Chris White Online

I went to the Brisbane Red-Green conference Saturday 6th February.

‘What roles can the Union and Green movements play in saving the planet?

Red, Green and In-between: Reviewing Labour and the Environment in Historical Context’.

Organised by the Brisbane Labour History conference, with The Centre for Work, Organisation and Well-being and The Department of Employment Relations, Griffith University.

This was not the deadening Rudd v Abbott, Tweedledum v Tweedledee charade where corporate polluters always win.

This one-day dialogue raised the challenges on alliance building with union activists, environmentalists and left political lobbying and action groups, a good mix of socialist left and green activists.

This was about Red Green alliance-building post-Copenhagen, against the formidable corporate and right forces dominating in each country. I give some reports and reproduce summaries. The papers are to be published soon.

Tony Maher CFMEU cited a refrain from those environmentalists at Copenhagen, ”If the climate was a bank, the governments would have saved it by now”.

Drew Hutton, founder of the Queensland and Australian Greens, said Copenhagen failed because of opposition by giant corporations.

The task is to mobilise world wide social movements in response.

80 year union veteran, Jack Mundey, opened the conference reminding us that capitalism and last century’s Stalinist socialism failed the environment.

In learning from this, there is the debate about ecological socialism.

As a Green activist, he favours their $20 carbon tax and called for dialogue between the government and Greens.

All agreed that Rudd’s ETS does not meet the targets.

The issue of replacing coal over 30 years with a planned transition to sustainable jobs has to be on the agenda.

Union and environment alliances are not easy.

From the legacies of today’s alliances, The Southern Cross Climate Coalition was represented, the
ACF – here Prof Ian Lowe and the ACTU – Tony Maher Mining division President and President of CFMEU and ACOSS and The Climate Institute.

The SCCC was able to get compensation for lower-income families under Rudd’s CPRS.

Their Climate Solutions has a 10 point plan for clean energy jobs plan for a strong and fair global low carbon economy.

http://www.climateinstitute.org.au/

http://www.acfonline.org.au/articles/news.asp?news_id=1820

Tony Maher said the history of left unions involved action on the environment, learning lessons. Today his union division is leading green mining unions in the world.

He talked of industry policies with green job plans being developed. Unions were becoming more active in the restructuring of the economy to be more sustainable.

His militant union faces a massive scare campaign organised by the companies to the workers and the communities. The election will see millions being spent on corporate propaganda in coal seats.

He commented that divisions amongst green groups made unions seem a united group.

You can’t expect unions to adopt others green policies. It is difficult to discuss what can be done in red-green alliances.

He ended that mining unionists know the bosses are bastards. Mining communities have a long history of struggle and the unions can deal with them.

Ian Lowe from the ACF said that good environment practice supported workers. But at times workers and unions are co-opted into their powerful capital. This had to be discussed.

Billions of people are starving in the world, with little clean water and their environment is still getting worse. With global warming, this third world is in greater crisis. Internationalism is a necessary focus. Western development is a delusion.

The SCCA did not discuss how they are going to react to Rudd’s ETS. They still seem to support the ETS as small first step.

Professor Ian Lowe AO is emeritus professor of science, technology and society at Griffith University in Brisbane.

Here is a link to a recent speech The Big Water Debate University of SA

http://www.unisa.edu.au/hawkecentre/events/2010events/WAC.asp.

Drew Hutton urged we have to build the biggest Global Climate movement and shift from lobbying that is not working to mobilisation.

He criticised the role of those on the left saying abolish capitalism first, and deal with environment later, as this is not viable because the ecological crisis is urgent.

He was not ignoring the question of capitalism or not, as market forces are continuing, but accepting they have to be radically changed.

He with Dr Libby Connors: senior lecturer in history at the University of Southern Queensland had this summary ‘A Red-Green Alliance?’

‘It is not uncommon for commentators to talk about the possibilities of a red-green alliance that would reinvigorate the socialist or social democratic project and address the key issues of the day like climate change.

However, it is much easier to talk about such a coalition than to bring it about.’

These two veterans of the green political movement saw some possibilities and difficulties.

They concluded ‘that different understandings of tradition, mobilisation and outcomes make the joining together of traditional leftism and radical environmentalism very problematic.’

Jeanne Reau analysed the Victorian labour movement grappling with alliance issues in the EarthWorker.

‘Back in 1997, a group of Victorian environmental and union activists formed EarthWorker, with the intention of working together on the global environmental crisis through trade unions.

Founder, Dave Kerin, reflected: “We wanted to say that the notion of jobs versus the environment is not only wrong, but it is dangerous.”

The group thought it was the time to act together and get past the impasse, to a jobs and the environment approach.

EarthWorker brokered significant and very concrete plans across several areas, including on alternative energy production. These worked at bringing employers and companies on board as well.

But EarthWorker was destroyed (as an organisation, not an idea) just a few years later when an invitation to mediate in a conflict between native forest activists and forestry workers in the Otway ranges resulted in disaster. Enough time has passed – it is time to reflect and learn from this episode.’

