had trouble filling,” said Patrick Criteser, chief executive officer of Tillamook County Creamery Association.

The Oregon-based dairy co-operative recently ran so short of workers that a board member had to skip an operational meeting to help out in the fields. “With the inflation we’re seeing in the business and the inflation that we’re seeing at the farm level, it’s going to translate to the shelf.”

Shortages are hitting farms, processors and restaurants alike. Malaysia, the world’s No. 2 palm oil producer, has lost about 30 per cent of potential output of the edible oil used in everything from chocolate to margarine. Shrimp production in southern Vietnam — one of the world’s top exporters — has dropped by 60 per cent to 70 per cent from before the pandemic. And a fifth of tomato production in the south of Italy has been lost this year, due to the scorching heat and transport paralysis, according to the farmers’ association CIA.

“I have been in this business since the ’80s, but I have never seen a situation like this,” said Michele Ferrandino, a farmer in Foggia. “Tomatoes are very perishable goods. There were not enough trucks to transport the crop to the processing plants, in those crucial days” of the harvest, he said.

Cancelled or delayed deliveries have also forced British dairy farmers like Mike King in South Gloucestershire, England, to dump milk while stores run short. King estimates he has lost some 20,000 litres (5,283 gallons), and says some farmers have resorted to milking their cattle less frequently due to staffing shortfalls.

A dairy farmer dumps excess milk down a drain at Plurenden Manor Farm dairy farm in Ashford, U.K., 
PHOTO BY ASON ALDEN/BLOOMBERG FILES

Even as restaurants and other businesses reopen in the U.S. and parts of Europe — boosting demand for goods such as meat and bottled drinks — the Delta variant is spreading in places like Southeast Asia, curbing primary production. Other, longer-established pandemic effects are still causing problems too: COVID-19 outbreaks continue to crop up in meat- and fish-processing plants, forcing temporary closures, and border restrictions in countries from the U.K. to Thailand are limiting the supply of migrant workers.

In some places, the scramble for staff is compounded by local issues, such as difficult and dangerous farmwork conditions caused by a record U.S. heatwave, or the disruption of Brexit.

As a result, employers face another hurdle: Workers have plenty of options.

The current economy is creating “choice where choices may not have existed in the past,” said BCG’s Walker. When “the entire world is short-staffed,” filling less desirable jobs gets more difficult, he said.


Employment in the food supply chain can certainly be tough. Whether it’s backbreaking strawberry picking, insecure slaughterhouse work or the fast-paced, high-pressure environment of a restaurant kitchen, many jobs are physically taxing, short term, poorly paid — or a combination of all three.

With more jobs available, Australian workers who might previously have settled for positions at meat processing plants in sparsely populated areas can opt for work in busier towns instead. Many of the European Union citizens who might typically travel to the U.K. to work on farms, in haulage or serving coffees are choosing to stay in their home countries or on the continent. American labourers who have struggled with sweltering heat in the fields may choose the cool interiors of a store instead.

Jon DeVaney, president of the Washington State Tree Fruit Association, acknowledges that work such as fruit picking is demanding.

A worker picks apples at an orchard in the U.K. 
PHOTO BY MATT CARDY/GETTY IMAGES FILES

“It is a physical job,” he said. “You are picking fruit and carrying it up and down ladders, so if your alternative is pushing buttons on a cash register, that might be more appealing.”

Higher salaries and perks can sweeten the deal. Chipotle Mexican Grill Inc. recently raised U.S. menu prices by as much as four per cent after increasing average pay to US$15 an hour; in Canada, the company is offering a referral bonus to help with recruitment. Pork-processing workers at Smithfield Foods Inc. in South Dakota get freebies like Apple Watches or iPads once they complete their first 60 days, a company official said. Pizza chain Rossopomodoro, which is headquartered in Europe, has been forced to boost its base pay by 50 per cent in London, chief executive Daniele di Martino said.

But often, money is not enough. Workers are increasingly demanding greater protection from the coronavirus as well as higher wages, according to Sunny Verghese, chief executive of agricultural trading giant Olam International Ltd.

While meatpackers have made significant safety progress since last year, they are up against the Delta variant now. That has slowed the amount of cattle moving through slaughterhouses at meat giant Tyson Foods Inc

.
A meatpacking plant in Quebec. 
PHOTO BY COURTESY OF OLYMEL/HANDOUT VIA REUTERS

“We were on a good trajectory and then the Delta variant showed up, and we’ve taken a step back as result of that,” chief executive Donnie King said on a call with investors last month. “Essentially it takes six days to get five days’ worth of work.”

Worker shortfalls aren’t happening everywhere, and the effects aren’t evenly distributed. Much of mainland Europe has not felt the same crippling shortages as the U.K., where Brexit constrained the flow of EU workers. China has been largely unaffected and in India, while inflation is still a worry, labour is plentiful and agriculture has been mostly untouched by virus restrictions.

Elsewhere, labour is just one of several headaches for the world’s food ecosystem. Extreme weather from Brazil to France has affected harvests. Surging crop prices have pushed up the price of feeding livestock — and, therefore, the price of meat. Transport costs have skyrocketed due to soaring demand, container shortages and overwhelmed ports, not helped by the temporary partial closure of China’s Ningbo-Zhoushan, the world’s third-busiest cargo port.

