John Medhurst johnme@pcs.org.uk

“An ecological heart and an egalitarian

body”Trade unions and environmentalism

1880-2011

William Morris

“When the day comes that there is a serious strike of workmen against the poisoning of the air with smoke or the waters with filth, I shall think that art is getting on indeed”

William Morris

Edward Carpenter -“Red, Green and gay”

The Social Democratic FederationSheffield Socialist Society“Towards Democracy”“Our Parish and Our Duke” - argued that rent

should go to a common fund for roads, the environment, care of old people and higher wages. Sold 20,000 copies.

Influenced the “New Unionism” and the Independent Labour Party

Edward Carpenter

Bryant and May Match Girls strike London 1888

Poor working conditions - 14 hour days, use of white phosphorous

Annie Besant wrote “White Slavery in London”

Management demanded workers repudiate article.

When refused, some sacked. 1,400 working girls and women went on strike

Led to better conditions e.g. separate eating areas

Eventually led to British Govt banning White Phosphorous in matches

Bryant and May Match Girls strikeLondon 1888

Women’s Trade Union League organised female garment workers

1909 – walkout of 400 workers at Triangle Shirtwaist factory demanding better conditions

9th floor – 240 workers crammed in. March 1911 – breakout of fire on 9th floor.Fire-escapes did not reach ground. Doors

opened inwards146 dead- mostly teenage immigrant girls

The Triangle Strike:New York 1911

The Triangle Strike – New York, 1911

The Triangle strike

WTUL agitated for new working environment laws and better inspection

NY State Legislature created Factory Investigating Committee .

Led to a "golden era in remedial legislation" in NY State.

Many trade unionists and progressives active in fight for improved worker safety in garment trades became leading figures in 1930s New Deal – introduced labour and environmental protections.

After-effects of the Triangle Strikes

The IWW

First Trade Union to have specific environmental policies

1925 - called for “Conservational Action” against lumber companies

“Nothing but mute stumps over hundreds of acres. Where is it going to end?” - The Industrial Pioneer

The IWW

“If it hadn’t been for the IWW, the forests of Montana and Northern Idaho wouldn’t be there now”

Joseph Davis, U.S Forestry Service, 1917

The IWW

“With their combination of revolutionary fervour, love for wild nature, and scorn for capitalist “development”, Joe Hill and others in the “rebel band of labor” can truly be regarded as forerunners of the Earth First! Movement in the 1980s.”

Franklin Rosemont – The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture.

The IWW > “Earth First!”

Judi Bari - environmentalist, feminist and union activist. Organiser of Earth First! campaigns in 80s/90s against logging of redwoods in California.

Organized links of Earth First! and IWW to bring timber workers and environmentalists together.

1990 - severely injured by FBI pipe bomb in her car whilst organising the “Redwood Summer” campaign to save redwood forests and build alliance with loggers.

Judi Bari and Earth First!

3 month long campaign by Earth First!Non-violent blockade of ports and logging,

demonstrations, sit-ins, and debates with logging workers and families

5,000 people participated

“The goal was, and is, to turn the timber industry to sustained-yield harvesting under community and worker control and ownership”

Jeff Ditz, Libertarian Labor Review, 1991

Redwood Summer

“She helped transform Earth First! from a narrow minded conservationist movement into an allied social force that aimed to transform social relations themselves, and the new and inventive way she went about it was undoubtedly the reason she was subjected to an attempted bomb assassination in 1990”.

Dan Jakopovich – Green Unionism in Theory and Practice, 2007

Judi Bari

Cesar Chavez & the United Farm Workers

Only IWW tried to organise immigrant farm workers

1963 – Chavez created the UFWUFW agitated for Filipino/Mexican farm

workers in California – used “Community Service Organisation”

Campaigns and strikes led to support of RFK, and passage of 1st collective bargaining law for farm workers

In 1980s focused campaigns on environment – fasted for 36 days to protest use of pesticides

Cesar Chavez & the United Farm Workers

Encouraged grass roots democracy and debate

Anti-Vietnam War activitiesEncouraged female membership and equal

pay1973 – 1st female organiser of a construction

workers union in the worldImmigrant members provided bi-lingual

resourcesSupported student and gay activists.

The Australian Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) - New South Wales Branch

“In the course of this great boom the developers were not concerned with what was destroyed; Georgian terraces, Victorian spires and domes, parkland, jewels of art deco all fell to the wrecker’s ball. Scab labour would be used in nocturnal operations to pull down heritage listed buildings. This was capitalism in the raw.”

Green Bans and the BLF: the labour movement and urban ecology

Green Bans

“Perhaps the most radical example of working class environmentalism ever

seen in the world”.

John Tully, ex BLF activist

Green Bans

Green Bans saved –

The Rocks – Sydney’s oldest precinct, parklands & terraced houses with controlled rents

Kelly’s Bush – Last remaining natural bush land in Sydney Harbour

Centennial Park Botanical Gardens – Sydney’s “lungs”.