Jeannie Rea is at the Victoria University in Melbourne. She has been an environmental and labour activist, Victorian NTEU President. She has worked against the “‘jobs versus environment” construction from the 1970s uranium mining campaigns, and was part of EarthWorker.

‘Over the years, Howard Guille has generated a few ideas about making red and green compatible. Or at least, finding a basis for unions and environmental organisations to share agendas and even practices.

He was pessimistic showing slides of the rich getting richer, and the share moving from labour to capital.

‘He is less optimistic in 2010 about the basis for joint red-green action.

There are two central issues: one is the turn to market solutions; the other is the need for anti-exploitation to be at the heart of both labour and environmental policies. Climate change and water are the two most pressing issues.’

T’he ETS re-introduces the same bogus financial experts with new forms of derivatives in pollution. Paying the biggest polluting companies is not good policy.’

He had a major criticism of environmentalists who place too much faith in market solutions.

Common cause between red and green requires an extension of regulation, not resort to markets.

Major groups push for a benevolent green capitalism where greener corporates benefit. He said this won’t work.

‘We have to examine the decommodification of both nature and labour.’

‘We need global unions working internationally with green groups and supporting leadership from anti-imperialist movements and the South – South Africa and South America.’

The Greens seemed to be concentrating on short-run politics of opinion polls and instantaneous media comment. ‘Short-termism’ could become all-consuming as for example with especially State ALP Governments.

My view is that the political complexion of government is very important. However, ‘big changes’ and new institutional frameworks occur in periods of conjuncture – for example around Federation in Australia, globally after World War II. This introduce regulatory frameworks that are persistent and somewhat irrespective of the immediate complexion of government. Thus, for example, the support for protection and arbitration in Australia; full employment and the welfare state in post-war Europe and to some extent the US.

My argument is that new institutional frameworks – of necessity global ones – are needed to deal with climate change and inequality. And both need to be addressed together.

Self-evidently, we are more likely to get support for this from an Obama Administration and a Rudd Government than either the Tea Party Movement or Abbott et al. However, it is needs a new framework of ‘collaboration’ between state and capital. Indeed, the new regulatory schema will be a new framework of state-capital collaboration (including Chinese ‘state-capital’) – the big question is how labour can be at the table and who is to represent/articulate for the environment.

Howard Guille was NTEU Queensland Secretary (1994-2006) and an environmental activist.

‘The Conflict Between our Jobs and Planetary Survival: Can we find a mediated solution?’ by Noel Bird.

‘For those who share the belief in protecting our threatened biosphere, there are still legitimate concerns about job security.

Do we continue current logging, mining and manufacturing to preserve our lifestyle, even if this is temporary, or do we accept possible sacrifices and the need for job changes to save our planet?’ He advocated a common ground through mediation.

I learnt the discussions going on with activists in Climate Action jobs and Union Climate Connectors.

In 2009, Climate Connectors ACTU/ACF launched a campaign on actions in homes, workplaces and communities; and on calling on our political leaders to take strong action on the climate crisis. More than 2500 Connectors got active, part of a growing worldwide movement for change. Rudd did not take the action needed.

‘But we’re not finished – this year, we’re digging in for the ongoing campaign with more action kits, different opportunities for Connectors to share stories and ideas, some new ways to boost skills and confidence in our campaign, and taking particular opportunities to get our message through. We’re getting ready to relaunch.’ I won’t go through this, but it is promising. See at

http://www.rightsatwork.com.au/climateconnectors/.

Examples of successful union organising on the job winning environment changes were given.

I do not relate here Kate Lee and the debates on the panel by Kate Flanders (QPSU – Climate Heroes programme), Tristan Douglas (ACTU Climate Connectors programme, Maggie May (NTEU and Worklife), Holly Kemp (Student environment network), John Mackenzie (Friends of the Earth), and Bob Fagan (academic and activist).

Hard issues such as Queensland coal and actions against expansion and social alternatives for these regions were raised.

The same day one of Queensland’s tycoons floated publicly a billion dollar deal to supply coal to the Chinese. A super hero in the Murdoch press.

Other activists in LEAN Labor Environment Action network contributed www.lean.net.au

This summary does not record the debate from the floor.

Here are summaries from other speakers.

‘People, Politics and Public Nature: Rewriting green history on Sydney’s Georges River’ by Heather Goodall.

‘Global warming makes environmental analysis more urgent every day, but we still think about conservation as a middle class social movement, in which working class people have little interest except as it affects their cost of living.

But taking a look at our own city’s history opens up challenges to that view of the roots of environmental concern.

A case study of the Georges River in south western Sydney immediately after WW2 shows us a set of working class communities gripped with big decisions about greenspace, native bushland and conservation on local suburban land, not distant ‘wilderness’.

Local grassroots community members in these industrial suburbs tried to address the difficult problems about how to save bushland AND have high populations living nearby and using it in a range of ways.

These groups are often disparaged today as not ‘green’ enough or even as ‘environmental vandals’ because of the interventions they made in their suburban environment.

But their local knowledge, their anxiety about the rising pollution they were witnessing in their own suburbs and their sustained commitment to a healthy environment led to the preservation of areas which were not ‘wilderness’ enough to attract much high profile ‘green’ interest in 1960 or 1970 but which are today prized as precious retreats for both people and native species in the middle of Sydney’s densest suburban area.’

