Global heating is accelerating, warns scientist who sounded climate alarm in the 80s

Oliver Milman

THE GUARDIAN
Wed, November 1, 2023 

Global heating is accelerating faster than is currently understood and will result in a key temperature threshold being breached as soon as this decade, according to research led by James Hansen, the US scientist who first alerted the world to the greenhouse effect.

The Earth’s climate is more sensitive to human-caused changes than scientists have realized until now, meaning that a “dangerous” burst of heating will be unleashed that will push the world to be 1.5C hotter than it was, on average, in pre-industrial times within the 2020s and 2C hotter by 2050, the paper published on Thursday predicts.

Related: ‘We are damned fools’: scientist who sounded climate alarm in 80s warns of worse to come

This alarming speed-up of global heating, which would mean the world breaches the internationally agreed 1.5C threshold set out in the Paris climate agreement far sooner than expected, risks a world “less tolerable to humanity, with greater climate extremes”, according to the study led by Hansen, the former Nasa scientist who issued a foundational warning about climate change to the US Congress back in the 1980s.

Hansen said there was a huge amount of global heating “in the pipeline” because of the continued burning of fossil fuels and Earth being “very sensitive” to the impacts of this – far more sensitive than the best estimates laid out by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“We would be damned fools and bad scientists if we didn’t expect an acceleration of global warming,” Hansen said. “We are beginning to suffer the effect of our Faustian bargain. That is why the rate of global warming is accelerating.”

The question of whether the rate of global heating is accelerating has been keenly debated among scientists this year amid months of record-breaking temperatures.

Hansen points to an imbalance between the energy coming in from the sun versus outgoing energy from the Earth that has “notably increased”, almost doubling over the past decade. This ramp-up, he cautioned, could result in disastrous sea level rise for the world’s coastal cities.

The new research, comprising peer-reviewed work of Hansen and more than a dozen other scientists, argues that this imbalance, the Earth’s greater climate sensitivity and a reduction in pollution from shipping, which has cut the amount of airborne sulphur particles that reflect incoming sunlight, are causing an escalation in global heating.

“We are in the early phase of a climate emergency,” the paper warns. “Such acceleration is dangerous in a climate system that is already far out of equilibrium. Reversing the trend is essential – we must cool the planet – for the sake of preserving shorelines and saving the world’s coastal cities.”

To deal with this crisis, Hansen and his colleagues advocate for a global carbon tax as well as, more controversially, efforts to intentionally spray sulphur into the atmosphere in order to deflect heat away from the planet and artificially lower the world’s temperature.

So-called “solar geoengineering” has been widely criticized for threatening potential knock-on harm to the environment, as well as over the risks of a whiplash heating effect should the injections of sulphur cease, but is backed by a minority of scientists who warn that the world is running out of time and options to avoid catastrophic temperature growth.

Hansen said that while cutting emissions should be the highest priority, “thanks to the slowness in developing adequate carbon-free energies and failure to put a price on carbon emissions, it is now unlikely that we can get there – a bright future for young people – from here without temporary help from solar radiation management”.

This year is almost certain to be the hottest ever reliably recorded, with temperatures in September described as “gobsmackingly bananas” by one climate researcher. A report this week found that the carbon budget to limit the world to 1.5C of heating is now nearly exhausted due to the continued burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

But while scientists are clear about this being part of an upward trend of global heating, there is as yet no agreement that this trend is accelerating.

Michael Mann, a climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, said that Hansen and his co-authors are “very much out of the mainstream” in identifying an acceleration in surface heating that has “continued at a remarkably constant rate for the past few decades”. Mann said that cuts to shipping emissions have only a tiny effect on the climate system and that calls for solar geoengineering are misguided and a “very slippery slope”.

Bärbel Hönisch, a paleoclimatologist at Columbia University, said she had “some reservations” about the certainties expressed in Hansen’s research about the state of the Earth’s climate millions of years ago, which helps predict the consequences of warming today. “I’d be a little more reserved, but they may well be correct – it’s a nicely written paper,” she said. “It raises a lot of questions that will trigger a lot of research that will bring our understanding forward.”

Some other researchers are less skeptical of Hansen’s dire warning of supercharged global heating, highlighting his previous prescient warnings about the climate crisis that have largely played out due to decades of inaction to stem the use of fossil fuels.

“I think [Hansen’s] contention that the IPCC has underestimated climate sensitivity somewhat will prove to be correct,” said Rob Jackson, a Stanford University scientist and chair of the Global Carbon Project. “It’s hard to know what’s unlikely any more in terms of warming. No fossil fuel has declined in use yet globally, not even coal.

“I think Hansen’s pessimism is warranted. He stood up 35 years ago and sounded the alarm – and the world mostly ignored him, and all of us.”

Experts underestimate how fast Earth is warming, top climate scientist says in new study

Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
Updated Thu, November 2, 2023 

A woman is silhouetted against the setting sun as triple-digit heat indexes continued in the Midwest Sunday, Aug. 20, 2023, in Kansas City, Mo.

Legendary climate scientist James Hansen, in a new study published Thursday, predicts that the Earth's temperature rise will accelerate in the upcoming decades and will reach 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial temperatures by 2050. This is significantly more than the most common estimates from groups such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, typically considered the planet's gold standard for climate forecasts.

According to Hansen's new study, the revised prediction is due to previous underestimations of the effects of greenhouse gases on the atmosphere, along with the effects of aerosols, which have acted to mask some of global warming.

Although the IPCC and other experts acknowledge the impact that aerosols have on the climate system – for example, NASA says that "if not for aerosol pollution, Earth would be even warmer than it already is" – Hansen and his co-authors say that that impact is "underestimated."

Specifically, Hansen told USA TODAY that the study's main point is that the Earth's climate is "more sensitive" to both greenhouse gases and air pollution than the IPCC realized.

Why does 2 degrees matter?

According to NASA, a "2-degree rise in global temperatures is considered a critical threshold above which dangerous and cascading effects of human-generated climate change will occur."

Hansen and his co-authors write in the paper that "impacts on people and nature will accelerate" as global warming increases toward the 2-degree threshold.

Beyond the temperature increase, the risks of weather and climate catastrophes also rise, as heat waves and death from extreme weather dramatically increase, according to an earlier United Nations scientific report.

In the American West, extreme fire weather will likely be more intense and last longer, NASA reports.

Exceptionally warm weather moved into the upper Midwest on Aug. 22 as a pedestrian walks at sunset in Oconomowoc, Wis. Climate scientist James Hansen predicts that the Earth's temperature rise will accelerate in the upcoming decades.

Coastal cities threatened by sea level rise

NASA said that if warming reaches 2 degrees Celsius, more than 70% of Earth's coastlines will see sea level rise greater than 0.66 feet, "resulting in increased coastal flooding, beach erosion, salinization of water supplies and other impacts on humans and ecological systems."

