The United Auto Workers and the Emergence of Labor Environmentalism
Andrew D. Van Alstyne
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Southern Utah University
Mailing Address:
Southern Utah University
History, Sociology & Anthropology Department
351 West University Boulevard, CN 225Q Cedar City, UT 84720
Phone:
(435) 586-5453
E-mail: andrewvanalstyne@suu.edu
Andrew D. Van Alstyne is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Southern Utah
University. His research focuses on labor environmentalism, urban environmental
governance, and sustainability.
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Abstract
Recent collaboration between labor unions and environmental organizations has
sparked significant interest in “blue-green” coalitions. Drawing on archival research,
this article explores the United Auto Workers (UAW)'s labor environmentalism in the
late 1960s and 1970s, when the union promoted a broad environmental agenda.
Eventually the union went as far as incorporating environmental concerns in collective
bargaining and calling for an end to the internal combustion engine. These actions are
particularly noteworthy because they challenged the union’s economic foundation: the
automobile industry. However, as a closer examination of the record shows, there was a
significant disjuncture between the union’s international leadership, which pushed a
broad vision of labor environmentalism, and its rank-and-file membership, which
proved resistant to the issue. By the close of the 1970s, the conjunction of economic
pressures and declining power in relation to management led the union to retreat from
its environmental actions.
Keywords: Labor Environmentalism, Blue-Green Coalitions, United Auto Workers,
Environmental Justice, Social unionism, Environmental Movements, Historical
Sociology
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Introduction
Over the past two decades, in response to long term declines in the labor
movement’s size, power, and influence, unions have increasingly turned to building
coalitions with other social movements on issues ranging from immigration reform to
the minimum wage to environmental protection (Gleeson, 2013; Tattersall, 2010). The
collaboration between organized labor and environmental organizations during the late
1990s global justice movement, captured by the image of “teamsters and turtles” coming
together in Seattle, inspired a number of scholars to focus attention on “blue-green”
coalitions between these two movements (Obach, 2004; Hess, 2012; Mayer, 2008;
Dreiling, & Robinson, 1998). This relatively recent collaboration between the two
movements has historical precedent, as there were several instances of partnerships
between segments of the labor and environmental movements in the late 1960s through
the 1970s (Gottlieb, 1993; Gordon, 1998; Gordon, 1999; Gordon, 2004; Dewey, 1998).
Bringing these movements together requires overcoming many of the challenges
inherent in coalition work (Rose, 2000) as well challenges specific to the relationship
between the environment and the economy. Many unions have seen this tension as a
tradeoff between jobs and the environment; this perception shapes behavior, even if it is
not empirically valid (Bezdek, et al., 2008). Although empirical analysis often challenges
the idea of a fundamental conflict between work and environmental protection, bluegreen challenges are set within a larger social context of a sharp decline in middle-class,
particularly unionized, jobs in the United States.
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As Gould, Lewis, and Roberts Gould, et al., (2004) note in their examination of
the global justice coalition, segments of the environmental movement that focus on
health or justice are more likely to partner with labor. The same is true for organized
labor as organizations: unions that embrace social unionism are more open to labor
environmentalism (Stevis, 2011). In order to better understand labor environmentalism,
this paper draws on archival data to analyze the historical actions of the United Auto
Workers (UAW), the leading union in the post-World War II era. I begin with a brief
history of the UAW’s formation and rise to prominence, before turning to issues of labor
environmentalism as a form of environmentalism as well as specific challenges it faces,
most notably the issue of job blackmail. Finally, I turn to the UAW’s record of labor
environmentalism. I find that the UAW frequently engaged in environmental actions
that presaged the rise of the environmental justice movements, but that, like many UAW
actions, there was often a disjuncture between the union’s international leadership and
rank-and-file members.
The United Auto Workers
One of the key historical divisions within the organized labor movement is
between craft unions that generally focus on skilled labor and industrial unions that
look to incorporate unskilled workers (Brody, 1993). Craft unionism dominated the first
era of US labor. In 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression, union leaders who felt the
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American Federation of Labor (AFL) paid insufficient attention to organizing unskilled
industrial workers formed the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) (Zieger,
1995). As part of these efforts, CIO unionists founded the United Auto Workers (UAW).
