securing our children's world - united...

Our Union and the Environment ● 1

TM

June 1, 2006

Greetings:

Steelworkers have always fought for a better life for our children.Today, two of the greatest threats to our children’s future are the destruction of good-paying jobs

and the environment in an economy where multinational corporations compete globally withoutregard or loyalty to their home countries.

But destruction of what we hold dear is not inevitable. Just as Canadians and Americans res-ponded to the challenges of World War II by harnessing the ingenuity and productivity of its workingpeople, we can retool our economy and rebuild it on sound environmental principles.

Such an endeavor could create millions of new jobs for our economy, regenerate our manu-facturing capability and capture emerging energy efficient technologies for the benefit of all thatsecure us from being victimized by changing conditions.

We outline key environmental challenges and our strategies for success in this report, Securing OurChildren’s World, which was developed by the USW’s International Executive Board EnvironmentalTask Force, created in 2005. The report was approved by a unanimous vote of the IEB on February28, 2006, on a motion made by District 9 Director Connie Entrekin and seconded by District 7 Co-Director Bill Gibbons.

To ensure membership input into the report, the USW conducted hearings in eight U.S. and Cana-dian cities over the course of three months. They were held in Washington, D.C., Cleveland, Atlanta,Houston, Portland, Ore., Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.

I would like to thank all those whose hard work made this report possible including task force co-chairs Dave Foster and Jim Pannell and IEB members Terry Bonds, Jon Geenan and Steve Hunt. Iwould also like to thank Mike Wright and Diane Hemmingway from the International Health, Safetyand Environment Department and Les Leopold from the Public Health Institute for their input andsupport. Staff appointed to assist included legislative director Bill Klinefelter and Andy King, head ofthe Health, Safety and Environment Department in our Canadian National Office.

This report is an update of a seminal 1990 report by our union entitled, “Our Children’s World,” whichexposed the false choice between good jobs and environmental protections in North America and made thecase that global warming is the single most important environmental issue of our lifetime.

In many ways, the environmental challenges we identified in 1990 have not changed but havebecome more severe. The then speculative damages caused by global warming have since been con-clusively demonstrated by the melting of the polar ice cap and the rising number of deadly stormsacross the globe.

The question now is not whether global warming is happening, but how do we slow it, reverse it,and manage the devastating effects to our benefit as trade unionists.

The future of manufacturing will belong to those nations that solve the problems of the world’sgrowing shortage of fossil fuels through energy-efficient technologies and building and processredesigns.

(Please turn over)

2 ● Our Union and the Environment

The technological solutions to environmental problems are within our grasp. Although someenvironmental friendly technologies require continued research, none are beyond our technicalcapacity.

Renewable energies like wind and solar power and mass transportation systems can createmillions of new jobs. In Germany, for example, 40,000 people are employed directly in its wind energyindustry, which consumes more steel there than any other industry, except for automobilemanufacturing.

The real barriers are not technical, they are economic and political. Despite the BushAdministration’s horrible record in environmental issues on the national and global arenas, local andstate governments are increasingly pledging action on their own.

As a union, we cannot stand aside from these issues. Our choices are to be victims of change, orto control that change to the benefit of ourselves and our children.

This report lays out a clear choice in favor of controlling our destiny, and those of our families andcommunities.

Sincerely,

Leo W. GerardInternational President


“SECURING OURCHILDREN’S WORLD, Our

Union and the Environment” isan updated report developed bythe USW’s International Execu-tive Board Environmental Task

Force which was presented to theIEB on February 28, 2006 in

Pittsburgh, PA. As its titlesuggests, the report builds upon

the landmark work of theoriginal report, OUR

CHILDREN’S WORLD, whichwas adopted at the 25th Consti-tutional Convention of the USW

in Toronto, Ontario onAugust 30, 1990.

SECURING OUR CHILDREN’S WORLDOur Union and the Environment


Introduction

In 1990, when the USW adopted its firstcomprehensive environmental policy statement, ourworld, its economic systems, and our union were alldramatically different. In the intervening years,globalization and the World Trade Organizationdisplaced the system of national economies. TheBerlin Wall crumbled, drawing Eastern Europe,Russia, and China into the international economyand greatly affected both the conditions of laborand the regulation of the environment. And ourunion participated in four major mergers — withthe URW, ABG, IWA and PACE — as well asseveral smaller ones.