We "must avoid 2 degrees global warming, which would otherwise result in the loss of our coastal cities near the end of this century," Hansen told USA TODAY.
Earth's climate 'more sensitive than usually assumed'

Using improved paleoclimate data, Hansen's new study finds that the Earth's climate "is more sensitive than usually assumed" to both carbon dioxide and aerosols.

The authors conclude that much of the expected greenhouse gas warming in the past century has been offset by the cooling effect of human-made aerosols – fine airborne particles found in air pollution. According to the study, aerosols have declined in amount since 2010 because of reduced air pollution in China and global restrictions on aerosol emissions from ships.

"This aerosol reduction is good for human health, as particulate air pollution kills several million people per year and adversely affects the health of many more people," Hansen said. "However, aerosol reduction is now beginning to unmask greenhouse gas warming that aerosol cooling hid."

The study authors term aerosol cooling a “Faustian bargain” because, as humanity eventually reduces air pollution, payment in the form of increased warming comes due.
What should we do?

The study recommends three actions humanity can undertake to avoid the 2-degree rise in global temperature:

(1) A global increasing price on greenhouse gas emissions accompanied by the development of abundant, affordable, dispatchable clean energy.

(2) East-West cooperation in a way that accommodates developing world needs.

(3) Conduct research and development for temporary actions to address Earth’s now enormous energy imbalance.

“We live on a planet with a climate characterized by delayed response, which is a recipe for intergenerational injustice,” Hansen concludes. “Young people need to understand this situation and the actions needed to assure a bright future for themselves and their children.”

The new study, "Global warming in the pipeline," appeared in the journal Oxford Open Climate Change, which is published by Oxford University Press.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Global warming to accelerate faster than expected, James Hansen says

The planet is heating up faster than predicted, says scientist who sounded climate alarm in the 1980s

Laura Paddison, CNN
Thu, November 2, 2023

The planet is on track to heat up at a much faster rate than scientists have previously predicted, meaning a key global warming threshold could be breached this decade, according to a new study co-authored by James Hansen — the US scientist widely credited with being the first to publicly sound the alarm on the climate crisis in the 1980s.

In the paper, published Thursday in the journal Oxford Open Climate Change, Hansen and more than a dozen other scientists used a combination of paleoclimate data, including data from polar ice cores and tree rings, climate models and observational data, to conclude that the Earth is much more sensitive to climate change than previously understood.

“We are in the early phase of a climate emergency,” according to the report, which warns a surge of heat “already in the pipeline” will rapidly push global temperatures beyond what has been predicted, resulting in warming that exceeds 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels in the 2020s, and above 2 degrees Celsius before 2050.

The findings add to a slew of recent research that concludes the world is hurtling toward 1.5 degrees, a threshold beyond which the impacts of climate change — including extreme heat, drought and floods — will become significantly harder for humans to adapt to.

“The 1.5-degree limit is deader than a doornail,” said Hansen on a call with reporters. “And the 2-degree limit can be rescued, only with the help of purposeful actions.”

Some other scientists, however, have cast doubt on the paper’s conclusions that climate change is accelerating faster than models predict.

Hansen, a director at the Earth Institute at Columbia University, is a renowned climate scientist whose 1988 testimony to the US Senate first brought global attention to climate change.

He has previously warned that the Earth has an energy imbalance, as more energy comes in through sunlight than leaves through heat radiating into space.

The resulting excess heat is equivalent to 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs a day, with most of the energy absorbed by the ocean, Hansen’s research found a decade ago.

US scientist James Hansen, pictured in 2013, is credited as the first to publicly raise the alarm about climate change in the 1980s. 

- CARL DE SOUZA/AFP/Getty Images

In this recent paper, Hansen and his co-authors say the energy imbalance has now increased, in part because of successful efforts to tackle particle air pollution, especially in China and through global restrictions on shipping pollution. While this kind of pollution is a serious health hazard, it also has a cooling effect, as particles reflect sunlight away from the Earth.

The imbalance is set to cause accelerated global warming, bringing disastrous consequences, according to the paper, including rapid sea level rise and the potential shutdown of vital ocean currents within this century.

Hansen said he is particularly concerned about the melting of the Antarctic ice sheet and especially the Thwaites Glacier, which acts as a cork, holding back the ice on land and providing an important defense against catastrophic sea level rise.

But the warming is not necessarily locked in, according to the paper, which calls for “extraordinary actions.”

Measures it recommends include taxing carbon pollution, increasing nuclear power to “complement renewable energies” and strong action from developed countries to help developing countries move to low carbon energy. While the highest priority is to drastically reduce planet-heating pollution, this alone will not be enough, the report found.

“If we’re going to keep sea level close to where it is, we actually have to cool the planet,” said Hansen.

One way to do this, the report suggests, is solar geoengineering. This controversial technology aims to cool temperatures by reflecting sunlight away from the Earth, or allowing more heat to escape into space. That can be done through injecting aerosols into the atmosphere or spraying clouds with salt particles to make them more reflective, for example.

Critics warn of unforeseen consequences, including impacts on rainfall and monsoons, as well as “termination shock” if geoengineering were suddenly halted and pent-up warming released.

But Hansen said it should be considered. “Rather than describe those efforts as ‘threatening geoengineering,’ we have to recognize that we are geoengineering the planet right now,” he said, by burning large amounts of planet-heating fossil fuels.

The paper’s findings are alarming and come as the world is experiencing unprecedented heat. This year is on course to be the hottest on record, with every month from June onwards breaking records for the hottest such month.

But while science is clear that the rate of global warming is increasing, the idea that it is accelerating beyond what models predict is controversial.

The findings “are very much out of the mainstream,” said Michael Mann, a leading climate scientist at the University of Pennsylvania.

While the Earth’s surface and its oceans are warming, the data does not support claims that the rate is accelerating, he told CNN in an email. “As I like to say, the truth is bad enough!” Mann said. “There is no evidence that the models are under-predicting human-caused warming.”

He also cast doubt on the role of pollution reduction in warming trends, saying the total impact is very small, and warned that solar geoengineering is “unprecedented” and “potentially very dangerous.”

“Whether or not the 1.5 degrees Celsius target is reachable is a matter of policy, not climate physics, at this point,” Mann said.

But Hansen rejected criticisms of the research, saying it’s based on hard numbers and straightforward physics.

“This is not fringe, this is the correct physics and it is the real world,” he said, “and it sometimes takes the community a while to catch on.”

James Hansen study warns Earth warming faster than previously thought

Patrick Hilsman
Thu, November 2, 2023 

The Earth's temperature could be increasing faster than was previously understood, according to a new research paper from James Hansen, the scientist who played a major role in raising public awareness about climate change in the 1980s. File Photo by John Angelillo/UPI


Nov. 2 (UPI) -- A new study led by James Hansen, a scientist responsible for raising public consciousness about climate change in the 1980s, suggests global temperatures are increasing faster than expected.