Still, the shortage of workers threatens to further add to costs, whether through wage increases or supply shortfalls. And the issue won’t disappear when the pandemic ends: The share of workers employed in agriculture has been falling for decades amid a shift to cities and services sectors, and hiring for some jobs was tough long before COVID-19. These more permanent changes to the labour market call for technological solutions, and investment in automation and robotics has accelerated during the pandemic.

In the U.S., automated tractors, robotic milkers and machines such as carrot planters are replacing human labour. Meanwhile, U.K. farmers are trialling robots to pick strawberries, lettuce or broccoli. Harvesting tools have helped Brazil’s robusta-coffee farmers cut dependence on manual workers to one-fifth of the number needed just a few years ago, according to Edimilson Calegari, general manager at Espirito Santo-based cooperative Cooabriel. While the country’s labour shortfall extended the length of the harvest, he said, technology has lessened its impact.

Still, it will take years before farmers really take to robots, according to Cindy van Rijswick, a senior analyst at Rabobank in Utrecht who specializes in horticulture.

“In the end, prices for food have to go up to compensate workers in a better way and to find solutions,” van Rijswick said. “They just cost money and we need to be willing to pay that.”

Bloomberg.com

  A big risk right now is if this labour shortage will become a common theme: Equity strategist

Jeff Weniger, head of equity strategy at WisdomTree Asset Management, discusses his North American investing strategy for the current market conditions. He says one of the systemic risks is if shortages are a feature, not a bug. He says if it’s a longer-term issue you could get a self-fulfilling prophecy that witnesses hoarding of goods in anticipation of such back-ups.

Bloomberg Markets

  


EU'S NEW MIGRANT WORKERS

About 77% of Lebanese youth want to leave amid several crises

Sep 3, 2021
Al Jazeera English

The number of people leaving Lebanon to look for opportunities abroad is at an all-time high. 

A new report warns the rate of mass exodus is leading to a severe brain drain as people lose hope in their country’s future. 

Al Jazeera's Sara Khairat has more from Beirut, Lebanon.

Billionaire Trump donors ordered to testify over union-busting accusations: report

The two brothers, Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta, allegedly undercut organizing efforts at a casino they own


By TOM BOGGIONI
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 5, 2021
Lorenzo Fertitta, left, and Frank Fertitta (Jason Merritt/Getty Images)

This article originally appeared on Raw Story

According to a report from the Daily Beast, two billionaire brothers who made the bulk of their fortune selling off the Ultimate Fighting Championship, are being compelled to appear a National Labor Relations Board judge over accusations of union-busting at a casino they own.

"Brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta have been ordered to testify about allegations that their gaming business, Station Casinos, egregiously tried to undercut labor organizing efforts," the Beasts' Noah Kirsch reported, adding, "The Fertittas are best known for Ultimate Fighting Championship—the mixed martial arts promoter they sold for more than $4 billion in 2016—and for donating millions of dollars to Donald Trump and his dark-money machine, America First Action."

According to the report, in July a federal judge ordered the Station to start negotiations "with roughly 1,350 culinary workers over a contested 2019 union vote at Red Rock Resort," but instead the organization offered employees new benefits, that included smaller health-care contributions on the employees' part and a changed 401k. That, in turn, reportedly, led to a defeat by labor organizers to form a union.
Advertisement:

In her opinion, Judge Gloria Navarro wrote, "Red Rock's offer of benefits was a hallmark violation," adding, "Many employees admitted not voting for the Union because they feared losing the new health care and 401(k) benefits that Red Rock had just promised."

According to one employee, Adam Christian, he feels his fellow workers were bullied into voting no on the union.

"They decided to throw the kitchen sink at everybody and not even give detailed information to us to be able to even make an informed vote," Christian recalled. "I just want to be treated fairly by a company and have something in writing."

According to labor expert Bill Werner, of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the judge calling on the bothers to testify is an unusual move.

"It's extraordinary that you would bring in the very, very top person in the company [to testify]," Werner explained. "What the union is saying: the Fertittas made this decision."

You can read more here and watch an interview with Lorenzo Fertitta describing taking over the casino with his brother below:





These Trumpy Billionaire Bros Are in Hot Seat Over Union-Busting Claims

Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta may have to testify about allegations of union-busting at their casinos.



CAGE MATCH
Noah Kirsch

Wealth And Power Reporter

Updated Sep. 04, 2021 

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photo Getty

A labor dispute of cartoonish proportions is playing out in Las Vegas, pitting two Trump-supporting casino billionaires against one of the largest private union drives in the country.

Brothers Frank and Lorenzo Fertitta have been ordered to testify about allegations that their gaming business, Station Casinos, egregiously tried to undercut labor organizing efforts. It is just the latest chapter in a complex saga that has played out for a decade. An administrative trial involving some of the claims is underway before a National Labor Relations Board judge.

The Fertittas are best known for Ultimate Fighting Championship—the mixed martial arts promoter they sold for more than $4 billion in 2016—and for donating millions of dollars to Donald Trump and his dark-money machine, America First Action. Much of their wealth, however, lies in a gambling operation founded by their father, which is now the subject of the union-busting allegations.

“It's extraordinary that you would bring in the very, very top person in the company [to testify],” says Bill Werner, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who researches employment disputes. “What the union is saying: the Fertittas made this decision.”

The trial follows a blistering opinion issued by a federal judge in July, which ordered Station to begin negotiating a contract with roughly 1,350 culinary workers over a contested 2019 union vote at Red Rock Resort.

