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: [email protected]

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.

1 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

2 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, blue- green challenges are set within a larger social context of a sharp decline in middle-class, particularly unionized, jobs in the United States.

3 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

4 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-

5 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

6 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

7 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).

8 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

9 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

10 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

11 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

12 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,

13 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

14 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

15 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

16 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

17 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

18 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

19 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

20 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

21 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 rank- and-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 rank- and-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.

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