The study suggests global temperatures will reach a crucial 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels by the year 2050, faster than was previously expected by scientific consensus.

Hansen's study implies that the highly regarded Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which is often used as a reference point for climate study, underestimated the urgency of the impact of global climate change.

NASA estimates that a global increase of 2 degrees Celsius could cause major flooding along Earth's coastlines.

"Our principal motivation in this paper is concern that IPCC has underestimated climate sensitivity and understated the threat of large sea level rise and shutdown of ocean overturning circulations," Hansen's researchers said in the paper.

The paper suggests that reductions in certain kinds of pollution, notably sulfur-based pollutants that reflect sunlight, may have accelerated the heating of the Earth.

The researchers used data from ice core samples to evaluate past greenhouse gas quantities.

"Air bubbles in Antarctic ice cores -- trapped as snow piled up and compressed into ice -- preserve a record of long-lived GHGs for at least 800,000 years. Isotopic composition of the ice provides a measure of temperature in and near Antarctica," researchers said.

The paper advises that climate change is still mitigable.

"Warming in the pipeline need not appear. We can take actions that slow and reverse global warming; indeed, we suggest that such actions are needed to avoid disastrous consequences for humanity and nature," the researchers said.

The study suggests that while the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions is crucial to combating climate change, it is insufficient without being paired with other actions.

"Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly as practical has highest priority, but that policy alone is now inadequate and must be complemented by additional actions to affect Earth's energy balance," researchers said.


NASA scientist issues grim warning 35 years after his original prediction: ‘[W]e knew it was coming’
Stephen Proctor
Wed, November 1, 2023



James Hansen, who was a NASA climate scientist when he first warned the world that the planet was heating in 1988, is back with another stark warning — this time hoping for different results.

When Hansen appeared before the United States Senate in June of 1988, the world had just experienced the warmest first five months of any year in recorded history, The New York Times reported at the time.

Up until that time, scientists had been cautious about blaming the warming of the planet on pollutants put into the air by human activity. But Hansen told the committee that NASA was 99% certain that the warming trend was caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide and other gases in the atmosphere.

Sadly, the problem has continuously gotten worse worldwide in the decades since. And Hansen has continued his fight to bring attention to the issue. In 2011, he was one of 140 people to be arrested while protesting the construction of the controversial Keystone XL pipeline.

In a recent statement released by Hansen alongside two other scientists, Hansen predicted the warming of the planet to accelerate in the coming years, musing about a “new climate frontier.”

“There’s a lot more in the pipeline, unless we reduce the greenhouse gas amounts,” Hansen told the Guardian. “These superstorms are a taste of the storms of my grandchildren. We are headed wittingly into the new reality — we knew it was coming.”

Speaking of the heat waves that have ravaged much of the Northern Hemisphere recently, Hansen told the Guardian he cannot help but feel “a sense of disappointment that we scientists did not communicate more clearly and that we did not elect leaders capable of a more intelligent response.”

Of the lack of response by humanity as a whole, Hansen added, “It means we are damned fools. We have to taste it to believe it.”

Though it’s been 35 years since Hansen first warned the world in Senate testimony about what we’re now seeing with our own eyes, there is reason for optimism.

The move away from dirty energy is kicking into high gear. Sales of electric cars continue to rise, with an expected growth of 35% from 2022 to 2023, electric boats with solar-powered charging stations are now available, and grassroots efforts to make renewable energy more widely available are underway.

Toyota raises pay across the board in response to historic UAW deals

Chris Teague
Wed, November 1, 2023 


The UAW and the Detroit three automakers have reached tentative agreements, and while the two sides haven’t officially voted on the deals, they’re already impacting the rest of the auto industry. The pay raises and other benefits doled out by American companies have put pressure on the non-unionized automakers, leading Toyota to increase pay at all its U.S. facilities.

Toyota VP for corporate resources Chris Reynolds told Axios, “We value our employees and their contributions, and we show it by offering robust compensation packages that we continually review to ensure that we remain competitive within the automotive industry.” Early reports note that production workers got a $2.94 pay increase and skilled trades workers got a $3.70 bump, but a Toyota spokesperson declined to confirm those numbers.

Toyota’s factories aren’t unionized, but UAW president Shawn Fain aims to change that. He’s repeatedly hinted at wanting to draw in non-union auto workers, saying earlier this year, "Non-union auto workers are not the enemy. Those are our future union family. We’re going to organize non-union autoworkers everywhere. Together, we’re going to stand up and take on corporate greed.”

The UAW’s influence had been on the decline for decades, but these recent negotiations have given it a significant boost. Fain and union leaders came to the negotiating table with a tough but risky strategy that ultimately paid off. Workers will see immediate pay raises of double-digit percentages, and they will regain cost-of-living pay increases that the union lost more than a decade ago.

UAW officials also got a five-year deal, longer than most in recent history. As Axios reported, that will give the union a longer runway to attract workers from other automakers, including Tesla, Toyota and perhaps even the Korean automakers. Either way, Toyota’s pay raises are likely just the start, and they will add to the pressure created by the union’s deals. That means we’ll probably see similar moves by the other non-union automakers in the near future as they seek to retain workers and stay competitive.

Toyota to raise wages following UAW deals with 3 major automakers

Julia Shapero
Thu, November 2, 2023 


Toyota said it will raise wages at its U.S. factories just days after the United Auto Workers (UAW) union reached a tentative agreement with the three major automakers to suspend a weekslong strike.

The Japanese automaker will reportedly increase wages for hourly manufacturing workers at the top rate by about 9 percent Jan. 1, according to Reuters. It will also cut the amount of time it takes workers to reach the top wage rate to four years and increase paid time off.

“At Toyota, we take great pride in showing respect for people,” Chris Reynolds, the executive vice president and chief administrative officer of Toyota Motor North America, said in a statement.

“We value our employees and their contributions, and we show it by offering robust compensation packages that we continually review to ensure that we remain competitive within the automotive industry,” he added.

UAW wins back Obama-era concessions from financial crisis, as strike nears end

The announcement follows the UAW’s decision on Monday to suspend its strike against the three major U.S. automakers — Ford, General Motors (GM) and Stellantis — after reaching a tentative deal with GM.

GM was the last of the three to strike a deal with the union, agreeing to largely the same terms as Ford and Stellantis. All three companies agreed to a 25 percent general wage increase over the life of a 4 1/2-year contract, including an immediate 11 percent raise.

They also agreed to reinstate cost-of-living adjustments and to cut the time it takes workers to reach the top wage rate to three years.

As the strike showed signs of winding down Sunday, UAW President Shawn Fain signaled that the union plans to turn its attention to organizing at other automakers.

“One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before,” Fain said during livestreamed remarks. “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the big three. It will be the big five or big six.”

UAW gears up to organize Toyota, other non-union automakers

Joseph White and David Shepardson
Thu, November 2, 2023 



DETROIT/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Leaders of the United Auto Workers signaled the next step in their campaign to capitalize on the union's success in bargaining with the Detroit Three: launching organizing drives at Toyota, Tesla and other nonunion U.S. auto factories.

