With public pension funds managing $4 trillion nationally and essentially representing the retirement plans of 20 million U.S. workers, where that money is invested has a lot of ramifications.

In recent years, attention has focused on the fossil fuel industry, where public pension fund investors play a growing role.

As , political science professor at the 天美影视传媒, and , a graduate student in political science and former research director for the UW , point out, private equity firms 鈥� including the Blackstone Group, KKR and the Carlyle Group 鈥� own and are expanding fossil fuel operations such as pipelines and gas- and coal-fired power plants. Meanwhile, reports from the International Energy Agency and the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change provide dire warnings about global warming.

鈥淚t is time that private equity also acts upon information the rest of the world seems to already understand,鈥� said Mehta-Neugebauer. 鈥淲illfully expanding fossil fuel infrastructure amid intensifying opposition exposes pension fund investors and retirees to investment risks, and exposes all of us to more dangerous climate and public health outcomes.鈥�

Ahead of the U.N. Climate Change Conference that begins Oct. 31, the Harry Bridges Center released a on the issue, following a spring panel discussion with representatives from labor, public pension funds, Indigenous groups and grassroots organizations around North America. The goal: collaboration and change.

McCann and Mehta-Neugebauer discussed the relationship among public pension funds, private equity and climate change with UW News.

听

What do you think people overlook, or perhaps don鈥檛 even know, about this issue? And what are the consequences?听

RMN: Private equity firms benefit immensely from a structure of secrecy. Through regulatory exemptions, private equity assets are, by definition, private and not subject to most public disclosure rules, like other publicly listed companies such as Chevron or ExxonMobil. As a result, neither the public nor government regulators fully understand the environmental and community impacts of private equity investments.

At the same time, private equity firms extoll their commitment to environmental and sustainable goals, but they fail to disclose the thousands of miles of oil and gas pipelines they manage, or the acres of oil wells they own, or the extent to which communities and ecosystems are impacted by their operations. Thus, private equity鈥檚 pension fund investors do not have an accurate understanding of the public health and climate risks associated with private equity’s ever-expanding fossil fuel footprint and run the risk of making investment decisions based on inaccurate and incomplete information 鈥� a serious fiduciary risk.

For instance, the same day that private equity firm Brookfield Asset Management raised $7 billion for a new clean energy fund, its $6.7 billion bid to takeover Inter Pipeline, an oil sands pipeline company, was recommended by the company’s board for shareholder approval. Brookfield failed to discuss this connection, and very few industry analysts observed how Brookfield鈥檚 attempts to mitigate climate change were immediately nullified.

Systematic, detailed and comprehensive disclosure of private equity portfolio鈥檚 climate risks, and plans to shift toward a pollution-free energy portfolio are necessary to enable the public, investors and regulatory agencies to effectively monitor and mitigate negative financial risks as well as climate and health impacts.

听

Financial returns are often considered the priority for investments, but you argue not only that other issues are important, but also that private equity investment in the fossil fuel industry is risky. Can you explain?听

MM: The majority of private equity energy funds have underperformed comparable buyout funds over the past decade.听On the other hand, over a similar period, renewable energy stocks a fossil fuel-focused strategy by more than threefold. Yet total investment in renewable energy assets is . And the heavy debt that private equity firms typically load onto their portfolio companies resulted in private equity-owned oil and gas companies dominating the unusually high number of sector last year.

Looking to the future, major oil companies are acknowledging a permanent decline in oil demand. In February 2021, Royal Dutch Shell joined other major oil companies in saying that the world reached peak oil production in 2019, and going forward, it expects annual declines. Governments and auto manufacturers are also responding to the writing on the wall, setting 2035 as a goal: California, one of the largest markets for vehicle sales, established that target for a phaseout of gasoline-powered cars; the United Kingdom mandated that any car sold after 2030 must have at least a hybrid drivetrain capable of running on a battery; and General Motors announced plans to completely phase out vehicles using internal combustion engines by 2035. GM also plans to use renewable energy for its U.S. factories by 2035, and for overseas plants by 2040.