In the run-up to that vote, Station had announced that it would grant employees new benefits, including a pension plan, reduced health-care contributions, and a medical center, according to court documents. The union ultimately lost the right to organize by a margin of 627 to 534.

“​​Red Rock’s offer of benefits was a hallmark violation,” Judge Gloria Navarro wrote in her opinion. “Many employees admitted not voting for the Union because they feared losing the new health care and 401(k) benefits that Red Rock had just promised.”


A 2019 union vote at the Red Rock Resort is at the center of the legal drama.

Ethan Miller/Getty

Adam Christian, a union supporter who has been a server at one of Station’s properties for 15 years, believes that many of his co-workers were intimidated into voting no.

“They decided to throw the kitchen sink at everybody and not even give detailed information to us to be able to even make an informed vote,” he says. “I just want to be treated fairly by a company and have something in writing.” Christian claims the casino stopped letting him serve Frank Fertitta meals once he started wearing a union button on his shirt, even when the billionaire sat in his section.

A spokesperson for Station Casinos denies that the new benefits were related to the union drive, saying it made “changes before it even knew there was to be an election.” In an appeal to the July ruling, the company called the decision “not only unjust, but also unprecedented.”

The Fertittas are likely to challenge the order to testify until the last moment, Werner says. In the meantime, supervisors at their casinos are choosing sides.

Last month, dozens of managers arrived at the union’s offices wearing matching shirts and chanting, “We despise union lies.” Most were not even eligible to join the unit.

“In our nearly nine decades of organizing, the Culinary Union has never seen company managers or supervisors picket, especially on their day off when it is 99 degrees outside,” the union’s secretary-treasurer, Geoconda Argüello-Kline, said in a statement. “We hope that they stay hydrated and cool.”

Union activity at Station Casinos has bubbled for a decade, driven in part by a history of harsh workplace practices, some employees claim.

Steve Bailey, a bellman at Red Rock Casino, says that he was pressured to skip breaks when he first started at the company 14 years ago. He bristled at other policies too, including a requirement that on-call employees be available 24 hours a day if managers decided to summon them into work.

“If you did not answer that call within five minutes, it was considered a refusal,” Bailey says. Three refusals resulted in automatic termination, he said. “I was so apprehensive about missing a call that I would put my phone in a plastic bag… and I would take it in the shower with me.”

Bailey also claims that employees have faced pressure to work private events for the Fertitta family, and that managers have sometimes used surveillance tapes to nitpick job performance. There is little recourse, he says, when employees are asked to perform tasks outside of their job descriptions.

As one example, Bailey was recently asked to drive a gambler to another property, he said. He resisted, since he lacked formal training, and ultimately said no, but he worried about repercussions: “I felt like my job was in jeopardy,” he said.

A Station spokesperson says that “the Culinary Union has a fraught relationship with the truth from the top down. The very few of our employees who have complained typically have an agenda.”

The years of tumult have not impeded the Fertittas’ financial success—including the massive UFC sale five years ago.

The brothers had purchased the fight promoter for just $2 million in 2001 after growing addicted to martial arts while taking classes in the basement of one of their casinos.

“What makes UFC so great,” Lorenzo Fertitta told Forbes in 2008, “is that every single man on the planet gets it immediately. It’s just two guys beating each other up.”

Previously, gambling had been the true family trade. The Fertittas’ dad, also named Frank, founded Station Casinos in 1976, and it grew to specialize in properties off the main Vegas strip, catering to locals over crapulent tourists.


Lorenzo Fertitta, left, and his brother Frank, right, with artist Damien Hirst at the Palms Casino Resort in 2018.
David Becker/Getty

The company is technically still private, though it is partly owned by Red Rock Resorts, a publicly traded business that the Fertittas control. Red Rock’s stock is up more than sixfold since the start of the pandemic—when it suffered a precipitous drop—and it’s now worth over $5 billion, an all-time high. Each Fertitta brother is personally worth $2.7 billion, Forbes estimates.

The brothers have not been shy about that money.

In late August, Lorenzo’s 285-foot megayacht, Lonian, caused a stir when it docked off the coast of Newport Beach; some locals believed it was a naval ship. Lonian, which cost a reported $160 million, features a glass-bottomed pool and helipad. It even travels with its own special friend, a 217-foot support yacht called Hodor outfitted with a spare helipad and additional gear.

Frank is known to splash out, too. His daughter’s 2018 wedding reportedly cost $25 million, thanks to a cake that stood more than two stories tall, a blinding amount of crystal, and an entertainment lineup that included Seal, John Mayer, and Bruno Mars. According to the Review-Journal, event staff were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements.

As for the labor dispute, the ongoing trial is unlikely to end the war, since the Fertittas could easily drag out the fight for another decade or longer.

“This will all be resolved when the culinary union has a contract with each Station property,” says Werner, the University of Nevada professor, about one slice of the battle. “I predict that happens never.”

Elon Musk’s SpaceX launch site threatens wildlife, Texas environmental groups say

The site in Boca Chica, south Texas is surrounded by protected lands that host a huge range of local wildlife including turtles and hundreds of bird species

SpaceX test launches its SN15 Starship prototype on 5 May in Boca Chica, Texas. Photograph: Gene Blevins/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock

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Dianna Wray
Sun 5 Sep 2021 


Everything seemed normal as SpaceX’s Starship juddered into the sky over south Texas last March, tangerine flames and white smoke pluming behind it. But roughly six minutes into the test flight, the spacecraft thudded back to Earth.