Over the next few years, the union engaged in a series of protracted, often bloody,
battles to gain recognition from major automobile manufacturers like Chrysler, General
Motors (GM), and Ford. Walter Reuther, whose organizing during the initial
unionization drives at Ford and GM made him a prominent figure within the union, was
elected UAW President in late 1947. Until his untimely death in 1970, Reuther remained
at the head of the union and shaped the UAW’s national and international policies.
Throughout his leadership, the union followed a liberal and social democratic, though
clearly anti-communist, path. In the post-war era, the UAW stood at the forefront of
collective bargaining, winning breakthroughs in inflation adjustments for income,
health care, retirement, etc. At the same time, the UAW used its leverage as one of the
largest industrial unions (as well as, arguably, the most powerful) to embrace the
concept of social unionism, which holds that the labor movement’s mission extends far
beyond collective bargaining and narrow economic emphases. For the UAW, in the
workplace this involved challenging the idea that business practices should be
exclusively reserved to management. Outside of industrial relations this included
support for the civil rights movement and a push for strong civil rights legislation. It is
this commitment to expanding the social role of labor unions that makes the UAW a
fitting choice for exploring the possibilities of labor environmentalism, as well as blue-
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green coalitions. The national leadership of the union’s embrace of progressive issues
and expansive vision of labor’s social role during Reuther’s tenure made the union more
likely to embrace environmentalism, in both its broad and narrow sense of the term,
than unions that focused almost exclusively on their members economic interests, which
is also known as business or trade unionism.
From the New Deal through World War II, the relationship between labor,
business, and the state fundamentally changed (Lichtenstein, 1982). Central to New
Deal legislation was a formal legal recognition of labor unions and collective bargaining,
most notably in the 1935 Wagner Act. During the war, the federal government, business,
and labor all had seats on the National War Labor Board, which addressed disputes
between workers and companies. Throughout this period, the UAW, and labor unions in
general, experienced tremendous growth numerically as well as in terms of legitimacy.
Coming out of the war, the UAW pushed for a more formal role in the automobile
industry. For example, in its Reuther-led 1945 contract negotiations with GM, the union
sought a 30 percent wage increase coupled with a pledge on the company’s part not to
raise car prices. After the company immediately rejected the proposals as economically
unworkable, Reuther challenged the company to open its books. Eventually, after the
company adamantly refused to yield any of its prerogatives, the union settled for a
smaller pay raise.
For the remainder of the 1940s, the UAW won significant victories that shaped
collective bargaining and employment practices for the next few decades, but were
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unsuccessful at gaining a voice in company decision-making. The newly won benefits
included fully funded pensions and cost of living increases. In exchange for labor peace
and recognition of production decisions as solely resting with the company, the UAW
won significant economic concessions. The landmark 1950 “Treaty of Detroit” with GM,
which soon spread to Chrysler and Ford, was a five-year contract that offered unionized
workers an essentially privatized welfare state system of benefits: along with retirement
and protections from inflation, the contract also introduced employee funded health
care (Lichtenstein, 1995). As I discuss in this paper, the UAW’s ultimate failure to gain
an official role in corporate practices had significant consequences for both labor and
the environment. However, the union achieved tangible results in a number of areas
that shared the logic of the contemporary environmental justice movement. Before
turning to these actions, I briefly outline two distinct forms of environmentalism:
reform (mainstream) environmentalism and environmental justice.
Forms of Environmentalism
As Brulle (2000) notes, there are multiple discourses within US
environmentalism. This paper focuses on two of them, reform environmentalism and
environmental justice. This section is not intended to present a thorough overview of
the two; instead it will briefly outline key distinctions that will inform the analysis of
labor environmentalism. Reform environmentalism and environmental justice differ in
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terms of their conceptualization of the environment, constituencies, tactics and
strategies, and understanding of the link between environmental and social issues.
