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(Working Paper #7) An Illness to One is the Concern of All: The Health Impacts of Rising Fossil Fuel Use

By Svati Shah and Sean Sweeney - Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, September 2016

This paper has been written to help unions representing workers in all sectors get a clear sense of what is presently happening in terms of the health impact of fossil fuel use and what could also happen if present patterns in energy use continue into the future. The data are presented in a way that unions can use to more effectively advocate both for their members and the broader public.

Unions in health care can play—indeed are playing—an important role in addressing both the climate-related and the pollution-related dimensions of the unfolding health crisis, as can health and safety personnel working with or for unions in different sectors. But the health-related impacts of rising pollution levels and climate change are expected to affect the lives of workers across a range of occupations. Unions representing workers in emergency services, workers in transport systems, or workers who must work outdoors in agriculture or construction also have a particularly important role to play. The situation requires as unified a response as possible.

One of the striking features of fossil fuel use today is how much it reflects and reinforces class inequalities. It is well known that rich countries consume far more energy per per-son than poorer ones, but within both rich and poor countries there is often a huge gulf between the energy consumed by the rich and the energy consumed by the poor and working class. The same is true of emissions. A December 2015 study released by Oxfam calculated that the poorest half of the global population are responsible for only around 10% of global emissions yet live overwhelmingly in the countries most vulnerable to climate change while the richest 10% of people in the world are responsible for around 50% of global emissions.

Trade unions with the capacity to play more of an active role in resisting the expansion of fossil fuel use can be confident of the fact that they will be intersecting with a rising global movement that is confronting fossil fuel extraction, including “unconventional fuels” like shale gas and shale oil. The concerns that drive this movement are numerous. Along with climate and air quality concerns, struggles have been built around questions of water scarcity and contamination and the fight to defend land and livelihoods from “extractivist” energy companies.

Read the report (PDF).

Atomic Depths: An assessment of freshwater and marine sediment contamination: The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster—Five years later

By Hisayo Takada, Shaun Burnie, Kendra Ulrich, and Jan Vande Putte - Greenpeace, July 2016

The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, which began on 11 March 2011, released large amounts of radioactivity into the Pacific Ocean. In fact, as calculated by the French Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN), “this is the largest one-off injection of artificial radionuclides into the marine environment ever observed.”

This report is based on a review of the extensive scientific research that has been conducted since 2011 on radiocesium in seabed sediments in the Pacific Ocean along the Fukushima coast and in river systems and lakes. It also includes the results of Greenpeace radiation surveys conducted in the coastal waters, estuaries, and rivers of Fukushima prefecture in early 2016, as well as in Lake Biwa, Shiga prefecture.

Read the report (PDF).

Well, If You Ask Me: Flint

By Dano T. Bob - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, January 23, 2016

Wow, the current situation in Flint, Michigan is fucked up. In a situation brought on by a so called “Emergency Manager,” who was appointed to run the city by Governor Rick Scott, Flint has been getting its drinking water since April 2014 from the Flint River, via pipes that have caused massive lead contamination, poisoning and sickening city residents.

Wow, the sheer incompetence and idiocy of the state government in Michigan is astounding and the fact that it is destroying the health of citizens is appalling. So, what are the how and why of this water crisis, how can it be fixed and how can we finally stop things like this from happening? As someone who was living in West Virginia during the chemical spill and water crisis of 2014, I am all too familiar with the blindness and greed of politicians and industry. We must move to get these things fixed ourselves and demand our own citizens driven solutions, because we can’t rely on paid off hacks for our protection, that’s for sure.

Let’s start with the “Emergency Manager” position, created and implemented by Governor Rick Scott. It is an austerity measure at heart, a way to usurp municipal control from cities in Michigan and install top down bureaucratic leadership beholden to the state government, and meant to slash city budgets, services and labor. The reason that this “Emergency Manager” switched Flint’s water supply from the Detroit municipal system to the Flint River was to “save money”. This was not a democratically made decision, there were no studies of the health and infrastructure impacts. It was rushed into and now people are paying the price, with water that has been polluted with lead for well over a year.

Using Violation Tracker to Analyze Workplace Safety and Labor Relations

By Phil Mattera - Dirt Digger's Digest, November 5, 2015

It’s widely known that BP has a terrible workplace safety record, especially at its Texas City refinery, where 15 workers were killed in a 2005 explosion blamed in large part on management. In 2010 BP had to pay a record $50 million to settle OSHA allegations relating to the incident and the serious deficiencies in its subsequent remediation efforts.

Figuring out which other companies have created the greatest hazards for their workers has been more difficult — until now, that is. Violation Tracker, a new database on corporate misconduct, brings together information on some 100,000 environmental, health and safety cases filed by OSHA and a dozen other federal regulatory agencies since 2010. The database links the companies involved in the individual cases to their corporate parents, and the penalties are aggregated. Here I look at the largest OSHA violators identified by Violation Tracker and discuss a key characteristic they tend to have in common.