SpaceX, the company founded by Elon Musk in 2002, has a “test, fly, fail, fix, repeat” method for its commercial space program. That approach is part of why Musk wanted to put the launch site on a tract of land just off the Gulf of Mexico, close to the Texas border with Mexico. “We’ve got a lot of land with nobody around, so if it blows up, it’s cool,” Musk reportedly said at a press conference in 2018.


How the billionaire space race could be one giant leap for pollution

But David Newstead, director of the nonprofit Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries, felt sick as he saw the fireball explode on the launchpad. SpaceX’s site is surrounded by state and federally protected lands. The explosion littered parts of the delicate ecosystem of the Boca Chica tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley national wildlife refuge – comprising tidal flats, beaches, grasslands and coastal dunes that host a huge range of wildlife – with rocket debris.

“I knew from the other explosions that the rocket would be scattered all over the refuge,” Newstead said. Cleanup took three months, he added.

The private space race is already causing concern about the potential climate impacts of the fuel needed to propel the rockets. But environmentalists on the ground in south Texas say SpaceX’s testing site is having more immediate impacts.

The remains of an exploded SpaceX Starship on land in Boca Chica, Texas in May. Photograph: Reginald Mathalone/NurPhoto/REX/Shutterstock

The refuge is made up of parcels the US Fish and Wildlife Service has been buying or leasing since 1979 when the federal agency came up with its plan to preserve as much of the land tucked against the Gulf Coast and the mouth of the Rio Grande River as possible, creating a patchwork of federally managed refuge land. As part of that, the agency has been managing Boca Chica state park, a 1,000-acre (404 hectare) site, since 2007.

Boca Chica is a key piece of the Laguna Madre hypersaline lagoon system and home to a plethora of vulnerable species. The Kemp’s Ridley sea turtles nest on the shore of Boca Chica Beach each spring, while shorebirds such as plovers peck at the tidal flats to find food. The refuge is also home to endangered ocelots, the wild cats that once roamed across the south-west.

“It’s one of the most unique places on Earth,” said Jim Chapman, a local environmentalist with Save Rio Grande Valley.

Many Texas officials consider SpaceX’s presence a coup for the state. They had been interested in wooing Musk since he first began talking about building a private space port in 2011. State legislators passed a bill in 2013, which gave SpaceX the right to close Boca Chica beach during testing and launches. They also permitted limited road closures to Texas’ Highway 4, the only road to the SpaceX site – and to the Boca Chica section of the refuge.

In 2014, the Federal Aviation Administration issued its environmental impact statement, finding that SpaceX’s proposal for the region “would have no significant impact on the environment”. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, Newstead said, most people assumed that the anglers and beachgoers, the US Fish and Wildlife refuge managers who monitored the sea turtles and the conservationists studying the region’s more than 200 bird species would be able to coexist with SpaceX.

When Musk formally announced Boca Chica had been selected, most people focused on the opportunity. “We were seen as a border town, with all the negative national rhetoric that goes along with that,” said Josh Mejia, executive director of the Brownsville Community Investment Corporation. “But SpaceX choosing to build here, that gave us tremendous validation. Other businesses finally started looking at us and seeing potential.”

SpaceX’s activity on the ground ramped up as rocket testing began in 2019. Dirt mounds were quickly replaced by fuel storage tanks, construction equipment, a sea of Airstream trailers, and the latest rocket gleaming on the launchpad. SpaceX employees and contractors were constantly driving up and down Texas State Highway 4 and using roadsides – technically state land managed by the US Fish and Wildlife Service – for parking.

In April, SpaceX applied to expand its current site by filling in 17 acres of wetlands, which the EPA suggested could have “substantial and unacceptable adverse impacts on aquatic resources of national importance”.
Birds pass over SpaceX’s Starship SN8 on 4 December, days before a test launch in Boca Chica, Texas.
 Photograph: Gene Blevins/Reuters

Local environmentalists have grown increasingly concerned that SpaceX is dominating the road and the refuge land around it, closing roads and beaches for longer than their 300 permitted hours. In 2019, US Fish and Wildlife sent a letter to the FAA asking that SpaceX’s road closures and testing be halted until “noncompliance issues are resolved”. In June, the agency again wrote to the FAA about SpaceX reporting “unauthorized encroachments and trespass on the refuge”, according to 60 Minutes, including parking on refuge land and installing a drainage ditch.

In 2021, Save Rio Grande Valley wrote to the Cameron county district attorney claiming that SpaceX had cut off access to the beach and the refuge for more than 1,000 hours. In response to the district attorney’s inquiries, SpaceX denied the company road closures have exceeded the permitted 300 hours stating that the local environmentalists’ claims were “not accurate”.

“It’s really been shocking to witness the way the federal government has allowed this to happen,” said Bryan Bird, of the national environmental nonprofit Defenders of Wildlife. “Elon Musk is building a space complex in one of the most environmentally diverse, and inappropriate, places in the world.”
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Launch site ditches, both on SpaceX land and public property, have dumped runoff water directly into the tidal flats, said Newstead, where he and his fieldworkers track nesting sites for snowy plovers, a wading bird that is close to landing on the federal threatened species list.

It would take a government agency to conduct the intensive rounds of ecological monitoring and study needed to understand how local wildlife is being affected by SpaceX’s presence, Newstead said, but he’s already seen a change in the snowy plovers.