The USW is today North America’s largestmanufacturing union and the dominant represen-tative of workers in the steel, aluminum, paper andforest products, metal mining, oil, chemical, rubber,

tire, plastics, glass andcountless other in-dustries. The breadthof our engagementwith the global econ-omy is greater thanany other labor organ-ization in the world.The overwhelmingmajority of ourmembers work todayfor large multinationalcorporations whocompete globally, withlittle regard or loyaltyto their countries oforigin. As such, theUSW recognizes thespecial obligation ithas to speak out tounion members notonly in North Amer-ica, but across theplanet, on the funda-mental issues ofwealth, poverty, andthe creation of sus-tainable economies inour ever shrinkingplanet.

In 1990 wedevoted much of our

attention to exposing the false choice between goodjobs and environmental protections in NorthAmerica. Today, we are expanding our attention tothe pivotal issue of how we exercise control over aglobal economy that threatens the very frameworkof the regulatory systems that have provided uswith labor law, environmental protections, humanrights and, indeed, basic democratic processes inour two countries. In 2006, we are intent onexposing the false choice between good jobs in a

global economy and the full range of civil society pro-tections that were achieved in the twentieth century.

In our original report, we wrote:“In the old days, we thought that smoke meant

jobs. That pollution was a byproduct of prosperity.And that if the air smelled funny, and the millkilled all the fish in the river, such was the price ofprogress. Besides, you could always get away onthe weekend to a place where the air was pure, thelake was clean and the fishing was good.

Today we know better. “Smoke” has become“air pollution,” with a host of noxious ingredientslike sulfur dioxide, which corrodes our lungs, andbenzene, which menaces our children withleukemia. Millions of tons of toxic chemicals getdumped into our water every day, from heavymetals to organic solvents. They threaten not onlyfish, but every person downstream.

Decades ago, nobody worried much abouthazardous waste. Today we are spendingbillions of dollars in what can only be a partialclean-up of thousands of sites that threatenpublic health. Entire communities, such as TimesBeach in Missouri, have been abandonedbecause of contamination by hazardous waste.

Pollution issues used to be local. The smokefrom a factory affected the town, but not theworld beyond — no longer. Acid rain,generated by pollutants from power plants,factories and automobiles, threatens forests andlakes half way across the continent and maycontribute to thousands of deaths every year.Nor do the problems stop at national borders —some are truly global. Chlorofluorocarbons likeFreon are slowly destroying the protective layer ofozone in the Earth’s upper atmosphere. The ozonelayer shields us from harmful ultraviolet radiation;if it is lost, the result will be serious damage tohuman and animal life and to crops.

The burning of fossil fuels like petroleum andcoal generates billions of tons of carbon dioxideevery year. This gas and others trap heat in theatmosphere. Studies show the resulting globalwarming will melt the ice caps, flood our coastalcities and turn huge agricultural areas intodeserts. The problem is made worse by thewidespread destruction of our forests, which helpabsorb excess carbon dioxide.

[Poor forest and other habitat management]threatens many species of plants and animals withextinction. Even our oceans are at risk from toxicrunoff, oil spills and waste dumping at sea.

Added together, these problems may threatenthe ultimate capability of our resources tosustain civilization.

Can the destruction of our environment bestopped? If so, who will pay the price? Somewould have us believe that these problems are


not as serious as we think, or thatthey can be left for the nextgeneration to solve. Others maintainthat pollution is still the price ofprogress, and that attempting to endit would cause massive economicdislocation, putting millions out ofwork.

The argument can get personal.Some companies, faced with newregulations, have threatened to shutdown — pitting workers againstenvironmentalists. Additional controlswould be just too expensive, these companiessay, and workers who want to save their jobshad better line up behind their employers.

This is part of a familiar corporate strat-egy. When the union tried to clean up unsafeconditions in plants or reduce toxic chemicalexposures, some companies would threaten uswith loss of jobs. Our response has alwaysbeen that a failure to act will cost us ourmembers’ lives. Time and again, these unscru-pulous employers have backed down, provingthat we must fight for good jobs and a cleanenvironment as mutually reinforcing goals.

Are they right? Do we really have to choosebetween our jobs and the environment? Is oureconomy threatened by efforts to stop envir-onmental damage? Or is a damaged envir-onment the real threat to our economic well-being? Can we afford to wait? What kind ofworld do we want to leave our children?

We believe the greatest threat to ourchildren’s future may lie in the destruction oftheir environment. For that reason alone,environment must be an issue for our union. Inaddition, we cannot protect Steelworker jobs byignoring environmental problems. This reportsummarizes our findings and recommendations,beginning with a basic review of the threat toour environment.”

In July, 2005 the International Executive Boardreconstituted its Environmental Policy Committeeand charged it with reviewing and restating ourcommitment to the environment. Our committeebelieves that the words of our original report stillring true today.

