reports

Joe Thornton, Ph.D. - Healthy Building Network, 2002

In the last 40 years, polyvinyl chloride plastic (PVC) has become a majorbuilding material. Global vinyl production now totals over 30 milliontons per year, the majority of which is directed to building applications,furnishings, and electronics. The manufacture, use, and disposal of PVC poses substantial and uniqueenvironmental and human health hazards. Across the world, govern-ments, companies, and scientific organizations have recognized the haz-ards of PVC.

In virtually all European nations, certain uses of PVC havebeen eliminated for environmental reasons, and several countries haveambitious programs to reduce PVC use overall. Scores of communitieshave PVC avoidance policies, and dozens of green buildings have beenbuilt with little or no PVC. Firms in a variety of industries haveannounced measures to reduce PVC consumption and are using or pro-ducing alternative materials in a variety of product sectors, includingbuilding materials. This paper discusses the hazards of the PVC lifecyclethat have led to this large scale movement away from PVC products.

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By the (UK) Anarchist Federation - ca. 1998

Many people are aware of the worldwide problem of environmental pollution and destruction. Rainforests such as Amazonia are being decimated, large areas of land turned into desert. Droughts, floods and earthquakes affect millions; large-scale pollution is causing dangerous climatic change. Ecology (the science of living things and how they interact with each other), is therefore vital, literally a matter of life and death.

In Africa and Asia, deforestation and desertification reinforce the effects of grossly unfair land ownership, producing starvation and malnutrition for millions of people. In Europe and North America, cancers from the environmental degradation caused by mass industrial society affect tens of thousands; the death and injury toll from cars is huge and the resulting air pollution causes a worsening asthma problem. Drinking water is becoming more polluted due to pesticides from farming, pollution from industry and, in Britain, water suppliers may soon be compelled to add the harmful chemical fluoride to water because of its supposed benefits to children’s teeth. Food is generally laden with chemicals (additives, pesticides, pollution, irradiation (to prolong shelf life), and is increasingly genetically modified.

Ecological analysis needs to be part of a wider class analysis. For too many environmentalists however, green issues and politics are “neither left nor right” or “beyond politics”. This is dangerous nonsense. It leads to flirtations (or worse) with paganism, eastern religions and mysticism. It encourages people-hating ideologies. Let’s not forget the nationalism and racism of leading American Earth First! activists in the 1980s or links to neo-fascist ideas (David Icke, for instance, or the Third Stream groups in Britain and elsewhere). On the other side, class analysis cannot ignore ecology, for instance by treating all technology as neutral.

If it does, it will be incapable of creating a future society that is free and equal (anarchist communism); such a society must be in harmony with the rest of nature.

This pamphlet is the result of the Anarchist Federation’s commitment to developing a coherent ecological analysis and practice as a vital part of our politics. It does not claim to be the last word, merely the start of the process. Ecology is an important strand in anarchist communism through people who were both theorists and activists, such as Kropotkin, Mumford, and, in the present day, Murray Bookchin’s description of ecologies of freedom.

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By Anne Lawrence and Paul Chown - Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California (Berkeley), Date Uncertain, likely early 1980s

American industry today is under going a massive transformation which gravely threatens the job security, wages, and benefits of union workers. Economic recession, the flight of capital overseas, and to low wage areas, the declining competitiveness of domestic industry, and the introduction of labor saving technologies are producing an epidemic of plant closings and layoffs.

The problem of plant closures is stunning. The federal government does not count shutdowns directly, but estimates based on private research data show that over four million jobs a year were lost in the early 1970s as a result of plant closings and migrations. For every ten large manufacturing plants open in 1969, three had closed by 1976. No single area of the country was spared. Since then, hundreds of thousands more workers -- from steelworkers in Lackawanna, New York, to insurance company data processors in San Francisco; from autoworkers in South Gate, California, to tire builders in Akron -- have joined the victims of plant closings.

Technological change also poses a major threat to workers' job security. The development of the microprocessor, or "computer on a chip," has made possible an unprecedented transformation of the workplace. Electronic scanning devices at the supermarket, word processors in the office, electronic transfer of mail at the post office, robots on the assembly line, and numerically controlled machine tools in the shop threaten the jobs of the checkout clerk, secretary, postal clerk, autoworker, and machinist. Business Week has estimated that within the next decade, new technology may transform as many as 45 million jobs, half of them now unionized. As many as 25 million of these jobs may be completely eliminated.