Debris is seen in the Boca Chica national wildlife refuge after the SpaceX Starship prototype rocket failed to land safely on 31 March. 
Photograph: Gene Blevins/Reuters

There used to be about a dozen nests dotting the tidal flats on the edge of Boca Chica where the refuge abuts SpaceX’s property each spring, but last year the organization found just two pairs of the snowy plovers nesting, he said. This year they only spotted one. Newstead has also scaled back the nonprofit’s annual migratory bird census and multiple other programs, because, he says, they can’t access the refuge often enough to properly conduct the survey.

“These are complex systems, some of the only ones of their kind left in the world,” Newstead said. “I never thought there would be no impact whatsoever to SpaceX being here, but I did think government agencies would do more to ensure that things like this wouldn’t happen. I’m afraid of what we’ll find when we go out looking for their nests next spring.”

Jim Blackburn, a professor of environmental law at Rice University, said complaints about a lack of enforcement of environmental regulations are common. “A lot of people think that because we have these laws, the environment is protected, but that’s not how it works. People working on the ground for these agencies are often well meaning, but if the political will is there to allow a project like SpaceX to go through, that’s what happens.”
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Neither SpaceX nor the US Fish and Wildlife Service responded to the Guardian’s requests for comment. The FAA told the Guardian that closures are implemented and enforced locally. It added that the 2014 environmental impact statement and the subsequent alterations remain valid, that the agency is still working on its environmental assessment of SpaceX’s revised plans for its launch testing site, and has no publication date at this time.

SpaceX has plans to launch the biggest rocket in the world, the Super Heavy booster and Starship, from Texas. SpaceX representatives have said they are eager to begin testing the new system, a process that many environmental campaigners in the community believe will ultimately see more rocket shrapnel lacerating refuge lands. The FAA is currently conducting an environmental assessment.

In 40 years of working to protect the Lower Rio Grande Valley national wildlife refuge, Chapman said he has never been more concerned. “People love space, they love the hype and glamour of rockets around here, but everything has a price,” Chapman said. “There’s always someone coming along who wants to develop the land out here. It used to be that we could rely on the government to step in, but now I’m not so sure about that.”

New study shows how engineered nanomaterials degrade, persist in environment

environment
Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

A new study published today in the journal Environmental Science & Technology finds that exposing certain nanomaterials to light can influence their environmental transformation, fate and, ultimately, their toxicity. The discovery provides new insights into the behavior of engineered nanomaterials and how they can be better designed for numerous commercial applications without impacting the environment or human health.

"Nanomaterials are ubiquitous in our world today and can be found in common products such as our sunscreens, cosmetics and clothing," said Dr. Danmeng Shuai, an associate professor of civil and  at the George Washington University who co-led the study. "Every day, new nanomaterials are being considered for commercial use, but do we really understand how these materials break down in the environment and the implications? Our study suggests there's more to learn before setting loose another  in the world."

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2021-01-20 · The Environmental Working Group presents an innovative “water atlas” tracking phosphorous and nitrate pollution in four Upper Mississippi River Basin states. August 31, 2021. SAVE THE DATE. EWG's CleanCon™ October 19-21, 2021. Virtual. PRE-REGISTER NOW. Dirty Dozen and Clean Fifteen lists are here! Get your FREE digital copy now. Search this Site. Environmental Working Group. …

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With support from the National Science Foundation's Environmental Chemical Sciences program and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, researchers at GW, American University, the United States Naval Academy and University of Illinois at Chicago examined graphitic carbon nitride, an emerging engineered nanomaterial that has been extensively considered for water treatment, air purification, antimicrobials, energy storage, electronics, biomedical therapy and more. The nanomaterial was previously believed to be highly stable and only decomposed in the presence of hydroxyl radicals, the most powerful oxidant in water.

The research team, however, found that the nanomaterial's decomposition by hydroxyl radicals was also affected by light: the nanomaterial breaks down rapidly when exposed to light, but decomposes slowly in the absence of light. According to the researchers, this should raise concerns about the perceived stability of the nanomaterial and industry's potential use of it.

"Our study highlights how engineered nanomaterials might persist or degrade in the environment as well as their potential toxicity," Mengqiao Li, a doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering at GW and first author of the study, said. "It also highlights where more research is needed to guide the design of future nanomaterials that are more stable and don't harm the environment." Mengqiao recently received the C. Ellen Gonter Environmental Chemistry Award for this study, a  provided by American Chemical Society Division of Environmental Chemistry.Researchers reveal anticancer property of nanomaterials with mitosis-targeting mechanism

More information: Mengqiao Li et al, Radical-Driven Decomposition of Graphitic Carbon Nitride Nanosheets: Light Exposure Matters, Environmental Science & Technology (2021). DOI: 10.1021/acs.est.1c03804

Journal information: Environmental Science & Technology 

Provided by George Washington University

Bookchin M. Our Synthetic Environment - Libcom
Our Synthetic Environment Murray Bookchin 1962
https://libcom.org/files/Bookchin M. Our Synthetic Environment.pdf ·
Table of contents
Chapter 1: THE PROBLEM 
 Chapter 2: AGRICULTURE AND HEALTH 
Chapter 3: URBAN LIFE AND HEALTH

Chapter 4: THE PROBLEM OF CHEMICALS IN FOOD 
Chapter 5: ENVIRONMENT AND CANCER
 Chapter 6: RADIATION AND HUMAN HEALTH
 Chapter 7: HUMAN ECOLOGY 
Chapter 8: HEALTH AND SOCIETY 
Appendixes
German environmental NGO launches legal action against car makers and oil firm over climate impact


© Getty Images / Peter Cade

3 Sep, 2021 
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German climate NGO Deutsche Umwelthilfe (DUH), alongside Greenpeace, launched legal action on Friday against a string of car manufacturers, as well as oil firm Wintershall Dea over concerns about their environmental impact.

