After years of courting, organized labor and environmentalists partner

Full story: http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/06/19/muckraker/

June 19, 2006 | Organized labor and environmentalists -- engaged in an on-again-off-again flirtation for years -- may finally be getting to third base.

Last week, Carl Pope, head of the Sierra Club, and Leo Gerard, president of the United Steelworkers (USW) union, announced the formation of the Blue/Green Alliance, linking the nation's biggest industrial labor union with the nation's largest environmental organization. Their motto: "Good jobs, a clean environment, and a safer world."

"The Blue/Green Alliance is one of the most important initiatives undertaken by the environmental movement in decades," said Pope at the launch event. Gerard said the creation of good jobs requires sound environmental strategy: "We cannot have one without the other."

The alliance already has "in the millions," according to its director, David Foster, a longtime USW member; that includes grant money from foundations as well as funds the Sierra Club and USW are committing from their own budgets. The money will be spent on legislative lobbying, supporting political candidates with strong records on both labor and the environment, and doing educational outreach. At the start, efforts will be focused in four key states -- Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington -- where there are large numbers of both Sierra Club members and USW members, and where state officials have already shown notable interest in promoting clean energy.

The alliance's main goals will be boosting clean-tech markets to create jobs, pushing fair-trade policies to aid American workers and fighting for tougher restrictions on toxic chemicals.

Greens and blue-collar workers in the United States have often been at loggerheads: Unions such as the United Auto Workers and United Mine Workers of America have earned anti-environment reputations for blocking progress on tougher fuel-economy standards and advocating resource extraction on wilderness lands.

At the same time, there have been notable collaborations between labor and environmental activists, from the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle to local campaigns against common corporate foes such as the tire manufacturer Firestone and Ravenswood Aluminum. Said Foster, "Invariably the companies with the worst labor rights had significant environmental violations."

They should work together because as the article says, if a company doesn't take care of the environment it more than likely doesn't take care of its workers, and vice versa.