While the roots of environmentalism trace back to 19th century, reform
environmentalism is currently the dominant discourse (Taylor, 2000; Taylor, 2002;
Brulle, 2000). It is what most people think of as environmentalism. The emergence of
reform environmentalism can be traced to the 1962 publication of Silent Spring (Carson,
2002). Reform environmentalism focuses on the non-human environment and is
primarily motivated by concerns about human health and well-being. Reform
environmentalism is generally associated with a white, middle class constituency. While
some reform environmental organizations have engaged in moderate forms of direct
action, the most common tactics include lobbying, letter writing campaigns, and
corporate partnerships in national and international contexts. The key difference
between reform environmentalism and earlier preservation/conservation approaches is
the former emphasizes the relationship between environmental and human health.
However, reform environmentalism still generally frames the environment in terms of
non-human nature.
The environmental justice movement emerged in the early 1980s in response to
the increasing recognition of the inequitable distributions of environmental hazards and
benefits along the lines of race and class (Čapek, 1993; Bullard, 1990; Bryant, & Mohai,
1992). The environmental justice movement draws heavily from earlier movements
addressing racial and economic issues as well as those of urban reform (Taylor 2002).
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While reform environmentalism focuses on general questions of human health, the
environmental justice movement emphasizes that these adverse impacts are
disproportionately centered in poor and minority communities. Environmental justice
actions often begin in response to locally unwanted land uses (LULUs) and initially try
working within established paths of civil society action. When communities encounter
frustration through these processes, they may turn to more direct actions.
Environmental justice advocates offer a people-centered vision of the environment that
defines it as where we “live, work, and play.”
Labor environmentalism often aligns with environmental justice concerns; in
fact, the labor movement is one of the precursors to the environmental justice
movement. To illustrate these connections, I will briefly examine the UAW’s focus on
housing and health care, two motivating concerns of environmental justice advocates.
These actions of are interest for two reasons: first, they highlight the importance of
incorporating organized labor into historical analyses of the environmental justice and
other grassroots environmental movements. Second, they demonstrate the UAW’s
commitment to reaching far beyond the narrow constraints of business unionism, which
explain why the UAW was willing to incorporate other environmental issues, once the
mainstream environmental movement emerged in the mid 1960s.
Outside of the workplace, the UAW focused on improving public housing. The
Citizens’ Housing and Planning Council (CHPC), an urban reform group founded in the
late New Deal, received significant support from the UAW, including the presence of
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Victor Reuther (Walter’s brother), who at the time was head of the union’s Education
Department, on CHPC’s Board of Directors. CHPC’s emphasis on urban clean up would
today be considered “environmental justice.” In the late 1940s, CHPC lobbied heavily for
anti-smoke legislation, because “concentration on clean-up meant concern with cleaner
alleys, rats, sewage disposal, and specific emphasis on smoke abatement” (Citizens'
Housing and Planning Council, 1947). CHPC also organized an annual “clean-up week,”
its promotional material declared: “Detroit’s dirt . . . CAN be licked . . . It’s being done in
rich, poor, and middle-income neighborhoods” (Citizens' Housing and Planning
Council, 1948). CHPC fought for urban clean-up for more than just aesthetic reasons:
smoke pollution represented a “cost to the city -- $50-million annually . . . respiratory
diseases 30% higher in smoke-blanketed areas . . . 30% less sun” (Citizens' Housing and
Planning Council, 1947). The environmental justice movement’s conception of the
environment as where people live, work and play can be clearly seen in CHPC’s actions
to clean up Detroit for communal benefit and public health and safety reasons. Smoke
abatement, trash removal, and rodent extermination were all pushed by progressive
urban organizations, often supported, as in the case of CHPC and the UAW, by
organized labor.
The UAW’s support of CHPC represented only a fraction of the union’s
involvement in clean, safe, and available housing. The union also worked directly with
local and national officials on housing projects for poor and working class citizens. The
union was heavily involved in the battle against segregated housing, both in terms of
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public housing projects and the private real estate industry (Sugrue, 1996). This
emphasis on the intersections of race, class, and the physical environment furthers the
parallels with the logic of environmental justice. The exploding number of African
Americans leaving the South for the promise of work in the industrial heartland created
unsustainable pressures on the already overcrowded black ghettoes. These conditions
added urgency to the UAW’s vociferous calls for quality, integrated housing.
Another issue the UAW devoted significant attention to was improving public
health care. The 1950 Treaty of Detroit first provided UAW members with company
subsidies for health care – in its first iteration, the company reimbursed half of workers’
doctor and hospital bills. The UAW has also repeatedly fought for national health care.