Companies with the most OSHA penalties, 2010-August 2015

  • BP: $63,860,860
  • Louis Dreyfus (parent of Imperial Sugar): $6,063,600
  • Republic Steel: $2,635,000
  • Tesoro: $2,532,355
  • Olivet Management: $2,359,000
  • Dollar Tree: $2,153,585
  • Ashley Furniture: $1,869,745
  • Kehrer Brothers Construction: $1,822,800
  • Renco: $1,535,475
  • Black Mag LLC: $1,218,500

(Source: Violation Tracker. Amounts are totals of “current penalties” for serious, willful or repeated violations of $5,000 or more after any negotiated reductions in OSHA’s initial proposed fines.)

Last February, members of the United Steelworkers union walked off the job at BP refineries in Ohio and Indiana as part of a strike focusing on safety problems in the industry. USW president Leo Girard stated at the time: “Management cannot continue to resist allowing workers a stronger voice on issues that could very well make the difference between life and death for too many of them.” BP’s $63 million in OSHA fines and settlements since 2010, far more than any other company, have put it at the forefront of that deadly resistance.

Tesoro, another unionized oil refiner criticized by the USW for its safety shortcomings, has the fourth highest OSHA penalty total ($2.5 million) among the companies in Violation Tracker. In 2014 the union called on the company to develop a “comprehensive, cohesive safety program” after an accident at a California refinery in which two workers were seriously injured. The USW also took the company to task for disputing a report by the U.S. Chemical Safety Board citing “safety culture deficiencies” among the causes of a 2010 explosion at a Tesoro refinery in Anacortes, Washington that killed seven workers.

Kehrer Brothers Construction, on the top-ten list of OSHA violators with $1.8 million in penalties, is nominally a union contractor, but it was the subject of a 2010 lawsuit by the Roofers union complaining about wage theft. Earlier this year, OSHA accused the company of bringing in non-English speaking workers under H-2B visas and knowingly exposing them to asbestos on the job.

Not all of the largest OSHA violators are rogue unionized employers. Some are firms that have managed to keep unions out. Chief among those is Imperial Sugar, which in 2010 had to pay $6 million to settle more than 120 violations linked to a 2008 explosion at its non-union plant in Port Wentworth, Georgia that killed 14 people and seriously injured dozens of others. (Imperial, acquired by Louis Dreyfus in 2012, had unions at some of its other facilities.)

Dollar Tree, which has racked up more than $2 million in OSHA fines since 2010, is one of the large deep-discount retailers that target the portion of the population that cannot afford to shop at Walmart. The non-union chain has been cited repeatedly for piling boxes in storage areas of its stores to dangerous heights and blocking emergency exits.

Ashley Furniture was fined $1.8 million by OSHA earlier this year at its non-union plant in Arcadia, Wisconsin for 38 willful, serious or repeated violations stemming from the company’s failure to protect workers from moving equipment parts. One worker lost three fingers while operating a woodworking machine lacking required safety protections. OSHA recently proposed another $431,000 in fines for similar problems at another Ashley facility in Wisconsin.

A more obscure company in the OSHA top ten is Olivet Management, a real estate developer fined more than $2.3 million for exposing its own workers and contractor employees to asbestos and lead during clean-up activities at the site of the former Hudson Valley Psychiatric Center in Dover Plains, New York. The company was created by Olivet University, which calls itself “a private Christian institution of biblical higher education.”

There’s a smaller third category of top OSHA violators, represented by Republic Steel: a company with decent union relations that appears to have gotten sloppy in its safety practices. In 2014 Republic agreed to pay $2.4 million as part of a settlement with OSHA resolving violations at its facilities in Ohio and New York. The settlement, which also involved the creation of a comprehensive illness and injury prevention program, was praised by the USW. Yet this year Republic was fined another $162,400 for repeated and serious violations at its plant in Lorain, Ohio.

The lesson of all this seems to be that workers face the greatest hazards in non-union companies and rogue unionized firms, but they also need to be vigilant in workplaces with decent labor-management relations.

Anger over China’s Deadly Workplaces after Warehouse Explosion

By Kevin Lin - Labor Notes, September 2, 2015

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.

A series of chemical explosions on August 12 at a warehouse in the northern city of Tianjin is shining a spotlight on dangerous workplace conditions and precarious employment relations in China.

The accident began with fires at a warehouse owned by Rui Hai International Logistics. The company was storing illegal quantities of sodium cyanide—a highly toxic and volatile substance. Investigators at the site have also found hundreds of tons of fertilizers and other hazardous chemicals.

