Resolution In Support of Protecting Essential Public Services and Public Employees by Making Polluters Pay for Climate Change

June 18, 2026

WHEREAS, Local and state governments are facing costly extreme weather events fueled by climate change, caused disproportionally by emissions from large fossil fuel companies.  These financial pressures threaten the jobs, good wages, and benefits that public sector union members have fought so hard to achieve through collective bargaining.

WHEREAS, King County examples include the 2021 and 2025 atmospheric rivers, the latter of which caused the Green River flood. These events damaged public roads, levees, and utility infrastructure. Another example is the 2021 heat dome, which incurred emergency response costs borne by the City of Seattle, King County, and suburban cities. At a statewide level, wildfires are particularly financially harmful because the State bears the cost of fire suppression on State land. Landslides have incurred costs by damaging state highways and roads, such as the 2025 flood that closed Stevens Pass.

WHEREAS, Public employee unions are among the most powerful advocates for the high-quality public services that benefit our communities.  However, even the most powerful unions will have to contend with the increasingly severe, frequent, and costly impacts of climate change. We are arriving at an era when the need to pay for repairs threatens to come at the direct expense of public employees and the public whom they serve.

WHEREAS, The biggest fossil fuel corporations were fully aware that their products would cause climate change. Rather than acting responsibly to mitigate this harm, they doubled down on climate denial and on mobilizing their political allies to protect the status quo. These corporations continue making billions in profits without paying a dime towards the damages caused by decades of greenhouse gas emissions.

WHEREAS, The Make Polluters Pay campaign is a statewide effort to pass Climate “superfund” legislation that would require the largest fossil fuel companies to pay their fair share for climate harms to Washington caused by those companies’ past decades of emissions. Such legislation is modeled on existing regulatory language in the federal CERCLA and Washington state’s Model Toxics Control Act that requires companies to pay to clean up hazardous-waste sites; Climate Superfunds ensure that the companies most responsible for the climate crisis bear the financial burden, rather than the state, local governments, workers and taxpayers; Climate superfund laws have already been passed by the States of Vermont and New York.

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED MLK Labor endorses the Make Polluters Pay Campaign and joins the coalition organizing toward this cause; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that MLK Labor will support efforts to make polluters pay for the costs associated with climate change, particularly as a means to ensure that public revenue is preserved for its originally intended essential public service purpose; and

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, MLK Labor recommends that the Washington State Labor Council endorse the Make Polluters Pay campaign and that it support the development of legislation by Rep. Sharlett Mena to make polluters pay for the cost of climate change.