"What could @Toyota workers win if they joined the #StandUpUAW campaign?" UAW organizing director Brian O. Shepherd posted on social media on Wednesday, commenting after Toyota agreed to boost wages for U.S. workers by 9%, and to cut in half the time it takes new hires to reach the top pay rate.

Other foreign automakers are reviewing recent auto-sector wage hikes. Honda told Reuters it is evaluating the recent UAW deals with the Detroit Three automakers and will remain competitive.

UAW President Shawn Fain is expected to deliver a video address at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT) on Thursday to outline details of the union's new contract with Stellantis.

Fain has used recent video addresses to telegraph the union's determination to organize workers at Toyota, Tesla and other nonunion U.S. automakers, using the record wage increases won in tentative agreements with Stellantis, General Motors and Ford.

"One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before," Fain said on Sunday. "When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three, but with the Big Five or Big Six."

UAW Region 8 director Tim Smith, whose territory covers many nonunion auto factories in the southern United States, said workers at those plants have been reaching out to the UAW.

"You cannot believe the calls coming in," Smith told Reuters.

UAW staff are keeping track of the calls, many from Toyota's sprawling assembly operation in Georgetown, Kentucky. The Toyota complex is not far from one of the UAW's largest local unions, which represents Ford's Kentucky Truck and Louisville Assembly plants.

Smith said it was important workers consider the total wages and benefits and not just the wage rate. "We got them a raise," he said. "If (Toyota workers) come calling, which they have, we're going to educate them and be there for them."

The UAW has tried and failed for years to organize nonunion U.S. auto factories, most of them built by Asian and European legacy automakers in southern U.S. states where so-called right to work labor laws make it optional for workers to pay union dues.

Recently, the union tried and failed to win enough support from workers at Tesla's Fremont, California, factory to hold an organizing vote. Tesla's Fremont plant was once a UAW shop when it was jointly owned by GM and Toyota and known as NUMMI.

"Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?" Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk tweeted in 2018.

The UAW filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board over that tweet, and the NLRB ruled the tweet violated labor laws prohibiting management threats against workers for supporting unionization. Earlier this year, a U.S. appeals court upheld the NLRB ruling.

WIDENING COST GAPS

The UAW's organizing efforts from 2015 through 2020 were hindered by a federal investigation of corruption in the UAW's top ranks.

Fain earlier this year won the UAW presidency by vowing wide-ranging reform.

Toyota's move earlier this week to raise wages is in line with the strategy the Japanese automaker and other nonunion automakers have used to keep UAW organizers at bay.

Nonunion automakers have kept hourly wages close to the UAW rates at the Detroit Three. But they have lower labor costs overall because they pay less for health and retirement benefits than the unionized automakers. They also use more temporary workers, who are paid less.

The result is that average hourly labor costs in total at foreign automakers are $55 an hour, compared with $64 an hour under the old UAW contract, Ford sources estimated ahead of the new contract agreements. U.S. labor costs at Tesla are estimated at $45 to $50.

The gaps will get wider, assuming UAW workers at the Detroit Three ratify agreements that call for increasing pay for veteran workers by 25%, restoring cost-of-living allowances and boosting pay for temporary workers by as much as 150%.

(Reporting by Joseph White in Detroit and David Shepardson in Washington; Additional reporting by Ben Klayman in Detroit; Editing by Matthew Lewis)

The UAW won big against Detroit automakers. Unionizing Tesla and Toyota will be tougher

Nathaniel Meyersohn, CNN
Wed, November 1, 2023

The United Auto Workers hopes the significant wage and benefit gains in tentative agreements with Ford, General Motors and Stellantis, the parent of Jeep and Chrysler, will spark unionization efforts throughout the US auto industry.

But the UAW’s ambitious plans to organize Tesla and other non-union automakers face steep odds.

“One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we’ve never organized before,” UAW President Shawn Fain said Sunday, signaling that the union plans to marshal the new contracts at the Detroit automakers to win over other workers. “When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won’t just be with the Big Three. It will be the Big Five or Big Six.”

In the 1970s, the UAW had 1.5 million members. Today, its membership has dwindled to 380,000, even while American automobile manufacturing has surged in recent decades. To grow, the UAW will need to gain a foothold at non-union automakers, which produce more than half of the cars assembled in the United States.

Yet big wins at the Detroit automakers won’t change the significant obstacles the UAW must surmount to unionize foreign-owned auto plants in the South — including Toyota, Hyundai, Honda, Volvo, Mercedes, BMW, Nissan and Volkswagen — and Tesla, which has non-union plants in California and Texas.

These companies have been elusive targets for the union in the past. In order to make progress, the UAW will have to overcome fierce management resistance, employee surveillance, unfavorable labor laws and political leaders in the South who are hostile to unions.

“This is a sizable victory. I wouldn’t minimize that,” said Harry Katz, a professor at Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “I just don’t know that it’s going to overcome all the difficulties facing organized and un-organized labor.”

Even if union efforts fail, however, the contract agreements could force non-union automakers to preemptively increase workers’ wages and benefits to try stave off union pressure.

Historically, UAW talks with the Detroit automakers have been closely watched by non-union automakers and suppliers.

Already, Toyota has raised wages in the wake of the UAW’s tentative settlements, which raise the top wage to more than $40 an hour and increase starting wages to more than $28 an hour.

Pro-union publication Labor Notes reported Tuesday that Toyota workers got pay increases of $2.94 to a maximum of $34.80 per hour for production workers and $3.70 to a maximum of $43.20 per hour for skilled trades employees. (Toyota confirmed it raised wages, but did not say by how much.)
Anti-union companies

The UAW will have to overcome weak protections for labor organizing in the United States and automakers’ aggressive tactics to defeat unions.

Companies often try to persuade workers against voting in favor of a union, hiring “union-avoidance” consultants in an attempt to dissuade employees and weaken workers’ unionization efforts. Even if a majority of workers casts ballots in favor of a union, negotiations on pay, benefits and other areas can drag on for years — and the longer companies can stall, the better it is for them, and worse it is for workers.

Employers also generally face weak remedies for violations of workers’ rights to organize under the National Labor Relations Act. Employers do not face monetary penalties for illegally retaliating against workers for exercising their rights, and workers do not receive compensatory damages when they face illegal retaliation.

“It’s very difficult to organize in the face of serious and significant management opposition,” said Thomas Kochan, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Many automakers in recent decades have moved to the South, drawn by cheaper labor, fewer regulations, tax incentives and anti-union laws. Every state in the South has “right to work laws,” which allow workers to opt out of paying fees to a union at their workplace, even if they benefit from union bargaining agreements, undercutting a union’s financial resources to strategize and collectively bargain.

