e CONFRONTING GREENPEACE - In July of 1997, the I.W.A. captured Greenpeace vessels on the Vancouver wate!
organization blocked logging roads in British Columbia.

rfront, after the international

environmental

Striving for balance between sustainability, quality
jobs, stable communities and inter-union solidarity

by Kim Pollock, Director
Environment & Public Policy

orking people have

a strong, self-evi-

dent interest in

environmental act-

ion. Workers and

their families are,
after all, on the front lines when it
comes to workplace contamination,
chemical and mechanical health
hazards or homes proximate to dan-
gerous industrial plants.

At the same time, however, “envi-
ronmentalism” has turned into a
highly codified ideology that ori-

ates not with the working class,

ut largely with the professional
middle classes. As such, it is an ide-
ology that often neglects the needs
and interests of working people and
ignores their key concerns: class
paity and solidarity, jobs and com-
munity.

Herein lies the crucial difficult;
and contradiction of environmental-
ism: it is an undeniable need for
workers as they struggle for a bet-
ter life for themselves and their
loved ones; it is also a movement
that for the most part is peopled by
middle class groups and individuals
who owe, for the most part, only
tactical allegiance to the working
class movement.

The first challenge for workers in
Canada and other nations, then, is
to harness the best of environmen-
talism and conservation to the inter-
ests of working class action, while
distancing and protecting them-
selves from the most extreme and
ruthless elements of the “green”

_ movement.

second challenge comes from
industry and capital. Workers

ently have an instinctive
eae itimate class response to ini-
ives that come from middle class

ideologues and intellectuals or from
green-controlled non-government
organizations. Employers often
manipulate this response to pit
workers against environmentalists
in a way that ignores real and seri-
ous and environmental concerns.
All too often, after all, factories do
pollute; industries do over-reach the
bounds of sustainability; profits do
come before the health of workers
and communities and the truth
about these activities is suppressed
in the interest of corporations and
their shareholders.

In addition, environmental change
is usually viewed by industry as a
cost, the payment of which must cut
into either profits, wages or invest-
ment. Companies therefore attempt
to resist these costs: often they can-
not, either because of competition,
political or regulatory pressure or
the effects of pollution or poor prac-
tice on the operating system itself.
When they cannot, often the brunt
is borne by workers, in the form of
one or more of:

° downward pressure on wages,
benefits or employment;

¢ deployment of new technology,
which can reduce either employ-
ment or workers’ control over their
workplace or both;

° an ideological attack on the green
groups or government regulators
who have pressured industry to
change practices, forcing workers to
feel they have to choose between
their health and ecosystem sustain-
ability, on one hand, and their job
security and remuneration, on the
other.

Tn short, workers all too often are
the “meat in the sandwich” in a
struggle between industry and green

ups. This can often mean either
that both sides attempt to use and
manipulate working apesele in their
struggle for gain and hegemony or
that workers’ interests are sacri-

ficed in the struggles and accommo-
dations between these two forces.

Thus the first and foremost lesson
for unions and working people: we
must develop our own perspective
and position on environmental
issues, one that answers important
issues about conservation and sus-
tainability, but which simultane-
ously puts up front our concern for
solidarity, jobs and community.

There are a number of important
observations that follow.

First, environmental issues are
complex and multi-faceted, in spite
of the simplifying and codifying
efforts of protagonists’ on either

Large environmental
organizations are
often stronger,
better equipped for
battle and more
resourceful than
the corporations
they attack.

side of a given issue. This means
there is no substitute for indepen-
dent analysis and aude either
by workers, union officials or their
attics In environmental issues it is
crucial to remember that “the howl-
ing of the righteous is indistinguish-
able from the howling of the
damned.” Because the various play-
ers are highly ideologically moti-
vated and interested, they can be
expected to bend and manipulate
the “facts” of “scientific” inquiry and
conjecture. We must develop our

own ability to interrogate these
“facts”, whether in-house or by
trusted academics and profession-
als. This is often time-consuming,
costly and likely to embroil a union
in controversy.

Second, in fact, there are no
“truths.” Environmentalism is an
ideology, not a science, and as such,
its conclusions depend and are highly
coloured by its assumptions. Many
of these assumptions — the fragility
of the earth, the finiteness of its
resources, the “fact” that environ-
mental quality is constantly,
implacably and irreversibly worsen-
ing and the belief that human activ-
ity is the main and root cause — are
just that: assumptions, not proven
or irrefutable scientific fact. There
is good reason to believe that these

ments originate in a concerted
effort to “dampen down” working
class expectations in the face of the
recessions of the mid-seventies and
early eighties. Although subse-
uently taken up and em! braced by
the middle-class, popularization of
green ideology really began with
reports such as the C. lub of Rome’s
mid-seventies exploration of the
“limits of growth.” Ee

In opposition to this ideology, it is
just as easy and reasonable to put
forward the belief that through col-
lective action and technical innova-
tion, humanity has, can and will
solve the problems of scarcity and
want and that we can overcome and
transcend the current limits imposed
by capi and the limits of our tech-
nical knowledge and industrial
capacity. Moreover, it can be argued
that environmentalists in fact over-
state the danger human activity
poses to the earth, which has repeat-
edly proven its resilience in the face
of human and natural devastation
and damage and which has arguably

Continued on page thirty-four

LUMBERWORKER/DECEMBER, 1998/33