“(Try­ing) to make cli­mate pol­i­cy by attack­ing indi­vid­ual con­struc­tion projects is nei­ther effec­tive nor fair to the work­ers involved. The AFL-CIO calls on the Oba­ma Admin­is­tra­tion to allow con­struc­tion of the Dako­ta Access Pipeline to continue.”

But it ​“is fun­da­men­tal­ly unfair,” he added, ​“to hold union mem­bers’ liveli­hoods and their fam­i­lies’ finan­cial secu­ri­ty hostage to end­less delay. The Dako­ta Access Pipeline is pro­vid­ing over 4,500 high-qual­i­ty, fam­i­ly sup­port­ing jobs.

In a state­ment, Richard Trum­ka, AFL-CIO pres­i­dent, said, ​“We believe that com­mu­ni­ty involve­ment in deci­sions about con­struct­ing and locat­ing pipelines is impor­tant and nec­es­sary, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sen­si­tive sit­u­a­tions like those involv­ing places of sig­nif­i­cance to Native Americas.”

The Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Labor and Con­gress of Indus­tri­al Orga­ni­za­tions (AFL-CIO) came out this week in sup­port of the Dako­ta Access Pipeline, the con­struc­tion of which was delayed last week by an order from the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion — a deci­sion that itself stemmed from months of protests led by the Stand­ing Rock Sioux.

It’s an open secret in labor that North America’s Build­ing Trades Unions — includ­ing many that rep­re­sent pipeline work­ers — have an at-times dom­i­nat­ing pres­ence with­in the federation’s 56-union mem­ber­ship. Pipeline jobs are well-pay­ing union con­struc­tion gigs, and work­ers on the Dako­ta Access Pipeline (DAPL) can make some $37 an hour plus ben­e­fits. As one DAPL work­er and Labor­ers Inter­na­tion­al Union mem­ber told The Des Moines Reg­is­ter, ​“You’ve got to make that mon­ey when you can make it.”

But an old blue-green mantra says, ​“there are no jobs on a dead plan­et.” The parts of orga­nized labor that have tak­en that phrase to heart are far from uni­fied around Trumka’s DAPL back­ing — even with­in the AFL-CIO. Nation­al Nurs­es Unit­ed (NNU) has had mem­bers on the ground at Stand­ing Rock protests and oth­ers around the coun­try have par­tic­i­pat­ed in a nation­al day of action.

“Nurs­es under­stand the need for qual­i­ty jobs while also tak­ing strong action to address the cli­mate cri­sis and respect­ing the sov­er­eign rights of First Nation peo­ple,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, NNU’s exec­u­tive direc­tor and a nation­al vice pres­i­dent of the AFL-CIO.

In response to the federation’s endorse­ment, DeMoro cit­ed the work of econ­o­mist Robert Pollin, who found that spend­ing on renew­able ener­gy cre­ates approx­i­mate­ly three times as many jobs as the same spend­ing on main­tain­ing the fos­sil fuel sector.

NNU isn’t alone. As protests swelled this month, the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Work­ers of Amer­i­ca (CWA) released a state­ment in sup­port of the Stand­ing Rock Sioux, stat­ing that ​“CWA stands with all work­ing peo­ple as they strug­gle for dig­ni­ty, respect and jus­tice in the work­place and in their communities.”

Unions like the Amal­ga­mat­ed Tran­sit Union and the Unit­ed Elec­tri­cal Work­ers have each issued sim­i­lar state­ments sup­port­ing protests against the pipeline, and call­ing on the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion to step in and block the project permanently.

For those who fol­low labor and the envi­ron­ment, how­ev­er, the above unions might be famil­iar names. Many were vocal advo­cates for a stronger cli­mate deal in Paris, and sent mem­bers to COP21 at the end of last year. They were also those most vehe­ment­ly opposed to the Key­stone XL pipeline, and all sup­port­ed Bernie Sanders’ pri­ma­ry cam­paign against Hillary Clin­ton. While friend­ly to pro­gres­sives, these unions have tend­ed to have a rel­a­tive­ly lim­it­ed impact on big­ger unions, like the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers and the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of State, Coun­ty and Munic­i­pal Employ­ees (AFSCME).

Accord­ing to Sean Sweeney, though, this small group of unions might now be gain­ing strength. ​“Pro­gres­sive unions are becom­ing a more coher­ent force,” he told In These Times.

Sweeney helped found a project called Trade Unions for Ener­gy Democ­ra­cy, which works with unions around the world on cli­mate change and the tran­si­tion away from fos­sil fuels, includ­ing the Nation­al Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion and Ser­vice Employ­ees Inter­na­tion­al Union (SEIU) Local 32BJ in the Unit­ed States. He also runs the Inter­na­tion­al Pro­gram for Labor, Cli­mate and the Envi­ron­ment at City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York’s Mur­phy Institute.

“It could be said that it’s just the same old gang mak­ing the same old noise, but for health unions and trans­port unions to go up against the build­ing trades and their pow­er­ful mes­sage and equal­ly pow­er­ful deter­mi­na­tion to win … that was a bit of a cul­tur­al shift in the labor move­ment,” he said, ref­er­enc­ing the fights against the Key­stone XL and Dako­ta Access pipelines. ​“That sug­gests that it’s going to continue.”

Sweeney men­tioned, too, that it wasn’t until much lat­er in the fight around Key­stone XL that even pro­gres­sive unions came out against it. ​“A lot of these unions,” he added, ​“know a lot more about ener­gy and pol­lu­tion and cli­mate change than they did before.”

Between Trumka’s DAPL endorse­ment and the Fra­ter­nal Order of Police’s endorse­ment of Don­ald Trump for pres­i­dent, this week has shown a stark divide between parts of Amer­i­can labor and today’s social move­ments. Pro­gres­sive unions face an uphill bat­tle on many issues, with­in and out­side of orga­nized labor. The ques­tion now — on the Dako­ta Access Pipeline — is whether today’s ​“Key­stone moment” can break new ground in the jobs ver­sus envi­ron­ment debate.