By Peter Boyle
There is a widespread notion that most environmentalists are middle-class activists who would place the welfare of trees and furry animals above that of human beings. There is also a stereotype, held by some environmentalists, of the trade unionist as a beer-swilling ocker who doesn't give a damn about anything but higher wages.
Both notions are false, and it is part of Ellena Galtos' job, as environment officer at the Victorian Trades Hall Council, to dispel them.
A recent study by students at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) found that in the metal trades, older, long-term workers in the manufacturing sector were best informed and most concerned about environmental issues. This is not surprising, says Galtos, because environmental issues such as hazardous chemicals, toxic waste, environmentally destructive production processes and dangerous working environments all impact very directly on many of these workers.
The environment is very much a union issue. The Coode Island chemical fire shocked Melbourne because the black clouds were plain to see from all over the city, but since then there have been several other chemical fires and accidents out in the industrial suburbs that have gone relatively unnoticed. The workers in those plants were injured or seriously endangered.
As far as the urban environment goes, workers are in the front line of the battle against rapacious corporations. Workers not only know the problems and dangers, but often have a good idea of how to fix the problems, said Galtos in a interview with Green Left Weekly.
A good example has been the work unions have done in the preparation of Victorian legislation on industrial waste reduction through recycling, now before state parliament as the Resource Recovery Bill. Unions, industry and environmental group representatives worked on the Recycling and Litter Advisory Committee for some six years and came to some consensus.
If adopted, this legislation will give the government the power to impose a levy on companies that fail to develop recycling and waste-reduction programs. Magazines, telephone books, drink containers, fast food wrappers and other disposable packaging would be taxed one or two cents in an attempt to cut landfill waste.
But now that the bill is before parliament, several industry groups — spearheaded by the plastics industry — are campaigning against the legislation, Galtos explained.
The public spokesperson for the plastics industry is Susan Ryan, a former education minister in the Hawke Labor government. Her line is that imposing recycling and its costs on industry will result in job losses and higher prices. What these companies want, said Galtos, is no compulsion on them to do anything. g will work best", they claim.
But the record of industrial self-regulation in matters like waste disposal proves that this approach does not work. Galtos cited the Greenpeace campaign to expose the illegal waste disposal practices of the Nufarm pesticide plant as a good example. There was a huge media campaign against Greenpeace, but in September Melbourne Water (the new name for the Metropolitan Water and Sewerage Board) revoked its waste agreement with Nufarm, vindicating Greenpeace's charges against the company.
Since then there has been a concerted campaign in the mass media to try to discredit Greenpeace. One article even had a screaming headline: "Dioxin: less deadly after all". Melbourne Water has 5800 trade waste agreements which allow companies to legally discharge 36 million cubic metres of industrial waste a year into the sewerage system.
According to Galtos, Nufarm is only one of many companies which regularly breach waste agreements. She cited an incident in the aftermath of the Coode Island fire. There were about 16 million litres of contaminated fire-fighting water to dispose of after the fire. In the process of disposing of this water gradually through the sewerage system, several workers at Werribee Sewerage Farm suffered from exposure to chemicals because other companies were taking advantage of the presence of waste from the fire to dump illegally their own chemical waste into the system. As a result, the Australian Workers Union has banned disposal of the fire water through the sewerage system, and the problem is now in the hands of Coode Island Terminals.
Developing solutions to many of the serious urban environmental problems was a lot harder than deciding to campaign for a national park here or there, the sort of campaigns that some environmental groups focussed on, said Galtos. The green movement had to understand this.
It also has to come to grips with the impact on people's lives, especially their jobs, that any particular "solution" to an environment problem may have. The battles between environmentalists and workers in the timber and paper mill industries, she said, demonstrated that there were problems on both sides.
"Environmentalists have to realise that unions need to develop an independent environmental policy and not necessarily simply take the advice of environment groups", said Galtos. An example of this approach arose recently when some environmentalists tried to set up a new advisory body on the environment to the Victorian government. The union movement was initially left out because some people argued that the government needed only "undiluted conservation advice", especially when it came to forest-related issues.
"It is obvious that some people in the environment movement need to adjust to the involvement of workers' organisations. They also need to accept that there are usually many different views in the union movement about any one issue, just as some environmentalists support social justice issues and others don't and some environmentalists are in favour of 'green capitalism' while others look to some sort of socialist ideal."