As momentum towards national health care stalled in the mid 1950s, the UAW
leadership looked to establish some form of medical insurance that would be affordable.
In spite of many of the negative associations currently associated with health
maintenance organizations (HMOs), in 1956, the idea was downright radical. At this
time, most medical expenses were still paid out of pocket or through expensive, for
profit, private insurers. The Community Health Association (CHA) was initiated by the
UAW and was set up to “make available to members a complete health service program
providing diagnostic, preventive, health maintenance and rehabilitation services, as well
as treatment for illness” (United Auto Workers Social Security Department, 1956). An
internal memo from shortly before the first CHA board meeting underscored the central
role of the union in the CHA’s founding: “I consider it extremely important that the
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UAW continue for some time to exercise a considerable amount of leadership in the
development of the Community Health Association . . . There is no one on the Board
other than Walter [Reuther] and Emil [Mazey] who can exercise the initiative that is
needed” (Brindle, 1956). In spite of the fact that participation in the CHA was open to
the public (though it had been created to primarily serve the needs of union members)
and emphasized an individual’s right to “choice between membership in the Association
and other health plans,” critics attacked the CHA as ‘socialized medicine’ (United Auto
Workers Social Security Department, 1956). However, the CHA flourished, eventually
being bought up by Blue Cross Blue Shield in the early 1970s and undergoing numerous
transformations.
Through battles for health care and housing, the UAW showed its commitment to
social unionism and community well-being. In the following section I address how the
union responded to the emergence of environmentalism as a mainstream discourse.
The UAW and Labor Environmentalism
By 1962’s publication of Silent Spring, the UAW had spent decades battling for
safe, clean, and integrated housing as well as expanded access to health care. Because of
the union’s core connection with the automobile, by no means did this history of
progressive actions guarantee that the union would support environmentalism.
However, within a few years, the UAW embraced environmental issues at the national
and local levels. While the UAW’s historical role at the forefront of progressive unionism
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most likely accounts for much of its early commitment to environmental causes, Walter
Reuther’s personal commitment and interest in environmental issues should also be
acknowledged. Given the top-down structure of the national union during Reuther’s
more than two decades as President, it is reasonable to assume some degree of
relationship between social issues Reuther personally believed in and that the union
pursued. Indeed, the same overlap can be seen in the push for civil rights and national
health care, as well as the battle against nuclear weapons.
In 1962, Reuther began talking with his neighbors about the troubling levels of
pollution in Paint Creek, which ran through his suburban Detroit community. By 1963, a
small number of people joined Reuther in establishing a temporary steering committee,
in order to organize for a larger In January 1964, nearly 50 people gathered at Oakland
Township Hall to form the Paint Creek Citizens Conservation Committee, with Reuther
serving as temporary chairperson. This paved the way for a larger community-wide
gathering, and the Paint Creek Citizens Conservation Committee was officially formed to
“carry ou[t] a coordinated and cooperative program for pollution control . . . [and]
improve fishing, swimming, recreation and, in general, to improve and beautify Paint
Creek and its environs” (Paint Creek Citizens Conservation Committee 1964). The
citizens group stayed active over the next few years and Reuther remained prominently
involved.
Throughout the 1960s, the UAW’s environmental commitment was reflected in
educational and policy making endeavors. In 1965, five years before the first Earth Day,
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the union sponsored the “United Action for Clean Water Conference,” which focused on
environmental remediation for the Great Lakes (United Auto Workers Conservation and
Resource Development Department, 1975). Decades of heavy industrial and municipal
impact had significantly damaged the Great Lakes watershed (Van Alstyne, 2013). The
conference attracted over a thousand people, including “representatives of local unions
from the Great Lakes States and Canada, conservation clubs, civic organizations,
government, industry, sportsmen clubs, and recreation organizations” (United Auto
Workers Conservation and Resource Development Department, 1975). Furthermore, it
offered an early insight into the UAW’s complex analysis of environmental solutions, as
it tried to unite local and national government officials with private citizen groups and
industry in the search for a solution. It would have been all too easy, from the point of
view of narrow economic self-interest, for the industrial union to excuse the role of
industry in causing environmental degradation. The UAW’s push for government,
industry, and citizen action to clean up and protect the Great Lakes came during an era
of heightened liberalism and progressive optimism. The union strongly supported
foundational environmental legislation, including the National Environmental Policy
Act (NEPA) of 1969, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, as well as Occupational Safety
and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970.
