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Labor Environmentalism 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
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