Tesla's Fremont, California, factory is likely to be a target of union efforts. - Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Workers have also outright rejected the UAW in recent years at Nissan and Volkswagen in Tennessee; Toyota in Kentucky; Mercedes-Benz in Alabama; and other foreign-owned plants in the South, sometimes with help from Republican state officials. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee in 2019 visited Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga to encourage workers to reject the union. Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, now a contender for president, said in 2015 she was a “union buster” when recruiting automakers to the state.

President Joe Biden, in contrast, became the first President to speak at a UAW picket line during the recent strike, when he briefly joined a protest in Michigan.

As automakers race to build electric vehicles, though, many are opening new facilities in the South. The region has picked up 66% of planned EV jobs, according to a recent report by the Environmental Defense Fund.

Pay at southern auto factories is lower than top UAW wages, according to a study this year by researchers at Alabama A&M University and Jackson State University, but the wages are typically higher than other industries in the South.

This means that auto companies have more leverage over their employees if they threaten to leave, Kochan said.

Companies “will argue, with some basis of reality, that jobs in their plants are higher paying than workers can achieve in other jobs in the South,” he said.
The Fain factor

Despite the challenges, the UAW’s seeming victories against the Detroit automakers put the union in its best position in years to mount successful campaigns at foreign automakers, experts say.

“These settlements send a strong message to non-union workers in other automakers and across the auto supply chain that this is what a strong union can do for you,” Kochan said. “There’s going to be more organizing on the basis of these settlements and the UAW’s intent to try to recoup organizing losses.”

The UAW for years has been plagued by corruption, which has hurt its ability to organize new workers. But it could be harder for anti-union forces to make that argument against Shawn Fain, who ran on an anti-corruption platform, and the current UAW leadership.

“Fain will bring incredible energy and an inspired organizing staff and will no doubt build on workers in the transplants who have been following what he’s won in Detroit,” said Harley Shaiken, a professor emeritus at the University of California, Berkley. “All that said, it could prove to be a long uphill fight.”

UAW President Shawn Fain, center left, stands for pictures with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, bottom center, after a rally for striking workers in Chicago last month. - John J. Kim/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service/Getty Images

The UAW could have the strongest shot unionizing Volkswagen in Chattanooga, Tennessee, labor experts say. The union lost a close vote there in 2019.

It may be easier for UAW to organize Volkswagen and other European automakers like BMW and Mercedes-Benz than automakers from Asia, experts say.

In Europe, automakers are unionized, and European labor leaders could push the automakers to remain neutral on US organizing efforts. European companies may be more amenable to US unions due to their deep and mutually beneficial experience with them. Union representatives at Volkswagen, for example, are on the company board.

UAW also has its sights set on Tesla, which controls around 60% of the US electric vehicle market.

The UAW has tried and failed to organize at Tesla, led by Elon Musk, in the past. Musk, the world’s richest man, is an outspoken opponent of unions and the National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly cited Tesla and Musk for illegal or improper anti-unionizing activities . Last year, the NLRB said it was unlawful for Tesla to prohibit employees from wearing shirts bearing union logos, and the agency directed Musk to delete a 2018 tweet saying employees would lose their stock options if they formed a union.

Employees at Tesla’s Fremont California factory have formed an organizing committee with the UAW, Bloomberg reported, in what could be a first step to trying to form a union again. (A UAW representative declined to comment to CNN.)

“Tesla will be the biggest and most public battle, given what we can expect as all-out resistance from Elon Musk,” Shaiken said.
Calling on Biden

Union advocates want President Joe Biden to help the UAW advance its efforts at non-union companies receiving federal funds.

Now that the UAW has tentative agreements at the Detroit automakers, some union advocates are calling on Biden to use his administration’s influence to set standards at non-union electric vehicle plants in the South.

The Biden administration is giving federal incentives to speed up automakers’ transition to EVs. Union organizers and supporters want the Biden administration to push automakers that receive federal funding to adopt a position of neutrality on unions and negotiate a set of baseline standards.

“The Big 3 and other automakers are locating EV manufacturing plants, battery and other supply-line facilities in rural, Black communities in the South,” a group of more than 60 Black elected officials wrote to Biden this week. “With the influx of transplant companies…the Biden Administration must do more to ensure the standards of the current UAW agreements are the norm, not the exception.”

Erica Smiley, executive director of the advocacy group Jobs with Justice, which helped organize the letter to Biden, said the UAW must expand organizing in the South, a region that is now crucial in the auto industry.

If the union fails to expand, the rise of non-union labor in the region could undercut the UAW’s strong contracts with the Detroit automakers, Smiley warned.

“This isn’t the time to say ‘we’ve won’ and move on,” she said. “The strength of this agreement won’t be widely felt and will be quickly undermined if the rest of the industry isn’t held to higher standards.”




Some Tesla workers say they'd never work in a unionized factory, even as Ford and GM workers are set to get a major pay boost

Grace Kay
Updated Thu, November 2, 2023 

The UAW wants to unionize more US automakers after reaching tentative agreements with the Big Three.


A major Tesla factory is reported to have a UAW organizing committee that's speaking with workers.


Some Tesla workers said they wouldn't join a unionized company, and the UAW would struggle at Tesla.

The United Auto Workers might have set its sights on Tesla, but some workers at the EV company told Insider they'd be hard-pressed to join a union.

After reaching tentative agreements with Detroit automakers, the union's president, Shawn Fain, said last week the UAW was aiming to expand its reach. And what better target than the most valuable car company in the world?

Musk, for his part, has in the past publicly invited the UAW to hold a union election at Tesla, expressing confidence that his workers would vote against organizing and saying that "former UAW members who work at Tesla are not huge fans of UAW." Tesla employs over 127,000 workers across the globe, including over 20,000 at its Fremont factory in California.

With the new UAW contracts, Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis are set to spend up to $35 more per hour than Tesla on labor costs, including hourly wages and benefits. Even before the 36-day strike, Ford and GM already spent more than $20 more per hour on factory workers than Tesla, analysts said. Musk said on X in September that Tesla paid more than the UAW and Tesla workers could also benefit from the company's employee stock offerings, saying that "quite a few of our factory techs who work on the line have become millionaires."

Yet even as the UAW made headlines this year and some experts speculated that Tesla could benefit from the autoworkers strike, nine Tesla workers told Insider the strike was far from a topic of conversation at Tesla — and few factory workers were even aware of the UAW's initial demands.

Despite the pay difference, seven Tesla workers told Insider they wouldn't want to work in a unionized factory and predicted that the UAW would struggle to find its footing at the EV company. The workers spoke under the condition of anonymity in order to avoid potential repercussions for speaking publicly about their employer.
Tesla's 'startup culture'

"Tesla still very much has a startup culture, and that's a lot different than a union culture," one Tesla worker at the Fremont factory told Insider. "I think people join Tesla because they want to work hard. They want to push themselves. They want to find ways to stand out by going above and beyond, and that's difficult to do in a union."