In a statement released on DUH’s website, the NGO decried BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz. Volkswagen and oil firm Wintershall Dea for engaging in “climate-damaging activities,” pledging to take legal action to restrict the CO2 emissions the companies can release.

For decades there have been companies doing their climate-damaging business at the expense of our future. The time for fossil industries is now up.

Through its legal efforts, the climate groups are hoping to secure commitments from the named companies that they will not consume more than the remaining CO2 budget to which they are entitled according to the IPCC and the Paris climate limit, phase out combustion engines worldwide by 2030 and no longer develop any new natural gas or oil fields by 2026 at the latest. Should the companies refuse these pledges, the group has stated it will “hold those responsible to justice in court.

The NGOs will be represented by legal duo Remo Klinger and Roda Verheyen, who, earlier this year, convinced a German court to rule that the country’s government must update its climate law by the end of 2022, showing how officials will meet a target of almost zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Responding to the legal threat, Daimler defended its commitment to reduce carbon emissions in line with the Paris climate accord, stating that it is on course to achieve climate neutrality. BMW, Volkswagen, and Wintershall have not yet publicly responded to the lawsuit.

Climate groups to sue German carmakers

Following the success of their case against the German government's underwhelming climate plans, environmental NGOs are now going after companies with big carbon footprints.




The groups argue automakers are bound by a ruling giving future generations the right to climate protection


Environmental organizations Greenpeace and Environmental Action Germany (DUH) said Friday that they will sue German carmakers BMW, Mercedes-Benz and Volkswagen, as well as oil and gas company Wintershall Dea, over the negative impact the companies have had on the climate.

Two lawyers — Remo Klinger and Roda Verheyen — who helped environmental activists force the German government to commit to more detailed plans of how it will reduce carbon emissions to near zero by 2050 will also represent the plaintiffs in this case, DUH said.

Following the success of the case against the government, the NGOs are hoping to pursue the precedent set by Germany's Federal Constitution Court (BverfG) and uphold the rights of future generations.

"The BVerfG concluded in its groundbreaking climate decision that future generations have a basic right to climate protection. Large corporations are also bound by this!" the BUH said in a tweet.

Companies to be 'held responsible'


The plaintiffs' demands include ending the sale of climate-damaging combustion engines by German automakers by 2030 — five years earlier than an EU ruling imposed — and stopping Wintershall Dea from developing new oil and gas fields by 2026 at the latest.

They say these deadlines are necessary to stay within the limits of the 2015 Paris agreement. The legal action will go ahead if the companies fail to respond to the demands in the next few weeks, the NGOs said.

DUH said the "current and planned measures by the four companies are inconsistent with the Paris climate goals and are therefore unlawful."

The legal team also referred to the decision by a Dutch court in May that companies have to oblige by the Paris climate agreement. The court ruled that Shell must cut its emissions by 45% by 2030 from its 2019 levels.

"Climate protection is the protection of basic rights. This sentence was confirmed by the Federal Constitutional Court. With this in mind, these companies that produce more CO2 emissions than entire countries are now being held responsible," Remo Klinger said at the press conference announcing their legal intention.

All three of the German car manufacturers have previously announced plans to transition to producing more eco-friendly electric cars, but environmentalists have said these plans are vague and non-binding.

"The companies' electrification plans are not ambitious enough and too slow. They won't be enough to avert the climate crisis," said Greenpeace's Martin Kaiser.

Daimler, the maker of the Mercedes-Benz brand, said it saw "no basis" for the legal action against them and that it would defend itself "through all legal means."

BMW said in response to the announcement that it was already committed to the Paris climate agreement. Volkswagen, which owns several car brands including Audi, Porsche and Skoda, did not comment.

The threat of legal action against the car companies came days before the IAA auto show, one of the biggest in the world, was set to begin in Munich. Climate activists have said they will protest the event.

German carmakers reject environmental groups' climate demand


The Associated Press Staff
 Friday, September 3, 2021 

In this July 16, 2009 file photo, an employee of the Daimler AG mounts the Mercedes star on the hood of a car of the Mercedes-Benz E-class on the production line in the Mercedes-Benz site in Sindelfingen, Germany. (AP / Thomas Kienzle, File)

BERLIN -- German automaker Daimler on Friday dismissed a "cease and desist" demand from two environmental groups to commit to ending the sale of combustion engine vehicles by 2030.

Lawyers for Greenpeace and the group Deutsche Umwelthilfe have threatened to sue Daimler, BMW and Volkswagen unless they sign a legal pledge not to put new gas-fueled vehicles onto the market from the end of this decade.

The groups argue that companies are bound by the same rules as governments when it comes to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to combat climate change. The same lawyers successfully sued the German government earlier this year, forcing it to adjust its emissions reduction plans to shift more of the burden onto older generations.

In a letter addressed to Volkswagen, Greenpeace said it believes VW "poses a threat to the absolute rights, such as the property, health, and life of our clients" by being responsible for the release of large amounts of planet-warming carbon dioxide.

