LABOUR-ENVIRONMENT: Trade Unions Want More Say in Environmental Affairs

By Farhan Haq Reprint | | Print |

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 14 1997 (IPS) - Workers and their trade unions must have a greater voice in determining environmental and health conditions in the workplace, say labour leaders from around the world.

As environmental meetings of the U.N. Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) entered their second week, trade unionists held their own special session here Monday to push for “collective engagement,” or greater worker involvement in the safety and environmental concerns of their workplaces.

“Experience has taught us that workers and workplaces are central to any effort to change production and consumption patterns,” said Clayola Brown of the U.S.-based Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees (UNITE). “This refutes the dominant view that workers take little interest in the negative effects of their working or general environment.”

In fact, the trade unionists attending the CSD session said, some 500 workers are killed every day — or more than 220,000 a year — because of work-related hazards. Workplace pollution and other environmental problems cause an estimated 65 to 160 million workers to contract diseases every year, the International Congress of Free Trade Unions says.

Against that backdrop, some unions have made major gains in reducing environmental risks.

Nilton B.B. Frietas of the Central Workers’ Union (CUT) of Brazil noted organised labour’s role in securing a 1995 accord with the government and major Brazilian petrochemical and steel companies in reducing benzene levels.

During the 1980s, he noted, “exposure limits (for benzene) were set at eight parts per millilitre, one of the highest (levels) in the world…However, reaction from trade unions, community and environmental groups resulted in an agreement with producing companies to incorporate technologies and standards in place in other developed countries in the world.”

Frietas praised the tripartite negotiations between government, business and labour groups for helping reduce the levels of benzene, a carcinogen, and to institute worker training and protection programmes to limit benzene exposure risks at the workplace.

Sohan Passet of the Indian National Trade Union Congress added that the four major trade unions in his country have recently joined to monitor health, safety, and environmental standards in India’s major steel plants. “The success of this forum is a trend- setter in this country, and many industries have started work in safety, health and the environment jointly on this pattern,” he added.

Now, many labour groups want to replicate such successes by pushing for greater funding of environmentally conscious worker training around the world.

“What is required is a new concentration of practical funding to start up a series of commercial ventures in countries that can turn recycling and environmental remediation to productive use,” argued Michael Boggs of the U.S.-based Labourers’ International Union.

Vast amounts of urban trash contain materials that, with proper worker training, could even be re-used for construction purposes to build durable housing and ease settlement problems, he contended.

Boggs urged donor institutions to set up programmes in recycling, toxic waste, and safe construction practises.

Other labour representatives pushed for greater cooperation between governments and unions in handling environmental problems. Isaac Mudyandaruva of the Zimbabwe Council of Trade Unions said that union teams in his country were helping to investigate housing, workplace, and community environments, and were tying in environmental concerns to problems of poverty and structural adjustment.

The Czech Republic, meanwhile, has begun to bring in organised labour to provide education on environmental concerns in the workplace, said Vlastimil Altner of the nation’s Union of Mine, Geological and Oil Workers. Labour safety specialists are now in the first phase of drawing up “eco-audits” of workplaces, in which they are to evaluate conditions in 12 companies that affect some 30,000 employees, he said.

The CSD meetings, which last for another two weeks, are expected to produce a draft report which the 185 U.N. member states will use as the basis for their special environmental meeting to be held here in June, on the fifth anniversary of the ‘Earth Summit’ in Rio de Janeiro.

Labour groups are pushing for changes in the draft text, most notably the inclusion of a role for the International Labour Organisation in environmental affairs and language specifically mentioning the role of workers and workplaces in sustainable development.