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¢ MORE CONFRONTATION - In the summer of 1997, 1.W.A. CANADA me:
protecting forest industry jobs from road blocks by radical preservationists.

Striving for balance
Continued from page thirty-three

been improved and enhanced by
human activity as often as it has
been harmed by it. Ultimately, work-
ing people must evaluate these and
other perspectives and draw their
own conclusions, both generally and
in specific cases. Such analysis must
begin with the understanding, more
common to workers than to many
others, that human beings must
transform nature to live: the point
is to try to minimize damage and
ensure the earth’s restoration.
Third, it is important to fully com-
prehend the nature of environmen-
tal groups. The largest of green
organizations are, in fact, multina-
tional corporations in their own
right. They typically raise millions
of dollars annually through various
fund-raising campaigns, usually
based on environmental actions and
initiatives. Theirs is a competitive
world, requiring increasingly flam-

boyant “stunts” to gain attention .

and increasingly strong, heart-tug-
ging rhetoric to reach the greens’
audience, which is primarily upper
or middle-class, urban and educated
and increasingly beyond Canada’s
borders. Green activists are typi-
cally drawn from the same middle-
class or upper-class backgrounds. It
is easy to understand, then, the
deep antipathy that can grow
between the supporters of environ-
mental causes and workers, espe-
cially workers in resource-based
industries, those who live in single
industry towns and rural residents.
For all the green groups’ rhetoric
about “nature,” they seldom exhibit
much empathy for those who gain
their living directly from the land.
Fourth, it is important to under-
stand the difficulties that lie in
environmental politics. In the “nor-
mal” world of unionism, the division
of forces is generally between
employers and the union; relations
with government generally depend
on whether or not the government

of the day supports union objectives
or is hostile to them. Many citizens’

groups are representatives of or
advocates for the dispossessed and
struggling sectors of society and
generally unions support their
efforts to a greater or lesser degree.

n environmental politics this
world is often turned on its head.
Greenpeace, World Wildlife Fund
and Sierra Club are large, interna-
tional organizations in their own
right. In spite of their “David versus
Goliath” posturing, they are in fact
often stronger, better equipped for

It is crucial that
unions work hard
to maintain cordial
relations within
our movement to
temper or balance
wider class values.

battle and more resourceful than
the corporations they attack. Some-
times it is the company that is more
rooted in the community than the
often-imported environmental
activists. Often the company has
more sympathy and respect for the
workers. This complicates the world
of workplace politics, where the
“boss” is frequently seen as an ally
in the important struggles around
environmental issues.

In this environment, as well, gov-
ernments’ responses are also often
hard to fathom. Many labour-
friendly governments are also closely
aligned with green groups, which
help with electoral volunteers and
donations. Increasingly, many of
the officials and staffs of these gov-
ernments rose through the ranks of
environmental groups, not unions.
Conversely, frequently it is the

right-wing governments whose offi-
cials are most sympathetic to work-
ers faced with environmental
protests, blockades or boycotts. Sud-
denly, electoral politics is compli-
cated by the reality that parties
who fight tooth and nail against
most labour values and objectives
are quite supportive in the environ-
mental realm.

At the same time, the interior
politics of the green movement is
also often hard to fathom. Union
leaders can relate many tales of
negotiating an apparent agreement
with green “leaders,” only to learn
that nobody in the green movement
seems to be bound by it, even though
the same groups claimed to form a
“common front” and appeared to act
in concert. Sometimes it seems there
is in fact, no green movement, but
only an array of shifting group titles,
alliances and causes.

inally, environmental issues

often add stress to inter-union

relations. Working class soli-
darity is a core value of the labour
movement, but it has never been
easy to achieve. Environmental pol-
itics simply makes the achievement
of solidarity that much harder.
Again, this is largely a function of
the importation of middle-class val-
ues into working class struggles. It
is often easy to let those values over-
ride the working class concern for
unity between all those who work
for a living.

The greatest difficulty lies in the
complex inter-relationship between
industries or between sections of a
multifaceted production process.
Fishermen whose catch is reduced
can easily blame logging, shipping,
petroleum refineries, hydro-electric
dams and grids or a whole host of
other industries, for instance. Work-
ers in the auto industry might be
quick to search for environmental
sources of harmful emissions within
their own workplaces, but less ready
to seriously challenge the equally
harmful emissions from the stacks
of their plants or the cars, trucks
and buses they build. White collar

z s! “
mbers joined with community members in Squamish to put up their own blockades

unionists might support environ-
mental causes, not knowing they
potentially undermine the job secu-
rity of workers in resource indus-
tries. In all these cases, environ-
mental groups are frequently happy
to step into the fray, often pitting
worker against worker in the
process.

Very often these people have not
grown up in the workers’ own world
and haven't learned from childhood
the “never-cross-a-picket-line” rules
that help bind together workers
from different industries or crafts.
It is crucial, therefore, that unions
work hard to maintain cordial rela-
tions within our movement. This
often involves measures to temper
or balance environmental demands
against other important wider class
values.

It is clear, therefore, that environ-
mental issues often open up a new,
strange world for union activists
and officials. While companies often
manipulate workers in their battles
with environmental groups, envi-
ronmental groups are willing to do
the same in the interests of fund-
raising or politics.

For all the good they have done in
pushing industry and government
toward the achievement of regula-
tion and more sustainable practices,
environmental groups often pose as
great a threat to workers’ jobs, com-
munity and solidarity as do compa-
nies. Often they appear to care about
jobs as little or less than companies.

It is important that labour orga-
nizations learn to take a good, hard
look at every environmental claim
or action, whether by industry, gov-
ernment or greens.

And it is important that labour’s
core values continue to be placed
front and centre, not submerged
under calls for embrace or rejection
of this or that environmental pro-
posal.

Environmental sustainability is
important, but so are good-quality
jobs, stable communities, union soli-
darity and other working class val-
ues. We must strive for balance.

9S

34/LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1998