Two Tesla workers previously told Insider they'd joined the company's factory line straight out of engineering school in hopes they could work their way up to an engineering role at Elon Musk's company. But even internal applications at Tesla are highly competitive, and the workers said they had yet to make their way off the factory floor. The carmaker has no shortage of interest, with over 3.6 million people applying to work at the company last year.

Three workers said the company also probably knew how to weed out pro-union employees.

"That kind of person probably wouldn't even make it through the interview process," a Tesla engineer said.

The electric-car maker and its CEO aren't exactly known for being union-friendly. The company has been accused of prohibiting workers from wearing union paraphernalia and unlawfully terminating employees who sought to unionize. Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board alleged that Tesla laid off dozens of workers at its Buffalo, New York, site after the employees had announced plans to unionize. Similarly, in 2021, the NLRB ruled that Tesla and Musk "unlawfully threatened" the workers hoping to unionize in 2017 and ordered the company to rehire a union-activist worker it had fired even after Tesla attempted to appeal the decision. The group said Tesla "interrogated" employees involved in the effort and ordered Musk to delete a tweet it deemed "anti-union."

Tesla has never held a union vote at any of its US facilities. But the German union IG Metall said last month that some Tesla workers at the company's Brandenburg plant had joined its union.

Tesla has never held a union vote at any of its US facilities.Christian Marquard/Getty Images

"I would say no one talks about unionizing, but it also might be an unfair gauge," another Fremont worker said. "It's not like it's something you would talk about openly at Tesla."

Still, other workers told Insider they wouldn't jump ship even for a better pay package at a unionized company.

"I think for a lot of the people that work at Tesla, it's not just a job," an additional Fremont factory worker said. "People are proud of what they do here. They believe in the mission of the company."

Nonetheless, there are some signs that some workers within Tesla are at least exploring the option of unionizing. Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Tesla's Fremont factory had a UAW organizing committee that was talking to workers.

Two Tesla factory workers told Insider they wished they could be paid more for their work and would be open to some of the benefits of a union, especially when it comes to combatting the high cost of living near Tesla's factories.

"I don't think anyone would think twice about getting paid more," an Austin worker said. "At the end of the day, you've got to take care of your family."

Fain has previously said Tesla's pay is "pitiful" and workers are just getting by so that "greedy people like Elon Musk can build more rocket ships."

"Workers in this country have got to decide if they want a better life for themselves, instead of scraping to get by paycheck to paycheck, while everybody else walks away with the loot," the UAW boss said in an interview in September.

A spokesperson for Tesla did not respond to a request for comment from Insider ahead of publication. In September, Musk said the UAW's initial strike demands would drive the Big Three automakers "bankrupt."

Business Insider Found Seven Tesla Workers Who Aren't Sure About A Union So That Settles That

Steve DaSilva
Thu, November 2, 2023 

Photo: David Butow/Corbis (Getty Images)

The United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three earlier this year led to some massive — and well-deserved — gains for the workers that actually build GM, Ford, and Stellantis’s cars. The folks over at Tesla, though, appear uninterested in such benefits — at least, according to the handful that spoke with Business Insider, who are kind of hoping their personal hustle will get noticed by .

Business Insider leads with the fact that UAW workers will earn $35 more per hour in total compensation — inclusive of pay and benefits — than their compatriots at Tesla. Oddly, this is couched as a cost to the company rather than a benefit to the workers, but such is the world of business (I went to college for it, I should know). The piece goes on to quote some Tesla workers about just why they want to do more work for less money:

The company also likely knows how to weed out pro-union employees, three workers said.

“That kind of person probably wouldn’t even make it through the interview process,” a Tesla engineer said.

The electric-car maker and its CEO aren’t exactly known for being union-friendly. The company has been accused of prohibiting workers from wearing union paraphernalia and unlawfully terminating employees who sought to unionize. Earlier this year, the National Labor Relations Board alleged that Tesla laid off dozens of workers at its Buffalo New York site after the employees had announced plans to unionize. Similarly in 2021, the NLRB ruled that Tesla and Musk “unlawfully threatened” the workers hoping to unionize in 2017 and ordered the company to rehire a union activist worker it had fired even after Tesla attempted to appeal the decision. The group said Tesla “interrogated” employees involved in the effort and ordered Musk to delete a tweet it deemed “anti-union.”

Tesla’s attitude towards unions has been antagonistic to say the least. Layoffs at the company have long been accused of really being thinly veiled anti-union activity, and that trend of behavior has never stopped. Are Tesla’s workers simply too hard-working, too eager to please, to ever join up with the United Auto Workers? Or have workers that know their worth simply given up on the company?

 Jalopnik

A "UAW On Strike" sign held on a picket line outside the General Motors Co. Spring Hill Manufacturing plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, on Oct. 30, 2023.

UAW aims to expand union organizing after Big Three deals

Julie Hyman and Eyek Ntekim
Tue, October 31, 2023 

The UAW has reached tentative deals with all of the Big Three automakers Ford (F), General Motors (GM), and Stellantis (STLA), and union president Shawn Fain is looking ahead to expanding union participation.

Arthur Wheaton, Cornell University Director of Labor Relations, expects union expansions to broaden out even to EV leader Tesla (TSLA).

“It's tough to organize an anti-union company," Wheaton tells Yahoo Finance, also predicting other auto plants to match Big Three wage hikes for UAW workers.

For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Yahoo Finance Live.
Video Transcript

JULIE HYMAN: The UAW has now reached tentative agreements with all of the big three automakers for GM and Stellantis. UAW President Shawn Fain is already thinking about the next steps in the union's fight, including expanding union participation.

SHAWN FAIN: One of our biggest goals coming out of this historic contract victory is to organize like we've never organized before. When we return to the bargaining table in 2028, it won't just be with the big three but with the big five or big six.

JULIE HYMAN: So obviously, Fain has big ambitions here. But there also are maybe big ambitions for what this means more broadly for unions in the US. For perspective on that, we turn to Arthur Wheaton, Director of Labor Studies at Cornell University. Thanks so much for being with us. This is a question that we have consistently been asking here and exploring.

Let's focus first on autos. Are we going to see a bump in unit participation? And are we going to see an expansion to-- I don't know-- attempts at Tesla, for example, in the wake of this?

ARTHUR WHEATON: There is already a negotiating group for organizing Tesla already. So they are already getting set to do that. And you have to remember the main plant in Fremont, California, used to be a UAW plant. So it was where General Motors and Toyota joint venture. So it's had unionization in that building, so they're going to try to fight and get more organizing again. But it's tough to organize an anti-union company.

JULIE HYMAN: What can they do to overcome that? I mean, are there any paths that you see for Tesla to potentially become unionized?

ARTHUR WHEATON: The biggest path they just accomplished. They got a tentative agreement. Once that agreement gets ratified and it's confirmed, then a lot of the non-union auto companies will either have to pay more or face the possibility of having organizing drives in their plant. So Tesla used to claim that they paid more than the UAW wages, but this contract really raised the lower paid temps, and newer hires raised their wages a lot. So it was massive increases. So they will be looking for that in other auto plants as well.