Theatre RoyalMany others

Green Bans

NSW Branch destroyed by alliance of property developers, corrupt union officials, and criminals

BLF President funded by employers – with their money he flew in scabs to break NSW Branch, hired armed thugs to intimidate activists

Prominent resident supporter Juanita Nielson vanished – presumed murdered

NSW Branch office burgled and records stolen

Jack Mundey reluctantly concedes defeat

Green Bans

“The NSW BLF perished, but its exploits have become the stuff of legend and an inspiration to all who wish to rebuild the worker’s movement as a thoroughly democratic, class-conscious movement, committed to social and environmental action as an integral part of building a better world”

John Tully, BLF

Green Bans

“Petra Kelly saw the Green Bans which the unions were then imposing on untoward developments in Sydney. She took back to Germany this idea of Green bans, or the terminology. As best as we can track it down, this is where the word “green” as applied to the emerging Greens in Europe came from”

Australian Green Party Senator Bob Brown

Green Bans > Green Party

“An Alternative Corporate Plan for socially useful and environmentally desirable production”

Green Bans in the UK –Lucas Aerospace 1975

Lucas Aerospace management sought to cut jobs.

LA shop stewards meet - a mix of aerospace designers, shop floor engineers and “unskilled” labour

Alternative Corporate Plan drawn up by a combine of all LA workers

Ideas for alternative production based on social usefulness – new kidney machines, portable life support systems, improved wheelchairs, battery driven cars, solar panels, wind generators, many more.

Lucas Aerospace

LA management refused to negotiate the planSuggestions of public ownership of LAOnly govt supporter – Industry Secretary

Tony BennWilson removed Benn from post after

pressure from CBI and media because of support for LA workers and public ownership.

LA Alternative Corporate Plan not acted on, but an inspiration for today’s Green New Deal and the “Just Transition” agenda.

Lucas Aerospace

Environmental action in South America

“If the climate were a bank, the US would already have saved it”

Hugo Chavez, Copenhagen Summit

Venezuela - Chavez

2000 - Bolivia’s water supply privatisedCochabamba Water run for profit by

Bechtel “Law 2029” – gave Bechtel control of all

water resources in Cochabamba. Bechtel raised prices by 35%, charged for

installation of meters, and for licenses to collect rainwater.

“If people don’t pay their water bills, their water will be turned off” – G. Thorpe, Bechtel Executive

Bolivia – the “water wars”

Bolivia - the “Water Wars”

Massive campaign of resistance led by Trade Unions – especially the Union of Coca Farmers (UCF).

UCF leader Evo Morales led 600km march from Cochabamba to La Paz.

Occupation of central la Paz.Eventually privatisation reversed and water

re-nationalised.Morales and others create “Movement

Toward Socialism” party2005 – Morales elected President of Bolivia

Bolivia – the “Water wars”

MTS government nationalised major utlities Provided subsidised food for poorPressured food producers to sell to local

markets first After failure of Copenhagen Climate Change

conference, Morales called for counter-conference at Cochabamba to focus climate change resistance

"The world is suffering from a fever due to climate change, and the disease is the capitalist development model." - Evo Morales, 2007

An Eco-Socialist government?Evo Morales and Bolivia

Mexico - Zapatistas

In response to NAFTABased on grass roots participatory,

anarchist, indigenous resistanceOccupied land of absentee landlords &

created autonomous communitiesUsed internet to create global network,

linking to anti-capitalist groups like Reclaim the Streets

Mexico - Zapatistas

1991 - Reclaim the Streets formed in UK by Earth First! activists.

“A campaigning Collective with a shared ideal of community ownership of public spaces. A resistance movement to the dominance of corporate forces in globalization, and to the car as the dominant mode of transport”

Reclaim the Streets

An alliance - Reclaim the Streets & the Liverpool Dockers

Vestas struggle

World’s largest Wind Turbine producerJuly 2009 – announced closure of Isle of

Wight factory and loss of over 500 jobsOffices occupied by some of workforce and

campaign by unions (RMT, PCS) to nationaliseLabour Govt supports “Green jobs” but

refuses to nationaliseAugust 2009 – Vestas opens plant in China

with 5,000 jobs

Vestas Struggle

“Vestas symbolises how we can’t rely on the motor forces of the capitalist market. Here were green products but low profits; hence, in a capitalist market, the result is closure and “rationalisation”. How can the passions and reflections stimulated by the Vestas campaign be turned into the strategy we need for an effective and socially just green transition?”

Hilary Wainwright, Red Pepper, 2009

Vestas struggle

Campaign against Climate Change

Founded 2001 in response to US rejection of Kyoto Protocols

2008 – major Trade Union conference on climate change

The “Just Transition” agendaThe Green New Deal“One Million Climate Jobs Now!”

pamphlet

Campaign against Climate Change

“Ecologists with a socialist perspective and socialists with an ecological perspective must form a coalition to tackle the wide-ranging problems relating to human survival. And then my dream, and that of millions of others, might come true: a socialist world with a human face, an ecological heart and an egalitarian body”.

Jack Mundey, Secretary NSW BLF

An ecological heart and an egalitarian body