Firefighters reportedly sprayed water on the flames, which may have contributed to a chain reaction. Two gigantic explosions were large enough to register as minor earthquakes. Fires and secondary explosions raged on for days, creating serious concerns about air and water contamination.

The accident has already claimed 145 lives and injured more than 700. Some are still missing. The casualties include employees of the logistics firm, other workers near the blasts, firefighters, and local residents. Apartments miles from the industrial park suffered broken windows, while poorly constructed dormitories nearby simply collapsed, injuring rural migrant workers inside.

What began as an industrial accident has quickly become an environmental disaster. The week after the blasts, when the first rains came, residents reported a white foam covering the streets and a stinging sensation on their skin. Thousands of dead fish floated to the surface of the nearby Hai River.

For fear of contamination, authorities evacuated residents near the blast site. Military units and biochemical specialists were sent to clean up the area.

Hundreds of displaced residents took to the streets to call for compensation. The families of dead and missing firefighters demonstrated to demand more information and transparency.

The Tianjin Explosion: A Tragedy of Profit, Corruption, and China’s Complicated Transition

By Yixi - chuangcn.org, August 21, 2015

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.

Late into the night on August 12, two massive explosions rocked the Port of Tianjin, immediately killing dozens and injuring hundreds of people. The explosions appear to have been caused by several hundred tons of unsafely stored sodium cyanide, in the container storage lot of Ruihai Logistics, a firm specializing in the transport and storage of hazardous materials.[1] As of 9am August 19, 114 people were confirmed dead, among them 19 Public Security Bureau firefighters, 34 port firefighters, and 7 police officers; a further 65 people are missing, while 674 have been hospitalized.[2] While public organs and journalists continue to investigate the exact causes of the blast, the backstory to the tragedy has gradually come to light. Ruihai, its insecure workers, the frantic development of the Port of Tianjin, and the especially severe abuses of power resulting from a powerful state bureau turning into a capitalist enterprise – all these are parts of the picture.

The Port of Tianjin

If an explosion were to happen at any port in China, Tianjin would have been a likely candidate. Handling more than 477 million tons of cargo and 13 million TEUs in 2013, Tianjin is the 3rd busiest port by raw tonnage and 10th busiest container port in the world.[3] It has a long history as a major trading port in China: an important foreign concession forced open in the Second Opium war, it continued to function as a major port during the socialist era, and then grew by leaps and bounds after “Reform and Opening” (economic liberalization) began in 1978. Tianjin is the closest major port to Beijing, and part of the important Bohai Economic Zone, one of the three clusters of economic development—along with the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta—that have benefited most from China’s economic liberalization. For Tianjin and its port, the past thirty years of reform have meant explosive and sometimes careless growth.

The chemical industry that erupted last week arose as Tianjin began to avidly court foreign investment. On May 12, 1991, with the approval of the State Council, the Tianjin port became the site of a bonded zone—the largest in Northern China, measuring 5 square kilometers. Since its founding, the Tianjin Port Bonded Zone has maintained a startling annual growth rate of over 30% per year, and is now home to more than 500 logistics companies and 3000 trading companies, maintaining regular trade ties with over 100 countries. It functions as an international trading center, a logistics center, a port-side processing zone, and a sales and exhibition center. Operating in the zone comes with tax, customs, and foreign exchange benefits. The cheap labor and investment incentives in the Tianjin Bonded have attracted well-known chemical companies to invest in the area, inviting clusters of dangerous chemical factories into the city. The chemical and hazardous chemicals industry has become one of the ten major industries in the Tianjin Bonded Zone, home also to heavy industries like steel and auto. [4]

Chemical factories have recently become a hot topic for environmentalist and NIMBY-style civilian protests—famously in Wukan in 2012, and in Shanghai this year. But logistics centers, where these foreign-bound chemicals are shipped in and out, are less visible yet even more dangerous nodes in the supply chains of global chemically-dependent industry. Tianjin is a reminder of this reality.

EcoUnionist News #59

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, August 4, 2015

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.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Ongoing Mobilizations:

Bread and Roses:

EcoUnionist News #58

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, July 27, 2015

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.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Stories:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Carbon Bubble:

Just Transition:

Other News:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW

EcoUnionist News #55

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, July 7, 2015

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.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Just Transition:

Other News:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC; Hashtags: #greenunionism #greensyndicalism #IWW

EcoUnionist News #51

Compiled by x344543 - IWW Environmental Unionism Caucus, June 9, 2015

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.

The following news items feature issues, discussions, campaigns, or information potentially relevant to green unionists:

Lead Story:

Fracking the EPA:

Bread and Roses:

An Injury to One is an Injury to All:

Carbon Bubble:

Just Transition:

Other News:

For more green news, please visit our news feeds section on ecology.iww.org; Twitter #IWWEUC

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