MCFly asked John Medhurst, Policy Officer at the Public and Commercial Services union (1), to write about the historic links between trade unionism and environmental protest.

It is sometimes assumed that trade unionism and environmentalism are two entirely different strands of social and political activity. But Trade Unions, especially their grass-roots activists, have frequently confronted environmental issues in the workplace, and those struggles have often led to innovative solutions to the exploitation of the working and natural environment. Drawing inspiration from socialist pioneers such as William Morris and Edward Carpenter, British Trade Unionism has always had a “green” strand. As an early example, in 1888 women trade unionists at the Bryant and May Match Factory in East London went on strike to protest atrocious working conditions such as 14 hour working days, and dangerous exposure to the “white phosphorous” used in matches. A major strike by the “match girls” led to real improvements in working conditions and the banning of white phosphorous.
Similarly in America. In 1909 in New York the Women’s Trade Union League organised women who slaved for long days in high rise sweatshop conditions for the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. After a fire at the Factory killed 146 women who could not escape because safety precautions had been cut and fire escapes did not reach the ground, a wave of protest led to improved factory inspection. Many of the union activists involved in the campaign later played leading roles in FDR’s New Deal in the 1930s, which for the first time in the US put in place significant labour and environmental regulation. The first trade union to have a specific environmental focus was the strongly anti-capitalist and syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), based on the agricultural, logging and itinerant labourers of the American West. In 1925 they called for “conservational action” against US lumber companies who were wiping out the huge redwood forests. In 1917 the IWW had provided volunteers to fight massive forest fires, and even the anti-union US government had to concede that “If it wasn’t for the IWW the forests of Montana and Northern Idaho wouldn’t be there now” (US Forestry Service).

The IWW has been acknowledged as the forerunner of the radical Earth First! movement in the 1980s, which forged links between environmental campaigners and logging workers during the influential “Redwood Summer” campaign of 1990, that sought to bridge divides and promote sustained yield harvesting.

The links are clear and inspirational. The social historian Franklin Rosemont’s classic book “The IWW and the Making of a Revolutionary Working Class Counterculture” concludes that “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.”

The IWW demonstrated that radical environmentalism can emerge from unexpected quarters. None more so than the Australian Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) in the 1970s, which produced “the most radical example of working class environmentalism in the world”. The New South Wales Branch of the BLF had been a beacon of progressive trade unionism, with anti-Vietnam war activities, support for equal pay and for student and gay activists. They were many years ahead of standard Australian trade union practice, but their most original and inspirational action was the “Green Bans”.

In response to rapacious and often illegal activities of property developers – who were destroying not just the last natural bush land around Sydney, but priceless Victorian and art deco architecture – the NSW BLF launched “Green Bans”, which in alliance with local residents blocked certain developments by refusing to provide workers.

For a while this was successful, but in the end an alliance of property developers and corrupt union leaders smashed the NSW Branch using paid thugs and intimidation. But one supporter of the Green Bans, German environmentalist Petra Kelly, took the terminology back home and used it to create the first Green Party in Europe.

There were attempts at “Green Bans” in Britain, especially the “Alternative Corporate Plan” suggested by the workers of Lucas Aerospace in 1975. Facing redundancy, the LA Trade Union combine suggested that instead of building military equipment they use their design and manufacturing skills to produce new and socially useful producers such as electric cars, improved solar panels etc, under public ownership.

The only government supporter of the plan was Industry Secretary Tony Benn. For his support of public ownership and radical ideas about workers control such as the LA Plan, he was removed from office. But although rejected, the Alternative Corporate Plan remained an inspiration for later trade unionists. Increasingly, links were forged between environmental activists and workers, such as the visible support given in the 1990s to the locked-out Liverpool Dockers by Reclaim the Streets activists.

Such alliances laid the groundwork for the historic Vestas struggle, in which trade unions like the RMT and PCS supported workers who wished to carry on building wind turbines under public ownership rather than be thrown on the dole.

Socialist writer Hilary Wainwright threw a keen light on the meaning of the Vestas fight – “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?” (Red Pepper, 2009)

The Vestas struggle highlighted the urgent need for a “green transition”, as campaigned for by the Campaign Against Climate Change (CACC). Founded in 2001 in response to the US rejection of the Kyoto Protocols, the CACC brings together UK trade unions to fight for what has been called a “just transition” agenda, consisting of the creation of “One Million Climate Jobs”, investing in a sustainable future rather than destroying jobs and services.

This is the only alternative to cuts and austerity and the destruction of public services that for all their flaws have protected ordinary people and the natural environment from the short sighted exploitation of the capitalist development model.

As Jack Mundey, the trade union leader of the Green Bans, once said – “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 our dream might come true: a socialist world with a human face, an ecological heart and an egalitarian body”.

(1) The Public and Commercial Services union (PCS) is currently leading the way in fighting the government’s attacks on the public sector. Part of their campaign is to present a clear alternative to the cuts and austerity being imposed throughout Europe. That alternative must rest on a “Green New Deal”, and alternative forms of public ownership. PCS has also been a leading light of the Campaign Against Climate Change.