How can labor unions 鈥� or any of us 鈥� be part of the solution?

MM: Public pension funds are essentially labor’s retirement capital. Investment decisions are made by pension fund trustees, who are often union members, state elected representatives, and investment experts. These trustees can demand robust climate risk reporting standards that take community and environmental impacts into account.听Assessing a private equity fund鈥檚 performance by financial benchmarks alone underestimates the full costs associated with these energy investments.

RMN: Labor unions can do a better job of committing resources to educating themselves and their trustee representatives on how their pension fund invests their retirement capital. Workers and retirees can demand from their pension funds more transparent climate-related disclosures as a condition for future private equity funding.

MM: Much political analysis has focused on the reluctance of labor organizations to fully support a clean energy future. However, greater engagement of labor within the pension fund investment sphere can bring about an alliance between labor and environmental interests. Better understanding the climate risks associated with private equity investments can help protect not only the environment, but also investment returns 鈥� ensuring a more sustainable future for retirees as well as the planet.

As the climate crisis impacts all of us, we can also engage on this issue by providing comment at pension fund meetings — after all, they are open to the public. And we can demand that our elected representatives take bolder climate-related actions. Aside from ensuring public pension fund investments are made more responsibly, we all have a stake in ensuring a healthier planet.

Political scientist Jack Turner co-edits volume on African American political theory

, UW associate professor of political science, has teamed with of Brown University to edit “.” The book is being published this month by University of Chicago Press.

The volume of essays features scholars’ reflections on prominent Black intellectuals of the past four centuries including W.E.B. Du Bois, James Baldwin, Ida B. Wells, Toni Morrison, Malcolm X, Audre Lorde, Cornel West and others. Turner and UW political science professor both contributed chapters, and Turner penned the introduction with Rogers.

Publisher’s notes say the book offers “an unprecedented philosophical history” of Black thinkers “who have addressed the central issues of political life: democracy, race, violence, liberation, solidarity, and mass political action.”

For more information, contact Turner at jturner3@uw.edu.

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Ruth Etzioni co-authors new textbook on data science and health research

, UW affiliate professor of biostatistics and health services, has co-authored a new textbook on data science. “” was published in January by Springer.

Etzioni, who is also on the faculty of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, wrote the book with of Hebrew University and , also with the Fred Hutchinson center.

Publisher’s notes say the book, aimed at researchers familiar with the basics of statistical analysis, “brings together key statistical ideas that are foundational for contemporary investigators in health services, health outcomes and health policy.”

Read on the Department of Biostatistics website.

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Oxford Press offers free chapter of Michael Blake book, noting among its best philosophy volumes of 2020

Oxford University Press has made a chapter of UW philosophy professor book “” freely available for several weeks as the press highlights 20 of its .

Publisher’s notes say the book offers a new approach to such questions as: How should we understand the political morality of migration? Are travel bans, walls, or carrier sanctions every morally possible in a just society?

“Blake challenges the current global realities of migration which ensure open borders for a select few and closed borders for the majority, most often the most marginalized in society.”

He views the idea of mercy as key to a moral analysis of migration, “which leads to the conclusion that we ought to show mercy and justice in constructing migration policy as well as in public debate.” Read Blake’s chapter, “.”

For more information, contact Blake at miblake@uw.edu.

A pre-World War II photo of cannery workers posed in solidarity. Industrial workers clasp arms in a 1930s poster that says “An injury to one is an injury to all.” Workers gather in a 1945 mural over a poster reading: “Build a free world. No masters, no slaves.” A recent snapshot of Seattle City Councilwoman Kshama Sawant and others campaigning for the $15 minimum wage.

These are among thousands of images, documents, records and more in the extensive , housed in the Special Collections area of UW Libraries. The archives are a collaborative project of the libraries with the .

The archives are overseen by UW Labor Archivist with the help of with assistant labor archivist.

With Labor Day approaching, UW News asked Casey to choose a dozen images that represent the variety and impact of the archives. The images are below, with captions written by Casey 鈥� who also answered a few questions about the archives and their important work.