Heather Goodall is a Professor of History at the University of Technology, Sydney.

‘Mangere Mountain: Community organising/education and the terrors of performativity’ by Joce Jesson.

‘This paper considers both some of the recent history and the pre-history of a community project aimed at creating a “living museum” (Davis, 1999) an important historical site in Auckland. It unpacks the tensions of co-operative ventures between local Maori and interested pakeha institutions. The project recognised that such ventures need to be Kiwi-determined, and thus be assured to meet the aspirations of the local people Te Waiohua.

As an advisor in this project, she describes some of the mainly informal learning situations she was party to, as the project unfolded and the emphasis shifted from a dream, to the creation of self-employed business or SME with required outcomes.

She aims to show how the creation of a co-operative based on particular ideals from the past gets taken over by hegemonic processes: in this case, neo-liberal ones through the performative requirements of well-meaning funding bodies to create measurable outputs.

This suggests a new form of Maori alienation; the past was land confiscation, the present neo-liberal one is the drive to create competing capitalist enterprises and generate outputs.

She discusses “enterprise culture”, the employment issues for environmental volunteers and the tradition of broader community engagement.’ Joce Jesson is a Principal Lecturer, Critical Studies in Education, at the University of Auckland.

‘A distinctive repulsiveness’: the metabolic rift between humans and other animals in the slaughterhouse by Helen Masterman-Smtih (Charles Sturt University) and Drew Cottle (University of Western Sydney).

‘If environmental history is to enrich labour history (and vice versa), then there is need for a clearer understanding, empirical and theoretical, of the relationship between human and non-human labour.

In 2003 Jason Hribal mounted a contentious challenge to labour history by arguing, “animals are part of the working class”; a challenge which has largely gone unanswered.

Drawing on Marxist and anarchist theoretical perspectives, his history from below examines the labours of non-human animals (from their perspective), their resistance to exploitation and the solidarity extended to them by human working-class labour.

Hribal’s article poses important analytical questions that go to the intersection of labour and environmental history.

This article takes Hribal’s position as a starting point for an analysis of speciesism, anthropocentrism and species-blindness in labour history, particularly in the Australian context.’

Helen Masterman-Smith is a sociologist at Charles Sturt University. Her research is on social, labour and ecological justice.

She is co-author of Living Low Paid: the Dark Side of Prosperous Australia.

Drew Cottle teaches history and politics at the University of Western Sydney.

‘Is Green the new Left? The political and social bases of the Australian Greens and the left Laborite tradition’ by Nick Fredman.

‘This paper posits that a particular nexus of environmentalism and the labour movement lies within the political sphere in the form of Green parties.

The Australian Greens, like its sister parties that have arisen across the world since the 1980s, proclaims four principles: peace and non-violence; grassroots democracy; social and economic justice and environmental sustainability.

These principles suggest antecedents both in traditional leftist concerns with equality, solidarity and radical democracy and in newer movements for disarmament and environmental protection.

He explored this nexus by examining the extent to which the politics of Green parties are informed by leftist traditions in social democracy and Laborism, and by comparing key aspects of the social composition and attitudes of the voter bases of the Australian Greens and the Australian Labor Party.’

‘Power Struggle: A people’s campaign to establish the Lesueur National Park.’ Janis Bailey (Griffith University) – a former union industrial officer, and now an NTEU delegate.

‘From 1988 to early 1992, a number of groups and individuals waged a campaign against a proposed coal mining operation and power station at Mt Lesueur, 200km north of Perth.

They included local farmers and other residents, conservation organisations, conservation-minded individuals, scientists and unions (under the umbrella of the WA Trades and Labor Council).

Against the backdrop of the last days of WA Inc, the campaign was ultimately successful, with the mining and power station plans withdrawn and the area finally gazetted as a national park. This paper explores campaigners’ strategies and their interaction with the complex political economy of the time.’

This left conference raised in the debate a key issue, can global warming be solved within the capitalist system?

A number of contributors highlighted the crisis of capitalism with environmental destruction has to be the agenda.

A steady–state economy was not possible under capitalism because it is accumulating capital.

Others said it would be difficult to get reduction in emissions and green energy jobs across all of the economy.

“http://asslh.org.au

There was wonderful music from the Fagans Bob & Margaret Fagan and Margaret Walters. I have been listening to their new CD “Milk and Honey Land.” www.thefagans.com.au

I discovered ‘The Lurkers’ a new 2009 subversive bluegrass group. Their CD “Shoot to the Moon” is good …loved their ‘Rotten to the core’ on banks.
www.lurkers.com.au

My recent ecology reading is by John Bellamy Foster. I discover that Marx was an ecologist: see his “Marx’s Ecology” (Monthly Review Press).

See also by John Bellamy Foster “Ecology Against Capitalism” Monthly Review Press 2002, .

Left ecological arguments on sustainable development, pollution, forests, soil and technological responses to our environment crisis.

See also on this blog his “An Ecological Revolution?”

I recommend John Bellamy Foster to those examining the red-green alliances.