Daimler said in a statement that it saw "no basis" for the groups' demand.

"If it comes to a lawsuit, we will use all legal means to defend ourselves," the company said.

Daimler said it is committed to the goals of the 2015 Paris climate accord and aims to make its entire vehicle fleet climate-neutral by 2039, more than a decade before current European Union rules require it.

BMW said it would examine the legal threat from the environmental groups, but said it was likewise already committed to the Paris accord's goal of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit). The luxury carmaker said it wants to put 10 million fully electric cars on the road over the coming decade. BMW sold more than 2.3 million cars in 2020.

Deutsche Umwelthilfe also sent a cease and desist demand to the oil and natural gas company Wintershall Dea, one of the investors in the Nord Stream 2 pipeline being built from Russia to Germany.
BAALZEBUB AND ASHTORETH 
Bitcoin miners and oil and gas execs mingled at a secretive meetup in Houston – here’s what they talked about
WIN/WIN


CRYPTO DECODED
PUBLISHED SAT, SEP 4 20218:33 AM EDT
MacKenzie Sigalos@KENZIESIGALOS

KEY POINTS

On a residential back street of Houston, in a 150,000 square-foot warehouse safeguarding high-end vintage cars, 200 oil and gas execs and bitcoin miners mingled, drank beer, and talked shop on a recent Wednesday night in August.

One big topic of discussion: Using “stranded” natural gas to power bitcoin mining rigs, which both reduces greenhouse gas emissions and makes money for the gas providers, as well as the miners.

Exercising political influence to educate legislators about bitcoin was also on the agenda.



Bitcoin enthusiasts, miners, and oil & gas execs gathered at a meetup in Houston to talk about the future of bitcoin mining.

HOUSTON – On a residential back street of Houston, in a 150,000 square-foot warehouse safeguarding high-end vintage cars, 200 oil and gas execs and bitcoin miners mingled, drank beer, and talked shop on a recent Wednesday night in August.

These two groups of people may seem as though they are at opposite ends of the professional and social spectrums, but their worlds are colliding – fast. As it turns out, the industries make for compatible bedfellows.

Just take Hayden Griffin Haby III, an oilman turned bitcoiner. The Texas native and father of three has spent 14 years in oil and gas, and he epitomizes what this monthly meetup is all about.

Haby started as a surface landman where he brokered land contracts, and later, ran his own oil company. But for the last nine months, he’s exclusively been in the business of mining bitcoin.

As Haby describes it, he was “orange pilled” in November 2020 – a term used to describe the process of convincing a fiat-minded person that they are missing out by not investing in bitcoin. A month later, he co-founded Limpia Creek Technologies, which powers bitcoin mining rigs with flared, vented, and stranded natural gas assets.

“When I heard that you could make this much money per MCF (a metric used to measure natural gas), instead of just burning it up into the atmosphere, thanks to the whole ‘bitcoin mining thing,’ I couldn’t look away,” Haby said. “You can’t unsee that.”

When China kicked out all its crypto miners this spring – an exodus which Haby calls the “Chexit” – that poured kerosene on the flames. “This is an opportunity we didn’t think was coming,” he said.

Haby tells CNBC they are already seeing demand rushing to Texas, and he is convinced that the state is poised to capture most of the Chinese hashrate looking for a new home on friendlier shores.

Bitcoin miners care most about finding cheap sources of electricity, so Texas – with its crypto-friendly politicians, deregulated power grid, and crucially, abundance of inexpensive power sources – is a virtually perfect fit. The union becomes even more harmonious when miners connect their rigs to otherwise stranded energy, like natural gas going to waste on oil fields across Texas.

“This is Texas, boys. We got what you need, so come on down,” said Haby. “We are sitting on the energy capital of the world.”

“I think Kevin Costner said it best: ‘If you build it, they will come,’” said Haby.



An underground meetup of bitcoin miners and oil & gas execs was held at a 150,000 square-foot warehouse safeguarding high-end vintage cars.

Mobilizing a movement

Parker Lewis is one of Texas’ de facto bitcoin ambassadors. Everyone knows him. Everyone likes him. And virtually any bitcoiner you ask refers to him as the future mayor of Austin.

Lewis is an executive at Unchained Capital, a bitcoin-native financial services firm. He isn’t in politics – yet — but he is hustling across the state of Texas to spread the good word on the world’s biggest cryptocurrency. In May, the Houston Bitcoin Meetup consisted of only 20 people in a fluorescent-lit conference room in an office. Then Lewis decided to get involved.

“I just knew Houston would be prime to explode because of the energy connection to mining – if we organized a good meetup,” Lewis told CNBC. “It’s also key to Texas being the bitcoin capital of the world.”

His efforts are paying off. Wednesday’s meetup drew more than 200 attendees from across the state of Texas, as well as California, Colorado, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New York, Australia and the UK.

The buzz was electric on Wednesday night. You had to shout to be heard. And no one in the room mentioned any cryptocurrency beside bitcoin. There was also an unmistakable air of stealth – and FOMO. The people who showed up to this event did so, at least in part, because they didn’t want to get left behind.

Capturing excess and otherwise wasted natural gas from drilling sites and then using that energy to mine bitcoin is still firmly in the category of avant-garde tech.

Haby, who’s affable and an open book on most things, clams up when it comes to sharing the location of his company’s mining sites. “West Texas” is as much as Haby would give CNBC, though if the name “Limpia Creek” is any indication, that would place them 100 miles due north of Big Bend National Park.