What is the formal mission of the labor archives?听听

The Labor Archives of Washington was founded to collect, preserve, and create access to labor-related materials from individuals and organizations documenting the local, national, and international dimensions of the labor movement in the Pacific Northwest. The archives’ collections reveal the intersection between labor unions and social justice, civil rights, and political organizations that feature a labor relations or labor rights dimension as part of their focus.

How extensive are the archives? How many items and categories?

We have over 300 collection components, and about 3,000 cubic feet of materials 鈥� a cubic foot is about a copier paper box full of materials. We also have a lot of materials (meaning items that originated in digital form) including oral histories, curated websites and born-digital collections.

How do items come to the archives?听

People and organizations often contact us seeking advice about how or where to preserve their historical materials. I have built ongoing relationships that yield new collections, and I initiate connections with people or organizations that include new collecting areas.

As a subject expert on labor history and related topics, I’m aware of trends of scholarship in academic study and in activism and issue-based organizings. I incorporate anticipated research value in those trends in how I seek out and appraise new collections, what I prioritize for processing, and what we emphasize in our outreach activities. We work closely with faculty, students and researchers to understand how this history is being taught and what topics students are researching. This helps us set collecting, processing and outreach goals.

I also use my knowledge of those areas to identify gaps and areas where we can strengthen our collections. We have been doing that with collections documenting female labor leaders, union members and occupations, public sector unions, communities of color 鈥� especially Filipinx and Latinx communities, and LGBTQ communities. These supplement and complement our traditional collection strengths in records documenting organized labor, European American workers, and traditionally male gendered occupations.

What is the process when new items or collections are donated to the archives?

Collections come to us in many ways. Donors may contact us directly, or they may be referred by community members or faculty. Some reach out to use the collections based on seeing media coverage on television, radio, podcasts, streaming video or our posts on social media. Our annual events and partnerships with other organizations and on-site and traveling exhibits generate donations as well.

I may contact donors myself. We are constantly trying to reach out to new audiences of users and donors. One new tool that we are using is a regional labor and labor-related records survey 鈥� Crystal is the point person for this 鈥� to understand what collections are out there, what types of materials there are, and what kinds of conditions they are stored in. This will eventually identify new collecting opportunities as well as identify areas of risk and need by our stakeholder communities.

You seem a perfect fit for your job, Conor. What background in labor unions brought you to this work?

I have labor history in my blood. I came to it from researching family history. My maternal grandfather was a longshore worker and union member, and my grandparents got married during the 1934 Pacific Coast Maritime Strike. My other grandfather was a union electrician, and both of my grandmothers were union workers when they were wage workers.

My father was an elementary school teacher and union chapter leader before he retired, so I have an awareness and appreciation of the labor movement. I was raised in a working-class household in an ethnically diverse community, so I grew up with an inclusive vision of the need to honor and preserve the history of diverse communities. At the same time, I was drawn to this as a rich intellectual topic academically. In my studies, I pursued anthropology, history and library science as a means of understanding the culture of diverse groups of people over time and how to preserve and promote that history and culture.

Having a job where I collect and preserve the stories of working people is an honor and a privilege. These people听 built our country. Their work has dignity and worth.

This history records the achievements of working people and their organizations in improving wages, working conditions, health and safety, and on-the-job democracy. Everyone who works for a living today enjoys the results of these accomplishments, but their origins are often mystified or forgotten. People often aren’t taught about it in school.

Long- and hard-fought achievements are not guaranteed to endure if we forget how they were won. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

There is no forward arrow of progress to time; no guarantee that all of these rights and privileges won’t be lost if current and future generations fail to remember and honor their history and protect these achievements for the future. As well, new modes of worker organizing are constantly arising, and being aware of those to ensure that we document evolving movements is an ongoing part of our work.

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For more information, contact Casey at 206-685-3976 or听 cmcasey@uw.edu.

Immigrant rights, environmental concerns and racial, class, gender and sexual justice will be the focus of a daylong conference hosted by the at the 天美影视传媒.