In 1967, the UAW International Executive Board formalized its commitment to
environmental issues when it created the Department of Conservation and Resource
Development. The department was established to “work with UAW local unions in every
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section of this country [the U.S.] and Canada for the express purpose of helping
communities preserve, maintain, or reclaim their natural resources” (Reuther, 1968).
Among the official tasks of the department was placing an “emphasis on identifying,
initiating, and maintaining a closer liaison with those recreation, conservation and other
organization which have the same goals and objectives as the UAW” (United Auto
Workers Conservation and Resource Development Department, 1975). One example of
this coalition work is the relationship between the UAW and the Sierra Club throughout
much of the 1960s. The Sierra Club was “extremely helpful to [the UAW] . . . in
preparing testimony for legislative hearings. They [also] . . . provided hand-out material
for . . . leadership training sessions” and establishing “union-community project[s]”
(Madar, 1967). As part of its work with organizations like the Sierra Club, the union
fought the expansion of timber harvesting into Michigan state parks, supported efforts
to ban the hazardous pesticide DDT, opposed underground nuclear testing, and
supported efforts to tighten pollution controls. Elevating its environmental efforts to full
departmental status, emphasizing the importance of coalition formation, and tackling a
broad range of environmental issues showed the union took environmental problems
quite seriously. In its work with environmental organizations, the UAW offered political
clout as well as financial contributions.
As the union worked on policy and educational campaigns, it projected an
optimism that environmental problems could be solved and a commitment to public
involvement. For example, when James O’Keefe, a member of the conservation
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department, testified at a hearing regarding water pollution in Lake Erie, he challenged
the committee, “I am confused about the label given this meeting today. It is called a
public hearing, but yet the agenda excludes the public” (Federal Water Pollution Control
Administration, 1968). In 1970, the union was a primary sponsor of Earth Day.
According to Denis Hayes, who coordinated the first Earth Day, “Without the UAW, the
first Earth Day would have likely flopped” (Uehlein, 2010). That same year, the union
joined environmentalists and other citizen activists in raising pollution issues during the
General Motors annual shareholders’ meeting, as will be discussed below.
It is important to contextualize these actions within the larger assumptions about
appropriate and effective paths to environmental protection. Early approaches to
environmental problems emphasized “command and control” regulation of withdrawals
and discharges, with the assumption that technological improvements would reduce the
environmental impact of production practices. Environmental sociologists have labeled
these approaches as part of a larger “treadmill of production,” in that solving the
environmental consequences of industrialization rests on accelerating production with
the promise that economic gains will then be reinvested in ameliorating environmental
consequences (Gould, Pellow, and Schnaiberg 2008; Schnaiberg and Gould 2000;
Schnaiberg 1980). The treadmill theory argues that, though their motives may differ, the
state, business, and labor coalesce around policies based on ‘accelerating’ the treadmill,
often through chemical and technological intensifications in production practices. For
the state, economic growth yields both popular legitimacy and increased economic
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revenue. For business, economic growth is a central operating principle. Labor supports
treadmill expansion to support movements toward full employment and increase
workers’ economic gains (in absolute terms, even if it is a smaller piece of a larger pie).
Even though the UAW began raising environmental concerns, they initially did so within
the larger framework of commitment to treadmill expansion. By the late 1960s, though,
the union challenged industry and eventually the automobile manufacturers themselves.
In protecting the Great Lakes, for example, the union pushed for a ban on oil drilling in
Lake Erie (United States Federal Water Pollution Control Administration, 1969). In the
early 1970s, the union unsuccessfully challenged management’s monopoly on
production-related decision making through an environmental critique of the
automobile.