Faced with the major job losses caused by plant closings and technological change, many unions have sought through collective bargaining to check further layoffs and lessen the hardship for those who are already out of work. Job security has always been a major concern of union negotiators. But today, with the highest unemployment since the Great Depression, it has moved to the top of the bargaining agendas of many unions. Provisions such as advance notice of shutdowns and layoffs and restrictions on management's rights to close plants, transfer work, and displace or downgrade workers are increasingly being used by unions to prevent or postpone layoffs. For workers who lose their jobs, unions are seeking improved severance pay, extension of health care benefits, transfer rights, and retraining assistance.

This manual is designed as a practical guide for union negotiators responsible for bargaining contract language on issues related to plant closings, transfer of operations, and technological change. The manual is organized by contract clause, such as advance notice or severance pay. Each section contains an introduction to the major bargaining issues and a checklist of items negotiators may wish to cover. The manual then provides samples of actual contract clauses recently negotiated by unions in a variety of different industries. Model clauses, included for each topic, may be used by negotiators in framing their own proposals for contract bargaining.

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By Mark Haskell - Industrial Relations, May 1977

Australian trade unions, have long made effective use of the “black ban,” that is, the tactic of boycotting employers and others in order to improve wages or working conditions or to implement political goals. During the Indonesian struggle for independence shortly after World War II, longshoremen placed bans on shipments to and from the Netherlands, More recently arms shipments to South Vietnam were boycotted and an Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) black ban was imposed on French shipping to protest nuclear weapons testing in the South Pacific.

In 1971, the black ban was transposed into the “green ban” when the New South Wales branch of the Builder’s Labourers Federation (BLF) agreed to boycott a construction project in Hunter’s hill, an upper-middle class area on the Paramatta River, an arm of Sydney Harbor. In September 1970, residents of that area had organized to oppose the construction of 25 luxury homes in Kelly’s Bush, an eight-acre bushland tract which had been preserved in its natural state. The tract had been zoned as “residential” just one year earlier despite widespread community opposition. After unsuccessful attempts to interest the state in purchasing the land for recreational purposes, the newly organized group, the “Battlers for Kelly’s Bush,” approached the New South Wales BLF to request that they not work on the construction site. Construction was halted and, despite the subsequent demise of the New South Wales branch in 1975, this green ban remains in force.

Thus emerged an unlikely collaboration between community groups struggling against drastic neighborhood changes and traditionally job oriented trade unionists - a merger which has often been labeled “unique” and may, in fact, have been the product of a special set of circumstances. On the other hand, the green bans do have the possibility of becoming an example for others. This paper is an attempt to analyze this movement for the purpose of providing an explanation for its appearance at a particular time and place. Part of that explanation may lie in the nature of the union which was most heavily involved, i.e., in the characteristics of its leaders, its members, and the way in which the union’s affairs were managed. Hence, the line of questioning will focus on the New South Wales BLF-i.e. why this union adopted this unconventional tactic to achieve this unconventional goal.

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By Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee - 1976

This Corporate Plan was prepared by the Lucas Aerospace Combine Shop Stewards Committee for that section of Joseph Lucas Industries which is known as Lucas Aerospace.

If a brief description of Lucas Industries is provided this gives an economic, technical and company background against which the performance and potential of its wholly owned subsidiary, Lucas Aerospace, can be viewed. It was also felt desirable to do so as some of the alternative products proposed elsewhere in this report, although emanating from aerospace technology, could more appropriately be handled, at the manufacturing stage, by production techniques and facilities available elsewhere ln the Lucas organisations.

• Download a PDF Version of the Lucas Plan.

By Robert H Leilich - Peat, Marwick, Mitchell & Co., June 11, 1974

This study examines various operating and economic aspects of short train operation. It includes a summary of studies conducted by several railroads plus original research by the author. Changes in freight train labor productivity and costs are discussed and related to changes in capital invested in freight cars. Parameters relevant to train size include identied operating, economic, and marketing factors. Since no comprehensive analytical procedures exist upon which to formulate conclusive answers, the study documents the need for the railroad industry to develop such a methodology.

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By Berry Weisberg - OCAW 1-591, July 1973
Background Information by Douglas W. Erlandson - USW Local 12-591

On January 21st, OCAWIU President Bob Grospiron called over 4000 Shell OCAW members from 5 oil refineries and 3 chemical plants, out on strike. Then made a nationwide appeal to the public to boycott Shell Oil while the union continued its fight over the right to bargain health and safety issues.

The union was seeking:

• 1) The establishment of a Joint Union-Management Health & Safety Committee
• 2) Wanted the Union committee workers paid while performing official committee duties
• 3) The right to call in independant Health & Safety inspectors
• 4) Access to all Company information on both death and disease rates
• 5) Annual Company medical examinations provided at Company expense

As a tactic for the 1973 strike, OCAW employed the first major "corporate campaign" in U.S. history. OCAW forged alliances with the scientific, academic, environmental and labor communities to fight Shell’s position that it would not bargain over health and safety. The union spent nearly half a million dollars to advertise a nationwide boycott of Shell and to educate the public about the need to protect the health of workers and the communities.

