Photo By Jared M. Holder

Larry Fahn (left), past president of the National Sierra Club Board, and David Foster, national director of the Blue/Green Alliance, say labor unions and environmentalists have a common cause.

One of the nation's largest labor unions is joining with the nation's largest grassroots environmental group to push a common political agenda that includes promoting the growth of renewable energy sources and improving air quality standards.

The United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club have formed a strategic partnership called the Blue-Green Alliance, with the goals of reducing the threat of global warming and stopping the flow of U.S. jobs overseas caused by free trade agreements.

Under the pact, the union will become more involved in environmental issues and work to decrease U.S. dependence on fossil fuels. In turn, the Sierra Club will use its resources to promote fair trade policies and oppose the corporate-led globalization of the economy.

Alliance leaders conducted a five-day tour across Ohio this week to promote the effort, with stops in Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Toledo and Cleveland.

Fair, not free, trade
In Cincinnati, Mayor Mark Mallory signed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement. Mallory joins a growing list of mayors from about 250 cities nationwide in pledging to review and implement more environmentally friendly policies.

Locally, the policies could include replacing gasoline-fueled vehicles in the city's fleet with hybrids that also can operate using electricity and reviving the city's Office of Environmental Management, which enforced local laws that regulated odors and monitored toxic emissions.

"The federal government has done nothing on these issues in recent years, so the cities are stepping in," says Larry Fahn, a former national president of the Sierra Club, who is working with the Blue-Green Alliance. "Congress needs to be brought around and start responding to global climate change. It's been the do-nothing Congress."

Noting that a former Texas oilman occupies the president's office, it's not surprising the White House has done little to promote renewable energy sources or methods for handling global warming, Fahn says.

"With the entrenched economic interests in the fossil fuel industry, people are going to fight like hell to protect that," he says.

The federal government's indifference to environmental and labor issues spurred the alliance, its leaders say. The two groups have found common ground in protecting workers' rights and safeguarding the environment, both in the United States and abroad.

Today's trade rules, such as the Central America Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), are written to favor the interest of large corporations, alliance leaders say. Nations are forced to compete by lowering wages and reducing environmental regulations in order to attract corporate investment.

With the Bush administration vigorously lobbying Congress for more free trade agreements similar to CAFTA and refusing to sign the Kyoto treaty to lessen global emissions of carbon dioxide, a joint counter-strategy was needed, the alliance says.

"After the 2004 elections, we decided we needed to do something dramatically different if we're going to get anywhere," says David Foster, a former regional director for the United Steelworkers who serves as the Blue-Green Alliance's national director.

One of the primary factors that led to the alliance is what the union and the Sierra Club say are inequities in the way many free trade agreements are written. The agreements often contain weak and unenforceable labor and environmental provisions, they say. For example, there typically are no requirements for a nation to maintain and enforce a set of basic labor or environmental laws and regulations.

Also, the agreements generally contain no parity between enforcement provisions for environmental and labor standards when compared to provisions regarding its commercial components. CAFTA and similar deals allow foreign investors to challenge environmental and health regulations before international tribunals, bypassing domestic courts, and receive monetary compensation if successful.

The Blue-Green Alliance is advocating a trade policy that would require nations to enforce any multi-lateral environmental treaties they have signed.

Moreover, the alliance wants to require nations signing the trade deals to abide by the conventions of the International Labor Organization. They include promoting workers' right to self-organization and protections against worker exploitation, child labor and slavery.

"We're not against the global economy, we're not against trade, but we're profoundly against how the global economy is being run right now," Foster says. "The assault on workers' rights that's going on is really staggering."

Environmental job growth
Fahn believes the alliance with labor interests isn't as unlikely as some people might think on first glance. He quotes conservationist John Muir, who founded the Sierra Club in 1892: "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

Affluent nations often rely on goods produced in poorer nations that, because they are desperate for foreign investment, allow grueling conditions that exploit workers, Fahn says. Globally, about 2 billion people must subsist on making less than $2 per day.

"How can you have a global economy that depends on such gross economic inequalities?" Fahn says. "We have an enormous responsibility in trying to create a global economy that can sustain this population."

As union leaders stress to their membership, working to stop climate change and improve air quality is not only morally correct, they also yield economic and other benefits if backed by government incentives.

In Germany, about 40,000 people work in jobs connected to the wind power industry, Foster says. That sector is the second-largest consumer of steel in that nation, after the automobile industry. Proportionally, a similar effort could create 160,000 jobs in the United States.

"There's some very strong graphic evidence about the economic benefits of dealing with these problems," Foster says. "There's no reason we couldn't have a hybrid energy plant being built here in Ohio."

The United Steelworkers is North America's largest private sector manufacturing labor union, with 850,000 members. the Sierra Club is the nation's largest grassroots environmental organization, with 750,000 members.

The two groups have worked together before, but only on an issue-by-issue basis. In the 1970s the groups helped secure passage of the federal Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act and other environmental laws. In 1999 the groups organized protests at a key meeting of the World Trade Organization in Seattle.

"There's really a mandate among the American people to take the issue of global warming seriously," Foster says. "This is an enormous global economic opportunity."

"The evidence is so overwhelming as to what the ultimate impact of global warming will be," Fahn says. "The question is, what are we going to do and how quickly are we going to do it?" ©