In one of his final addresses to the union, Walter Reuther declared: “I think the
environmental crisis has reached such catastrophic proportions that I think the labor
movement is now obligated to raise this question at the bargaining table in any industry
that is in a measurable way contributing to man’s deteriorating living environment”
(Oldham, 1972). Soon after, at the UAW’s national convention, delegates passed a
resolution stating: “Unchecked pollution by the automobile and related industries is of
direct concern to auto workers not only because they are citizens concerned for their
environment but because there is a direct threat to their jobs and the job security”
(Oldham, 1972). This expresses not only a resistance to potential threats of job
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blackmail (discussed below), but also a willingness to reverse the logic of the jobs vs.
environment framework and instead link environmental protection with employment.
Reuther’s call for incorporating environmental concerns into contract
negotiations was heeded in the 1970 General Motors campaign, which included
hundreds of environmental proposals. Though the national union pushed to tie the
larger environmental impact of production with collective bargaining, the vast majority
of contract proposals focused on workplace safety issues, with a particular emphasis on
air quality within plants. During negotiations and a lengthy subsequent strike, the
international leadership of the UAW challenged the discharge of pollution into
surrounding communities. However, while local unions expressed fairly strong concern
about hazards at work, rank-and-file support for larger environmental issues was tepid
for the most part, though several locals vehemently embraced measures to curb
pollution (Oldham, 1972).
Because I have primarily focused on the actions of the national union and
its leadership, one could reasonably question to what extent environmental concern
existed among the rank-and-file UAW members. Perhaps an ‘enlightened’ leadership
outpaced the membership’s environmental consciousness and interest, and at the local
level one might find significant evidence of environmental indifference or hostility.
While the following discussion by no means fully addresses this potential hazard, it does
allow for a closer examination of local environmental experiences within the union and
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recognition of the difference in environmental opinion between members and the
leadership.
In February 1970, in preparation for the General Motors campaign, the national
union distributed a questionnaire to local union presidents and bargaining committee
chairpersons; the cover letter, co-signed by Walter Reuther and Olga Madar, Director of
the Conservation Department, explained the survey was necessary because “the UAW
Executive Board has suggested . . . [considering whether or not] the problem of
pollution [should] become a matter for collective bargaining in the 1970 negotiations”
(Oldham, 1972. The survey instructed the local leaders to work with the “Local Union
Safety Committee or the stewards and committeemen” as well as the “Local Union
Conservation-Recreation Committee” (Oldham, 1972). Reuther and Madar closed by
highlighting the survey’s role in helping the union’s struggle to “improve working
conditions and to formulate strong federal legislation which will protect workers
everywhere on their jobs and where they live” (Oldham, 1972).
Most of the 54 survey questions focused upon safety from hazardous chemicals
within factories and frequency of inspections, but the UAW national also asked “Do your
members know if their plant is contributing to pollution of the surrounding air, water
and land?” and “Do any of your members know of examples where their lives have been
directly affected by pollution caused by your plant?” (Oldham, 1972). Fifty-nine percent
of unions replied that their factories were responsible for polluting the environment;
among larger locals (more than 1,000 members) the affirmative response rate rose to 78
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percent (Oldham, 1972). More than seventeen percent of the locals had members whose
lives had been affected by pollution from their workplace; among the larger unions, this
number grew to roughly 25 percent. Although the international leadership had almost
uniformly supported environmental protection for the previous decade, it is likely that
there was more variation in environmental concern among individual members, a
conclusion supported by actions during the 1970 strike (ibid.).
The events described so far in this paper show the UAW’s willingness to fight for
a variety of environmental issues, proactive response to threats of job blackmail, and
expression of what today would be considered the logic of environmental justice.