His secrecy was par for the course that evening.


Oilmen, turned bitcoin miners, Griffin Haby with Conner Murphree and Jordan Kuntz at one of their bitcoin mining sites in Texas.

Bitcoin miner Alejandro de la Torre was born in Spain, but he’s spent years minting bitcoin all over the world, most recently in China. When Beijing cracked down on all things crypto, De La Torre got a call from his boss at 3 A.M. telling him he had to go to Texas. He was in Austin the next day.

Since then, he’s been shipping his new-generation mining gear to the U.S. in bulk.

“It’s all through ships and from the Pacific side,” De La Torre told CNBC. “The port depends on the location of where the rigs will end up.”

That was as much as De La Torre would divulge, because, as he explains it, any further details about the destination, or the gear itself, could give his competitors an edge.

Bitcoin believers care a lot about privacy, as do the oil and gas guys. Some cited non-disclosure agreements as a reason to speak to CNBC in vague platitudes about business deals. Others were only willing to share their thoughts on the condition of anonymity. And some attendees worried about their job security should their employer find out they were there.

These weren’t tycoons -- they were mostly up-and-coming young execs, hungry to get ahead and make a name by taking a gamble on bitcoin mining.

Oil and gas meets bitcoin


For years, oil and gas companies have struggled with the problem of what to do when they accidentally hit a natural gas formation while drilling for oil. Whereas oil can easily be trucked out to a remote destination, gas delivery requires a pipeline.

If a drilling site is right next door to a pipeline, they chuck the gas in and take whatever cash the buyer on the other end is willing to pay that day. “There’s no choice. There’s no middle finger. Whatever gas comes out that day has to be sold,” explained Haby.

But if it’s 20 miles from a pipeline, things start to get more complicated.

More often than not, the gas well won’t be big enough to warrant the time and expense of building an entirely new pipeline. If a driller can’t immediately find a way to sell the stash of natural gas, most look to dispose of it on site.

One method is to vent it, which releases methane directly into the air – a poor choice for the environment, as its greenhouse effects are shown to be much stronger than carbon dioxide. A more environmentally friendly option is to flare it, which means actually lighting the gas on fire.

“Chemistry is amazing,” explained Adam Ortolf, who heads up business development in the U.S. for Upstream Data, a company that manufactures and supplies portable mining solutions for oil and gas facilities.

“When CH4, or methane, combusts, the only exhaust is CO2 and H2O vapor. That’s literally the same thing that comes out of my mouth when I exhale,” continued Ortolf.

But Ortolf points out, flares are only 75 to 90% efficient. “Even with a flare, some of the methane is being vented without being combusted,” he said.

This is when on-site bitcoin mining can prove to be especially impactful.

When the methane is run into an engine or generator, 100% of the methane is combusted and none of it leaks or vents into the air, according to Ortolf.

“But nobody will run it through a generator unless they can make money, because generators cost money to acquire and maintain,” he said. “So unless it’s economically sustainable, producers won’t internally combust the gas.”


A panel of bitcoin miners and oil & gas execs share what it’s like to mine bitcoin in Texas.


Bitcoin makes it economically sustainable for oil and gas companies to combust their methane rather than externally combust it with a flare.

“There is no such thing as stranded gas anymore,” said Haby.

But Ortolf has taken years to convince people that parking a trailer full of ASICs on an oil and gas field is a smart and financially sound idea.

“In 2018, I got laughed out of the room when I talked about mining bitcoin on flared gas,” said Ortolf. “The concept of bringing hydrocarbons to market without a counterparty was laughable.”

Fast forward three years, and business at Upstream, a company founded by lead engineer Steve Barbour, is booming. It now works with 140 bitcoin mines across North America.

“This is the best gift the oil and gas industry could’ve gotten,” said Ortolf. “They were leaving a lot of hydrocarbons on the table, but now, they’re no longer limited by geography to sell energy.”

It is also helping to curtail the overall carbon footprint of some of these oil and gas sites. Recent production stats show that in the U.S. alone about 1.5 billion cubic feet of natural gas is wasted on a daily basis. And these are just the reported numbers, so the actual figures are likely higher.

Meanwhile, bitcoin miners get what they want most: cheap electricity.

Voting out the haters

The thing about all these grand visions for bitcoin mining – to stay the course, it requires some manpower on Capitol Hill to safeguard its plan to scale. And right now, politicians in Washington are scrambling to figure out what and how to regulate cryptocurrencies and all the ancillary services that make up the wider ecosystem for digital currencies.

That’s why another big topic of conversation at the Houston Bitcoin Meeting was political activism.

“Who knows a staffer or a representative?” one member of the crowd posed to the group. At least half a dozen people raised their hands and one stepped up to confirm they would reach out to their contact in Senator Cruz’s office.

There was a sense of momentum in the audience. Several people made the point that the bitcoin contingent across the country had paralyzed a $1 trillion rubber-stamped, bipartisan bill, no small feat for a voting bloc which hitherto hadn’t been viewed as much of a threat on the Hill.

But it’s not just about being on the defensive for these tens of millions of voters and bitcoin faithful. They’re going on the offensive by working to install like-minded people into office so that they can do something “before they do it to us,” as one member of the audience said to the group. They’re also teaching veteran lawmakers about bitcoin, as many representatives don’t understand it.

“We need to target anyone who is anti-bitcoin. There are 45 million of us in America, and we are not silent,” said this same attendee.