Home » Blog » Pipeline Climate Disaster: The Keystone XL Pipeline and Labour
Blog
Pipeline Climate Disaster: The Keystone XL Pipeline and Labour
By Brendan Smith | Huffington Post
Monday, July 18, 2011
Read this blog post on the originating site
More than two million American construction workers — nearly one in five — are currently unemployed. Factories that produce building materials are operating at only half their capacity. So when a private company proposes a project that it claims will spur the creation of 118,000 new jobs, it is hardly surprising that unions representing construction, transportation, and related workers pricked up their ears.
The project is the Keystone XL Pipeline. It will take oil produced from tar sands in Alberta, Canada 1,959 miles to Nederland, Texas.
The General Presidents of the Teamsters, Plumbers, Operating Engineers, and Laborers unions say the project will “pave a path to better days and raise the standard of living for working men and women in the construction, manufacturing, and transportation industries.” It will allow “the American worker” to “get back to the task of strengthening their families and the communities they live in.”
It sounds good. But before supporting the project, we need to take a deeper look at whether this project — and the energy practices it will make possible — will really lead to “better days” for working men and women, their families, and their communities. We need to know whether there are dangers that make the project more of a threat than a promise. And we need to know whether the claims made for its benefits are really true.
Read more on the Huffington Post website
Tagged with: keystone xl, pipeline, jobs, unions