Drawing connections between the social and environmental actions of the UAW and the
1980s emergence of the environmental justice movement is more than simply an
exercise in theorizing. For example, in 1972, the UAW’s Conservation and Resource
Development Department produced a pamphlet titled: “Richard Hatcher Says: Pollution
is Not a ‘White Thing’” and sold one thousand copies to the Environmental Protection
Agency for national distribution (United Auto Workers Conservation and Resource
Development Department, 1972; United Auto Workers Conservation and Resource
Development Department, 1975). The front page of the pamphlet contains the following
quote from Gary, Indiana Mayor Richard Hatcher: “Facts show . . . that air, water,
sewage and food pollution threatens Black people most because of where we live and
under what conditions” (United Auto Workers Conservation and Resource Development
Department, 1972). Olga Madar, Vice President of the UAW and director of the
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Conservation and Resource Development Department, echoed Hatcher’s concerns: “The
chief victims of pollution are the urban poor, Blacks and workers who cannot escape
their environment. Unless we join together now to stop those who pollute for profit, our
cities will become ugly cesspools of poisonous pollutants” (United Auto Workers
Conservation and Resource Development Department, 1972). In addition to pollution,
the pamphlet also discusses “garbage-littered streets and alleys, rats, roaches, the lead
paint peeling from tenement walls, [and] overcrowding [as] . . . environmental problems
that plague the inner city” (United Auto Workers Conservation and Resource
Development Department, 1972). The environmental justice has framed each of these
problems as environmental issues over the past few decades. Because the UAW
produced this pamphlet for wide distribution, including by the EPA, it is of interest for
two reasons. First, is the early recognition and conception of the environment as where
people ‘live, work, and play’. Second, it is important that the UAW brought its decades of
experience battling against racism and the extremes of capitalism to its analysis of
environmental issues. The UAW’s environmental justice analysis is particularly notable
because it recognizes not only the disproportionate burdens borne by the poor and
people of color, but also environmental privilege: that some segments of society, often
those whose decisions are most responsible for environmental degradation, are able to
“escape their environment.”
While this history of environmentalism within the UAW is quite impressive, by
the mid-1970s, changes in the US economy generally, as well as the automobile industry
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specifically, put the union on the defensive. Following the 1973 oil embargo, the price of
oil skyrocketed and the US economy slowed significantly. High oil prices and gasoline
scarcity was particularly frightening for the UAW, which had begun feeling the effects of
changes in manufacturing. Some combination of economic vulnerability and changed
national leadership left the union more susceptible to employers’ threat of job
blackmail. In 1977, when Congress debated amendments to the Clean Air Act, the auto
industry’s vehement opposition was predictable. However, the UAW, which had spent
the previous decade engaged in movements towards fighting air pollution, sided with
the industry. This shows that even unions that have been historically cognizant of the
need to fight job blackmail can, when faced with significant economic pressure, buy into
the jobs vs. environment dichotomy. While fully exploring these conditions is outside
the domain of this paper, clearly the relative strength or weakness of the overall
economy, as well as the specific industrial sector, plays a strong role in determining
susceptibility to job blackmail. This suggests the UAW faces significant challenges going
forward, as global restructuring of production challenges the strength of the union.
Job Blackmail
In the 1960s and 1970s, as environmentalism became associated with white
middle- and upper-class activists, because of the apparent lack of involvement by people
of color and the working class and poor, many observers assumed that the former
possessed a deeper concern for environmental issues than the latter groups. As the case
22
of the UAW shows, the notion that environmental concern is unique to the white middle
and upper classes is historically inaccurate, something that public opinion research has
also shown (Rainey, 2008; Jones, & Rainey, 2006; Mohai, 1990; Mohai, & Bryant,
1998). One of the most compelling explanations for working class hostility towards
environmental protection is job blackmail. Corporations (and sympathetic political
agents) often raise the specter of factory closings in response to any form of regulation –
the same refrain can be heard whether the issue is raising the minimum wage or
tightening pollution regulation. In a survey of these types of threats, Kazis and
Grossman (Kazis, & Grossman, 1982) found:
the focus on jobs was intentional. Employers made calculated, tactical decisions,
unrelated to whether the new regulation . . . would in fact eliminate jobs. The companies
and industries involved – and in several instances the federal government – wanted
public support for their decisions and actions. They did not want workers, local citizens,
or the public suggesting alternatives. What better way to win the active backing (or at
least to silence the criticism) of workers and other citizens than to threaten them with
unemployment? Since all but a very few Americans must work for a living, threatening
people’s jobs is the same as threatening their livelihood (12-13).
