Five Reasons Labor Opposes Coal

The Alameda Labor Council and 19 local unions were among the leadership of this campaign to keep coal out of the East Bay ten years ago.

Today, we need even more labor presence in this campaign.

Let me tell you five reasons why.

1) As you can see from this map, people of all classes would be hit by the toxic coal. But working-class communities would suffer the most. Workers are more than their jobs. They are parents whose children will be poisoned by coal. They are neighbors who will inhale toxic air and watch the people next door fall ill.

2) Our detractors tell us we have to choose between jobs and the climate, and we therefore must accept the consequences. But this terminal will create at most thousands of unhealthy, short-term jobs and a hundred permanent jobs in toxic workplaces. Some of our laboring brothers and sisters say, “Short-term unhealthy jobs are better than no jobs.” We hear them, we empathize with them, and therefore we are saying:

3) This is a “Yes to Healthy, Unionized Jobs” campaign as much as a No Coal campaign. Our coalition has been championing the redevelopment of the old Oakland Army Base, but in a way that will foster permanent, socially responsible employment. It is therefore crucial that many more unions and laborers join us because we can’t get that kind of development unless there is a mass movement of workers that puts pressure on local, state, and national governments to generate good jobs. This builds up to my next point:

4) The people who are behind this terminal – Trump and his oligarchs – are the same kind of people who bust unions throughout the country. They are also the ones who prevent any kind of legislation that would generate renewable energy jobs. In the last couple of years, bills that could have produced literally millions of green jobs in the US (with a heavy concentration in California) were killed due to their opposition. In other words, they are giving us (at best) thousands of unhealthy, short-term jobs with one hand, while they are taking away potentially millions of healthy, permanent jobs with their other hand.

5) This fight is also a matter of labor pride. The bosses want to build this terminal not just for the cash, which might be their primary motive, but also as an act of class vengeance. They always tell us that without them labor would be nothing. They create the jobs and they pay the wages, we are told. But the labor leadership in this campaign has shown that labor can coalesce with social movements and environmental justice communities to make big things happen. Whenever bosses see that kind of action, they are afraid for their fundamental privileges. That kind of victory shows that a world without oligarchs, a world where labor and communities self-consciously produce and control value, is possible. And therefore, they want to crush any living trace of such victories. Our win in 2016 is a cherished jewel of working-class memory. Ceding this turf to the oligarchs would mean abandoning our belief in a different world as much as abandoning our health and dignity.

Cihan Tuğal is a sociology professor at UC Berkeley and an organizer in East Bay DSA’s Climate Action Committee. He studies social movements, populism, capitalism, democracy, and religion and has a forthcoming book from Stanford University Press entitled The Social Roots of Autocratic Resilience. This piece is based on remarks Cihan made at the community rally of September 15, 2026, outside the Berkeley City Council meeting that adopted a resolution opposing the proposed Oakland coal depot. Photo credit: Leon Kunstenaar

Photo at top: Labor delegation led by Alameda Labor Council leader Josie Camacho speaks out against coal at Oakland City Council meeting in 2015 | Credit: Brooke Anderson