How a Campaign of ZIONIST Extremist Violence Is Pushing the West Bank to the Brink

Jeffrey Gettleman
Updated Thu, November 2, 2023 

Mourners bury the body of Bilal Muhammad Saleh, a Palestinian man killed by a settler in the West Bank last Saturday. (Alaa Badarneh/EPA, via Shutterstock)

On Saturday morning, Bilal Mohammad Saleh, a Palestinian sidewalk vendor of sage and thyme, went out with his family to pick olives.

It’s olive harvesting season in the West Bank, and Saleh was helping pluck the fruit from the gnarled trees that his family has owned for generations.

Then, four armed Jewish settlers showed up, witnesses said. They started yelling, and the olive pickers stopped what they were doing and began to run.

But Saleh forgot his phone.

“I’ll be right back,” he told his wife.

Two gunshots rang out, and in an instant, Saleh, who was known for his love of fresh leaves and being a fun dad, was facedown in the olive grove, dead.

While the world’s attention has fallen on the Gaza Strip, violence in the West Bank, a much bigger and more complex Palestinian-majority area, is hitting its highest levels in years.

Some of the specific incidents, like the killing in the olive grove, reflect a long-standing problem in the West Bank that has gotten much worse since the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks: Heavily armed settler extremists have operated with impunity for years, many Palestinians say, and now their assaults are becoming bolder, deadlier and nonstop.

Experienced observers believe the spike in violence is part of a broader campaign to scare Palestinians off their land that has been allowed to accelerate amid Israel’s enraged and wounded mood. Since Oct. 7, settler violence has displaced more than 800 Palestinians, including entire herding communities.

“The strategy is: We are here, this land belongs to us and we will kick you off it, with all the means we have,” said Dov Sedaka, a reserve Israeli general who works for a foundation that supports Israeli-Palestinian cooperation.

“It’s awful,” he added.

He said because of the intense battle inside Gaza and the anguish all Israelis felt about the atrocities committed by Hamas, Israeli soldiers were now, more than ever, failing to live up to their duty to protect Palestinian civilians in occupied areas.

“They’re not stopping the extremist settlers,” he said. “They’re closing their eyes.”

According to witness statements, video footage and analysts who have examined larger patterns of the violence, settler extremists in the West Bank have been attacking Palestinian homes and businesses, blowing up their generators and solar panels, burning down the tents of seminomadic Bedouin herders — and even shooting people.

United Nations officials say that since Oct. 7, the Israeli military and armed settlers have killed more than 120 Palestinians in the West Bank. (Most of those deaths occurred in clashes with Israeli soldiers.)

Even before the Hamas attacks, settler violence was hitting its highest levels since the U.N. began tracking it in the mid-2000s. According to U.N. figures, there used to be one incident of settler violence a day. Now it’s seven.

On top of that, the number of protests by Palestinian youth, furious about the relentless bombardment of Gaza, is also rising. These protests frequently lead to deadly confrontations with Israeli troops. Soldiers are also staging nightly counterterrorism raids, which the Israelis say are necessary to crack down on armed groups. But the raids, often conducted in tight alleyways and densely inhabited neighborhoods, can set off more bloodshed as well.

The West Bank, which has been rocked by major uprisings before, feels primed to explode. And the worry, among Palestinians and the Israeli security establishment, is what happens if it does. Should the violence spin from the West Bank, it could risk opening another front in the war, further raising the chances of a larger, even more catastrophic regional conflict.

Palestinians and rights activists blame the increasingly combustible atmosphere on Israel’s right-wing government, whose ministers have vowed to expand the settlements and hand out more weapons to settlers. Deadly Palestinian attacks on Israelis in the West Bank are also at their highest point since the 2000s, adding to the tensions and the sense that this whole territory is on edge. On Thursday, Israeli officials said Palestinians opened fire on a car and killed the driver, a Jewish settler.

Gaza and the West Bank are two separate areas that Israel captured in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Israel withdrew from Gaza in 2005, effectively sealing it off and leaving its residents subject to a tight blockade that throttled its economy.

But Israel still occupies the West Bank under a highly contentious system that leaves Palestinians stateless, limits their movements, and tries them in Israeli military courts — restrictions that do not apply to settlers. The Israeli military routinely blocks roads, shoos Palestinians off streets and strictly controls access from one area to another.

Complicating the West Bank further is the growing number of Israeli settlements — more than 130 — that most of the world considers illegal because they were placed on occupied land.

These communities, often built on strategic hilltops and encircled by walls and razor wire, are interspersed among a patchwork of Palestinian cities and towns administered by the Palestinian Authority, a semi-autonomous Palestinian body. Roughly half a million Jewish settlers live in the West Bank, alongside an estimated 2.7 million Palestinians.

Many settlers reject Palestinians’ claim to the land, arguing that Jews have been living in this territory since biblical times and that Israel justly won the territory decades ago in war.

According to Naomi Kahn, a settler who works for a nonprofit organization that supports the settlements, Palestinians say “Everything in the Middle East is their land.”

“Try again,” she said. “I’m not buying it.”

In recent days, threatening leaflets, widely presumed to have come from settler extremists, have been slipped under the windshield wipers of Palestinian cars.

“A great catastrophe will descend upon your heads soon,” read one flyer. “We will destroy every enemy and expel you forcefully from our Holy Land that God has written for us. Wherever you are, carry your loads immediately and leave to where you came from. We are coming for you.”

Sam Stein is a Jewish peace activist from Long Island, New York, who has spent years working in the West Bank and has physically inserted himself between settler extremists and Palestinians. He said that all the recent violence was “not random acts of hatred.”

Instead, he said, it is a “guided approach” to create “Jewish continuity” in the West Bank.

Jewish settlers are aided in this project by the fact that they are allowed to carry weapons and Palestinian civilians are not. Another recent incident, one of many, shows how Palestinians often pay the price.

On Oct. 13, Zakariya al-Arda, a Palestinian construction worker living in a small West Bank town called At-Tuwani, was walking up a hill after Friday prayers with about eight friends. A video from that day shows that none of al-Arda’s group are carrying firearms though one is holding a rock.

A settler from Havat Ma’on, an outpost bordering At-Tuwani that is considered illegal even under Israeli law, comes down the hill brandishing a rifle. He clubs al-Arda with the butt. When al-Arda tries to defend himself, the settler shoots him.

The bullet pierces his stomach, a few inches below his lungs. He survives. But that single bullet has sown fear through the entire community.

“We did nothing to the settlers,” said al-Arda’s brother, Khaled. “They’re constantly harassing us, vandalizing our property and threatening our safety. What do they want from us?”