Environmental analyses of labor environmentalism frequently contain an
implicit, or occasionally explicit, assumption that environmentalism offers a correct
answer, making the challenge how to understand labor’s perceived failures in
incorporating environmental practice. The ‘spotted owl’ controversy shows the
importance of how environmentalists react to labor. Throughout much of the 1970s and
the 1980s, logging in the Pacific Northwest accelerated rapidly, as companies began
employing new technologies and techniques, setting up a confrontation between the
23
timber industry and environmental groups. Because of “the utter lack of class
consciousness by virtually all . . . environmental groups,” many radical
environmentalists reacted to the threat to old growth forests by tree spiking and most
other groups lumped those who physically cut the trees in with ownership and
management (Bari, 1994: 14). By blaming workers for environmental destruction,
environmentalists made them even more susceptible to management’s “job blackmail.”
Dave Foreman, co-founder of Earth First!, explained: “I quite honestly am more
concerned about old-growth forests [rather than worker safety] . . . and nobody is
forcing people to cut those trees” (Bari, 1994: 268). This attitude allowed the industry to
slash wages and cut jobs while driving a wedge between loggers and environmentalists.
As one worker explained, “Let’s say you’re a big macho logger, and you know something
is wrong. You could blame L-P [the company], but then you’re powerless. Or you can
blame Earth First! and then you can punch ‘em” (Bari, 1994: 116).
In the case of the UAW, the international leadership embraced environmental
issues even before the emergence of mainstream environmentalism. Throughout the
1960s and early 1970s, the union promoted a robust vision of environmental protection
that would benefit people and nature. It was only in response to tremendous economic
pressures and declining power relative to industry, that the union became susceptible to
job blackmail arguments. While the massive job losses the union suffered throughout
the 1980s caused the union to retreat from its earlier vision of labor environmentalism,
24
it is also worth noting that the environmental community offered no substantive support
to its one-time ally during the Reagan-era backlash.
Conclusion
From loggers battling spotted owls to teamsters marching side-by-side with
turtles, the relationship between labor unions and the environment/environmentalists
is more complicated than the jobs vs. environment dichotomy suggests. The popular
history of US environmentalism traces a direct line from 19th century
conservation/preservation movements through the emergence of the mainstream
environmental movement in the 1960s to the contemporary diversity of
environmentalisms, including the grassroots and environmental justice movements.
Exploring the environmental actions of the United Auto Workers (UAW), one of the
largest and most influential labor unions in the US, complicates the historical narrative
of environmentalism in the US. During the 1960s, the UAW promoted natural resource
conservation and remediation. The union did not ignore the issue of industrial
pollution, nor did it ignore the disproportionate distribution of environmental burdens
by race and class. Instead the UAW offered a positive vision of environment and
economy, linking employment with environmental protection. This stood as a sharp
challenge to job blackmail arguments, often employed by management as well as some
politicians, that there is inherent tension between good jobs and environmental
protection. Building off of its challenge to job blackmail, in 1970, the UAW also sought
25
to incorporate environmental impacts into collective bargaining. However, it is also
clear that there was a break between the international leadership and the union’s rankand-file members. The union attempted to involve its locals, but encountered
significant, though not uniform, resistance. Within a few years, rising oil prices and a
general economic downturn threatened the U.S. automobile industry. In the face of
declining employment, the union became more susceptible to job blackmail, and in 1977
opposed Amendments to the Clean Air Act. Economic pressures also influence rankand-file members, who are more pro-environmental than the general public during
times of economic prosperity, but not in weaker economic climates (Kojola, et al., 2014).
This history suggests that researchers looking at environmental-labor coalitions
need to be cognizant of both the limits and possibilities of labor environmentalism and
that environmental organizations would benefit from increased awareness of the
significant history of labor environmentalism as well as attention to economic pressures
on workers. The UAW has a mixed record in recent actions addressing climate
change/carbon emissions. The union has vociferously opposed moves to tighten
Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency (CAFE) standards and the Kyoto Protocol, which are
both seen as direct economic threats to its already precarious economic base. However,
the UAW has sided with environmentalists in current debates over the Keystone XL
Pipeline, which would substantially expand the capacity of the pipeline system that runs
between Canadian tar sands in Alberta and US refineries in the Gulf Coast and
supported the Climate Change March in September, 2014. This mixed record suggests
26
that union is currently struggling to balance its susceptibility to job blackmail arguments
with its commitment to a robust vision of union action regarding the environment.
27
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