Even though 12 other major oil companies had already signed contracts that provided for the new joint union- management health and safety committees, they assisted Shell by buying their gasoline and blacklisting Shell's strikers. The oil industry's thinking was the new joint H&S committees would get in the way of production and profits.

Shell's corporate spokesman, J.H. Walter called the unions joint H&S committee 'another attempt at featherbedding since the workers could then decide how long they could safely work in the refineries and chemical plants.

Moreover, Shell stated that health & safety was none of the oil workers' business: "We are legally responsible for the health and safety of Shell employees in the workplace and this responsibility cannot be shared". The truth was the oil companies didn't want to give up control in this area.

From 1963-1969, Shell used caged canaries as 'safety devices' at their Houston chemical plant.(true story, no joke!) The canary's job was to detect the presence of carbon monoxide. If the canary died, it was time for the workers to leave. Shell went through a lot of canaries, OCAW was claiming by the time the canary died, the workers would already have been exposed.

The union was also seeking the right to inspect company records and financial reports of the pension funds Shell administered and to be able to grieve the company's arbitrary actions with regard to disability pensions. (The union suspected Shell's pension fund was under funded.) One Anacortes member who worked for Shell for 17 years, was certified by two doctors as being disabled, yet Shell wouldn't allow him disabled benefits even though he met the 15 year employment requirement. For the union, this was an item that needed to be addressed.

The International Representative assigned locally was Virgil Coragliotti, with Representative Tom Burkholder assisting on occasion. Don Yates was the Shell unit chairman and the committee members were Gil Nuessen, Wes Shull, F. D. Ferguson, Bob Melton Sr. Jerry Vrooman was the Local President and Jim Burgess was the financial secretary.

Picket pay was $25 a week. The 1-591 union brothers at General Chemical and Texaco assessed their monthly dues to help support the Shell members. Financial support was also received regularly from the Ferndale OCAW 1-590 local. Because Shell Oil’s daily production was unaffected and they didn’t lose any profits during the strike, the strikers received unemployment benefits under what was then known as the ‘dark plant rule’. Not surprising, Shell Oil later lobbied to get that section of the unemployment law changed.

About a week before the strike Snelsons’ had contracted with Shell to do maintenance work on a recently shutdown furnace. Their plan was to use the Boilermakers union, Local 104 out of Seattle. OCAW had gotten wind of it and a group of about 60 Shell brothers were on site waiting for the 14 building trades members when they attempted to cross the picket line, being led through by Bill Snelson. Several Shell picketers became so upset that they turned over both of Snelsons’ trucks and trailers. At the same time, someone smashed out Snelson's rear window. Out of fear, Snelson romped on the gas throwing John Garner, who was standing in front of him, onto the hood of his car. Garner was able to roll off as Snelson bolted on through. The Sheriff was immediately called.

Fred Nelson, Bob Melton and Charlie Pyburn were identified as the lead individuals involved and were fired. Later, after two days in court, Judge Deierlein had Melton and Pyburn jailed, then sharply criticized Shell management for not maintaining better communications with the union and local law enforcement officials in trying to prevent emotional blow-ups. Later Snelson took OCAW 1-591 to court and won $6700 for the damage done to his vehicles. Shell also fired Virgil Avey for breaking windsphrlds with his picket sign. While the other three were unable to get their jobs back, Fred Nelson was eventually rehired. Old time Union members refer to this incidence as the "Day of the Windstorm."

OCAW also had trouble with the Teamster's Union from Seattle. The same teamster leadership that was scabbing on the United Farm Workers, had ordered their drivers to disregard the picket line established by OCAW. And since there was an injunction limiting the number of pickets to two per gate, the union was unable to do much about the Teamsters pushing through with their trucks.

To keep in the health and safety issue in front of the public, OCAW had teams that traveled the northwest speaking to the news media and public about the need for work place safety. Shell later admitted the mobile speakers bureaus were very effective.

Finally, Shell, in the face of public pressure, bargained a compromised health and safety clause as well as meeting the union's demand allowing the pension fund to be reviewed and grieved if necessary. On June 1st the strike was officially ended.

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By Murray Bookchin - 1962

In his very first published book, Murray Bookchin, writing under the pseudonym "Lewis Herber", warns of the dangers of pesticide use, and espouses an ecological and environmentalist worldview.

Our Synthetic Environment was one of the first books of the modern period in which an author espoused an ecological and environmentalist worldview. It predates Silent Spring (1962) by Rachel Carson, a more widely known book on the same topic widely credited as starting the environmental movement.

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