Green Unionism: The Way Ahead

By Bill Mee - SPB Searchlight, May 31, 2014

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are not the official position of the IWW (or even the IWW’s EUC) and do not necessarily represent the views of anyone but the author’s.

As unfettered capitalism with all its’ unsustainable methodologies of unlimited growth and consumption drives the planet ever closer to environmental catastrophe is there anything that can be done to reverse the damage and put economic activity on a long term sustainable basis?

The answer may just be yes. Most people will be familiar with activist groups such as Trade Unions and environmental groups such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth and they would at first glance seem to be poles apart on what they are trying to achieve.

The answer then must lie in the making of common cause. This is now possible. The need for working class organizing across trade or guild lines potentially pitting worker against worker in both the national and international context is, in the early 21^st century, an anachronism. Workplace organizing and the environmental agenda are inextricably linked. For the planet to stand any chance of sustaining human life, especially human life with all the technical advances it has made, sustainability in the long term is now a matter of urgency.

Step up then a little known union that has addressed these issues. This union is called the Industrial Workers of the World or International Workers of the World if you prefer.

The IWW is not a trade union. It is open to all working people be they students, employed, unemployed, long term unemployed or retired. It doesn’t matter what job you do or if you have no job at all the only criteria required for membership is that you don’t have the power to hire and fire or affect the economic well being of a fellow worker.

The IWW is not governed by a hierarchy of career union officials that draw eye wateringly large salaries and expenses that maintain them in a fat cat lifestyle. The IWW is a grass roots driven union where office holders, workplace reps and administrators work unpaid as democratically elected volunteers.

The IWW is not aligned to any political party or philosophy so you can be assured your subscriptions (more about these later) won’t be used to fund a political party you don’t support or maybe politics just turns you off anyhow.

The IWW will not try and sell you cheap insurance or services like other (trade) unions do.

On the environmental front the IWW has a co-organization called the IWW Environmental Union Caucus (EUC). Known as ‘Green Unionism’ the aim of this organization is to promote sustainable technologies from the grass roots and wrench these technologies out of the hands of greedy capitalists who will only have anything to do with them if there is profit involved.

In a Dorset context the current controversy over the Navitus Bay wind farm and the imminent exploratory drilling operations (that will almost certainly lead to fracking) in Swanage can be used as a case study.

The Navitus Bay wind farm, as most people know, is a project that proposes to locate a sizeable offshore wind farm off the coast of Bournemouth/The Isle of Wight/Purbeck. This in itself is no bad thing but it’s implementation is driven by investment returns that will have no benefit at all to the area where the wind farm is located.

The IWW contends that any sustainable energy solution should be owned and run democratically by the workers that work in it and the community it serves thereby returning all benefits to these communities rather than any profits being hived off to faceless corporate investors.

The following resources will give you some idea of how this all holds together. It makes good reading and most importantly common sense. Sustainable technologies owned and run by the workers and the communities that they serve.

Union subs for the IWW ARE related to the ability to pay starting at just £1 a month for members on a limited or low income. The IWW will not tell what you must pay, rather it relies on your honesty to pay what you can reasonably afford.

The IWW holds that ‘An injury to one is an injury to all’ and now in the 21^st century with the environment in increasing peril it doesn’t just mean workers it means planet Earth and all living things animal, vegetable and mineral that inhabit it.