Labor Network for Sustainability (LNS) (also operating as Voices for a Sustainable Future) is a left-of-center network of labor organizations aligned in their support of left-progressive environmentalist policy. The organization has expressed its support for a left-wing climate change agenda, including the creation of a so-called Green New Deal. It is led by a board of directors made up of officials from labor unions and labor union-aligned organizations such as the AFL-CIO, the SEIU, and Jobs With Justice. ^[1] The organization has promoted or sponsored a number of protests alongside its labor union partners, calling for sweeping legislative change regarding climate change, labor issues, and alleged civil rights issues.

Transit Equity Day

Labor Network for Sustainability holds demonstrations for “Transit Equity Day” annually on February 4, the anniversary of Rosa Parks’ birthday. The organization claims that access to public transit is a civil right. The organization has encouraged supporters to promote Transit Equity Day through social media and to organize protests across the country in order to  pressure local and state legislative bodies to pass resolutions supporting fully subsidized public transit programs. The event was sponsored by a number of labor unions and left-of-center environmentalist organizations such as Greenpeace, a radical-left environmentalist organization; the Sierra Club, one of the largest left-of-center environmentalist organizations in the United States; the NAACP, the nation’s oldest civil rights organization; the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor unions in the country.; and Dream Corps, a left-of-center grantmaking organization. ^[2]

Green New Deal

LNS signed a petition in 2018 expressing its support for the Green New Deal, a radical and sweeping environmentalist legislative proposal from U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and U.S. Senator Ed Markey (D-MA). ^[3] The proposal, which would cost an estimated $90 trillion over 10 years, has been heavily criticized as unrealistic and ill-advised, though it has been supported by a number of left-of-center organizations and individuals. LNS uses its leverage and influence over labor organizations to force promotion of the Green New Deal. ^[4]

LNS has also signed onto the THRIVE Agenda,^[5] a project of Sierra Club that claims to combat purported systematic racism, climate change, and economic inequality in America. The organization promotes a left-of-center platform including increased incentives for labor organizing, the mass expansion of federally-funded infrastructure upgrades, large taxpayer-funded programs to support development in ethnic minority communities, and environmentalist programs. The THRIVE Agenda supports the Green New Deal and is a member organization of the Green New Deal Coalition. ^[6]

COVID-19 Lawsuit

LNS joined with labor unions and environmentalist groups to sue the Trump administration in 2020. The lawsuit claimed that the Trump administration failed to provide personal protective equipment to frontline workers at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which the plaintiffs claimed led to increased infection rates among the workers. LNS was joined by some of the largest labor unions in the country including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and United Steelworkers (USW). A number of environmentalist organizations also signed onto the suit, including the Center for Biological Diversity, a large left-of-center environmentalist and legal advocacy organization, and Friends of the Earth, a left-of-center environmentalist organization based in the Netherlands. ^{[7] [8]}

People

Joe Euhlein is the president of Labor Network for Sustainability. Euhlein has worked for numerous environmentalist and labor organizations, including spending a number of years as the director for the AFL-CIO Center for Strategic Campaigns and as the secretary-treasurer for the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union department. Euhlein was a founding board member of Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (Ceres), a left-of-center environmentalist group. He also sits on the boards of directors for a number of other environmentalist organizations and coalitions including the BlueGreen Alliance, Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), and the U.S. Climate Action Network (US-CAN). ^[9]

Michael Leon Guerrero is the executive director of LNS. Guerrero previously worked as the executive director for Climate Justice Alliance, a left-of-center coalition of environmentalist organizations. He sits as a member of the boards of directors for Greenpeace, one of the largest radical environmentalist organizations in the world, and for Jobs With Justice, a national coalition of labor-union aligned workers’ centers. ^[10]