The conference, gathering activists, academics, union leaders and policymakers, is titled “.” It will be held from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, March 10, in Kane 225, the Walker-Ames Room.

, UW associate professor of political science, will moderate a panel discussion on “Transforming Politics as Usual: Electoral Politics.” Participants will be Dulce Guti茅rrez of the Yakima City Council, Rosalinda Guillen of Community to Community Development, Washington State Rep. Bob Hasegawa (D — Seattle) and Nikkita Oliver of the Seattle Peoples Party.

, UW assistant professor of sociology, will moderate a panel discussion on “Retaking Ownership of the Company Town.” Participants will be Kshama Sawant of the Seattle City Council, Nicole Grant of the M. L. King County Labor Council, KJ Moon of the Democratic Socialists of America and Matt Remle of Mazaska Talks.

Author and activist will moderate a panel discussion on “Challenging Strategies for Advancing Social Justice Unionism.” Others participating are Faye Guenther of the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 21; Eunice How of UNITE-HERE, Local 8; Dean McGrath of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, Local 23; Sandy Restrepo of Colectiva Legal del Pueblo; and Rev. John Stean of the Ebenezer A.M.E. Zion Church in Seattle.

The welcoming and closing remarks will be by , UW professor of political science and director of the Harry Bridges Center. Lynne Dodson of the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO will provide some opening remarks, followed by the opening keynote address by activist and author Bill Fletcher, Jr. The lunchtime keynote address will be by Kent Wong, author, activist, and director of the UCLA Labor Center.

The conference is dedicated, promotion notes say, “to conversations among local activists on ways to join commitments and collaborate on transformative projects fighting for social justice, racial justice, gender justice and workers’ empowerment in the current political moment.”

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For more information, call 206-543-7946 or email hbcls@uw.edu. Press interested in attending or interviewing participants may contact organizer Michael McCann at mwmccann@uw.edu.

The outsourcing of workers at Portland International Airport has increased in recent years while those workers serve ever-more passengers and their wages remain relatively low, according to a recent report from the 天美影视传媒’s .

The report, titled “,” was compiled by Garrett Strain, who recently completed the ‘s program, and was released by the center.

His study of employment at the Portland airport found that the share of contracted, or outsourced workers there increased from 19 percent to 26 percent from 2001 to 2014. Those workers are serving more passengers, too; the airport had a ratio of one to 1,103 passengers in 2001 that rose to 1,931 in 2014. The annual turnover among outsourced employees averaged 64 percent, the report found.

The state of Oregon passed legislation increasing the state’s minimum wage to $9.75 starting this July. Still, the report says, even after this increase the Portland airport will have the lowest minimum wage when compared with other large-hub airports on the West Coast such as Seattle-Tacoma, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego.

A wage analysis in the report concludes that by paying outsourced workers at least $15 an hour, the Port of Portland could create 81 jobs and add about $7 million to the regional economy.

Strain, the report’s author, said that by allowing low-wage jobs at the airport, the Port of Portland and airlines are limiting the airport’s ability to positively impact the regional economy.

Portland International Airport, called PDX for short, has been named in recent polls by Travel + Leisure magazine as among the best in the nation for location, access, check-in, security and design.

“Any serious discussion of the airport’s impact on economic development needs to include wages for contracted workers,” said , center director and UW professor of political science. “While it may get top marks for customer satisfaction, PDX has fallen behind other major West Coast airports when it comes to wages and job quality for airport workers.”

Low wages and a lack of health and retirement benefits “have become common at many of the country’s wealthiest airports,” the report states.

“These trends have had a negative impact on the livelihoods of air transportation workers 鈥� such as baggage handlers, cabin cleaners and others who provide vital services to ensure the smooth passage of travelers in and out of U.S. airports.”

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To learn more, contact the center at 206-543-7946 or hbcls@u.washington.edu; McCann at mwmccann@uw.edu or Strain at garretts@uw.edu. This was based on a issued by the center.