Community Profile

Smokey Thomas and OPSEU's Green Vision

Originally from Kingston, Warren 'Smokey' Thomas is president of OPSEU, (Ontario Public Service Employees Union). He first became interested in environmental issues in the 1970s, an interest that is put to good use today, leading the 117,000-member union with a green vision that includes reducing the environmental impact of the union's operations, promoting green jobs, and educating members about climate change.

OPSEU is a public sector union representing workers "in a variety of areas whose job it is to protect and promote the public interest. These include air and water quality inspectors and scientists, provincial parks workers, teachers at community colleges, public health officials and transportation planners." Whether testing your local water quality, or guiding provincial park visitors on eco-friendly tours of forests, people in these fields are often the face of today's green jobs.

For Smokey, and the members of OPSEU, "health and safety - the environment at work - is a core issue. Enforcement of health and safety laws go hand-in-hand with overall environmental protection."

Beyond the workplace, "members of the union are also concerned about the broader issues of global warming, climate change and pollution. They expect that their union will contribute to the solution and lead by example in reducing energy consumption and green house gas emissions." To do that, OPSEU is undertaking a number of initiatives to green their operations.

"For starters, becoming a greener union affects pretty much every part of our organization and aspect of our operations." OPSEU has conducted "Go-Green" environmental pre-assessments of the office buildings they own. According to 'Smokey' Thomas, "a number of recommendations about energy usage are under serious study which, when implemented, will lead to greener operations. One of the first such projects underway is a window replacement project in our downtown Toronto office. This will reduce energy waste in heating and cooling the building."

"Other activities we're working on in our green plan include supporting joint projects between OPSEU and environmental groups at the local level, greener purchasing, encouraging our members to take action at home, bargaining green language with employers and working with our pension trustees to develop environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria to ensure our member's pension plans are also part of the solution."

In addition to the many positive steps being taken with OPSEU, Warren Thomas also does his part at home, leading by example. Warren lives in Kingston with his wife and five sons. Together they recycle, buy local and organic food, wash clothes in cold water and hang them to dry when possible.

When asked what he did for Earth Hour, which OPSEU endorsed early on, Smokey had an especially hot answer to the burning question. "I was in Southern Africa with my family on a tour of projects funded by the Stephen Lewis Foundation. One of the things we did on that trip was help install some solar-powered lighting in a small mountain village that had no electricity," giving climate-friendly light to the community. Meanwhile, at OPSEU buildings, the lights were out.

Smokey Thomas and OPSEU clearly have a lot of bright ideas for a climate-friendly future.