Boaz Natan, a settler and former soldier who oversees security in Havat Ma’on and the neighboring settlement Ma’on, knew about the shooting but said he didn’t want “to get into whether this was OK or not.” Still, he said, the settlement’s security committee immediately took away the man’s gun because they didn’t want “lone actors to do whatever they think needs to be done.”

The Israeli police are investigating the incident, according to the Israeli military.

Palestinian leaders say their people are more frightened — by what is happening in Gaza and now across the West Bank — than they have been in a long time.

“Israel says they have the right to respond. They responded,” said Mustafa Bargouthi, a senior Palestinian lawmaker. “How many more thousand Palestinians should still die before they stop?”

In the case of Saleh, the man killed while picking olives, his family remains in shock.

He lived in a village called Al Sawiya, north of Jerusalem. Forty years old, he struggled to support his four children with his small business selling fresh herbs in Ramallah, one of the West Bank’s bigger cities.

According to an Israeli military spokesperson, an off-duty soldier “allegedly” fired his military-issued weapon during the incident and has been taken into custody for questioning. The spokesperson said Israeli soldiers are required to intervene if they are present when violence erupts.

But in this case, Mohammad Yasser Saleh, one of Bilal’s cousins, said Israeli soldiers sat in a jeep parked at the top of the hill during the shooting incident and watched the whole thing. The Israeli military declined to comment on why the soldiers did not intervene.

The killing has left Saleh’s children in a daze.

Musa, 8, remembers what his father was doing right before the gunshots rang out.

“He was carrying me while dancing and making me laugh,” he said. “He then lifted me up to an olive tree and said, ‘Let’s see how many olives you can pick.’”

c.2023 The New York Times Company

NORTHERN IRELAND

Vets, meat and port inspectors take to picket lines in unprecedented five day strike


Kevin Mullan

Derry Journal
Thu, 2 November 2023 

NIPSA workers on the picket line in Lisahally on Thursday morning. (Photo: Supplied)

NIPSA and GMB members who work in the Department of Agriculture, Environment & Rural Affairs (DAERA) Veterinary Services Animal Health Group walked out on Sunday and will end the strike on Friday.

Pickets were staged at DAERA headquarters in Ballykelly on Monday and Lisahally on Thursday.

Stuart Wilson, NIPSA branch representative, explained: “The strike is in relation to the issue of insufficient pay awards across the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS).

Stuart Wilson, NIPSA branch representative. (Photo: Supplied)


"This has occurred over a number of years, 15, with the service having endured pay freezes and pay caps of 1 per cent.”

NIPSA has described a £552 pay award for 2022/23 as ‘derisory’.

"The impact of all this has left a 25-30% drop in value of pay in real terms over this time. People within many of these areas have real concerns and anxieties about how they can make their monthly pay stretch to cover necessities which include running a vehicle to get to their place of work,” said Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Wilson described the week-long strike as ‘unprecedented’ with the potential to be the most significant targeted action ever undertaken by NICS members.

NIPSA members on strike for better pay at DAERA headquarters in Ballykelly. (Photo: Supplied)

"The action affects the passage of goods coming and going through the ports as well as the production of, in particular, beef, pork and lamb at the various meat plants across NI.

“The situation has left the service vulnerable in as much as DAERA have been struggling to recruit and retain staff in these business critical, key worker areas and this has increased the work pressures on those remaining in post.

“A resolution would need to come from an intervention via the Secretary of State, Chris Heaton-Harris, making funds available to NICS that allows for pay issues to be addressed or a financial boost to a returning assembly that will allow for the same thing to happen.”
READ MORE: NWRC staff strike: Lecturer wages are ‘shockingly low’ says Derry Councillor

A DAERA spokesman said: “This targeted five-day strike is part of a wider programme of industrial action by NIPSA and GMB members and involves a significant number of staff across DAERA’s Veterinary Service Animal Health Group (VSAHG).

Members of the Derry Trades Union Council supporting the NIPSA picket in Lisahally. (Photo: Supplied)

“The Department respects the rights of its staff to take industrial action and deeply regrets that the 2022 NICS Pay Award could not have been higher due to the very challenging budgetary position.

“As soon as the likelihood of this strike action became apparent, the Department commenced its business continuity planning and in the period since then has engaged extensively with stakeholders and operators on the potential impacts. It also advised operators of businesses that rely on DAERA services to consider activating their own business continuity/emergency plans.

“NIPSA has granted derogations to ensure that poultry slaughter continues and for the provision of cover for the 24-hour epizootic on call rota. Both have been granted on the basis that they will only take effect if required. Other requests for derogations were not granted.

“DAERA has continued to be able to provide some level of service to the intensive livestock sector and is monitoring activities across portal and field operations and, where possible, is taking action to mitigate the worst impacts on service delivery.”

NIPSA workers on strike in Ballykelly on Monday. (Photo: Supplied)

The ‘Journal’ asked the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) for comment.
Hundreds of health and education workers in Derry strike for better pay and conditions

UK
Sizewell C campaigners wait for ruling on latest court fight over nuclear plant


Brian Farmer, PA

PA Media: Money
Thu, 2 November 2023 

Campaigners opposed to the building of a new nuclear power plant near Sizewell in Suffolk are waiting to see if they have won the latest stage of a legal battle with the Government.

Protest group Together Against Sizewell C objects to a decision, made in 2022 by then business secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, to give the development the green light.

The group lost a High Court fight in June and has now asked three Court of Appeal judges to consider its concerns.

Sir Keith Lindblom, Lady Justice Andrews and Lord Justice Lewis on Thursday finished overseeing a Court of Appeal hearing in London and said they would deliver a ruling on a date to be fixed.

Lawyers representing the group told judges the central issue relates to whether a “development consent order” was lawful “without any assessment” of the environmental impacts of an “essential” fresh water supply.

A spokesman for Together Against Sizewell C said in a statement outside court: “It is clear that the business secretary needed to guarantee how a permanent water supply of two million litres per day for Sizewell C would be obtained, before giving consent.

“However, the environmental impact of such a plant was not included in the planning application for the nuclear power plant, and therefore was neither assessed nor taken into account.”

The group has taken legal action against Energy Security and Net Zero Secretary Claire Coutinho and Sizewell C Ltd.

Kwasi Kwarteng gave the Sizewell C development the green light in 2022 while he was business secretary (UK Parliament/PA)

Lawyers representing the two defendants say the appeal should be dismissed.

Together Against Sizewell C argued at a High Court hearing in March that the Government failed to assess possible environmental impacts, including the impact of the water supply, and did not consider “alternative solutions” to meeting energy and climate change objectives.

The Government argued that it had made “legitimate planning judgments”.

A High Court judge dismissed Together Against Sizewell C’s challenge.

French energy giant EDF, which is due to develop the plant, has said Sizewell C is expected to generate low-carbon electricity to supply six million homes.

Ministers have said the multibillion-pound project will create 10,000 highly-skilled jobs, with its go-ahead being welcomed by unions and the nuclear industry.