But in 2006 much of the doubt that wasexpressed in 1990 has been removed. In the wakeof the most devastating hurricane season in moderntimes, the destructive danger of doing nothing aboutglobal warming looms over the U.S. and worldeconomies. Over 12,000 USW members andretirees were personally affected by the 2005hurricanes, losing their jobs, homes, and in somecases, their lives. The economic impact ofHurricanes Katrina and Rita may run as high as

$200 billion, an amount that our economies can illafford to absorb on a regular and escalating basis.

Our original report identified global warming asthe single most important environmental issue ofour lifetime and warned about the risks of doingnothing. During the last 15 years the U.S.government, in particular, has failed to takemeaningful steps and today, global warming hasemerged as a significant threat to the stability ofsteelworker jobs and communities in the comingyears. We can no longer be content with simplyidentifying problems and issuing warnings. Astrategic response to environmental challenges likeglobal warming is key to our union’s long-termsurvival. The good jobs of the future will be basedon principles of environmental sustainability. Quitesimply, this means that the jobs and other humanactivities that we engage in must be performed in amanner that doesn’t destroy the planet we inhabit.Two hundred years ago, we didn’t concernourselves with this issue. Even a hundred yearsago, such concerns were minimized. Today,scientists are very clear that escalating humanimpairment of our environment will rapidly andirretrievably change the ability of human beings tosurvive on the planet. Thus, we can say withcertainty that those jobs that are based on thecontinued rapid consumption of the earth’sresources and atmosphere simply will not last.

Our report will examine each of the areasoriginally noted in our 1990 report and touch on boththe progress made and the threats that are stilloutstanding. In the concluding section we outline anaction plan for our union’s broad engagement with theglobal environmental movement. In many ways, thereis no more important policy decision for us to make —a planet populated by 6.5 billion human beings,virtually all of whom share our own aspirations for abetter life, cannot imagine a future of peace andgrowing prosperity without also imagining a globaleconomy that lifts 2 billion people out of poverty in asustainable fashion. The alternative — an unregulatedglobal economy that increases the gap between richand poor and ignores sound environmental science —will ultimately destroy the good jobs and healthyenvironment that are the legacy of the NorthAmerican trade union movement.

Introduction

An unregulated global economy that increasesthe gap between rich and poor and ignores soundenvironmental science—will ultimately destroy thegood jobs and healthy environment that are the

legacy of the North American trade unionmovement.

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Table of Contents

What We Face ........................................................................................ 8

Global Warming ............................................................................. 10

Air Pollution .................................................................................. 13

Water Pollution .............................................................................. 14

Toxic Chemicals ............................................................................ 16

Acid Precipitation .......................................................................... 17

Sustainable Forestry ...................................................................... 19

Ozone Depletion ............................................................................ 22

The Oceans ................................................................................... 23

Population, Poverty and the Environment ........................................ 24

A Union Issue? ...................................................................................... 27

First, we must protect our children’s world ..................................... 28

Second, protecting the environment ultimately protects our jobs ...... 29

Third, Globalization is our common fore, linking the environmentto other union issues ....................................................................... 32

Taking Action ........................................................................................ 33

Securing Our Children’s World—A Strategic Alliance Against Corporate Globalization ...................... 35

Conclusion ............................................................................................. 39

Task Force Members ........................................................................ 40

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What We Face


In 1990 we wrote, “Over the last century, therelationship between human beings and the planetthat sustains us has undergone a profound change.When the century began, our population and ourtechnology did not have the power to alter ourenvironment irreversibly. Now they do. Yet thatpower seems out of control, creating enormousconflicts between human activities and the naturalworld. Some of the problems are local and familiar;others are global, and seem difficult to compre-hend. All of them are critical to our survival.”

In many ways the challenges we identifiedbetween human technologies and the environmentin 1990 have not changed. But in one profound waythey have. Today, this challenge is deeply affectedby the political refusal of the Bush Administrationto accept the overwhelming scientific consensus onthe importance of addressing environmental issues.

In 1992 the governments of the world’s nations,including the U.S. and Canada, gathered in Rio deJaneiro for the first global conference on theEnvironment and Development. This landmarkevent — for the first time the issues of globaleconomic growth and environmental protectionwere linked — set the stage for an internationaleffort to deal with global warming. The Rioconference was followed in 1995 by the KyotoTreaty which committed the nations of the world toreducing greenhouse gases and reversing the trendtoward climate change.

Ten years later, in May, 2005, 141 of theworld’s governments ratified the Kyoto Treaty andtook the first steps toward cutting back on carbonemissions. Notably, the United States stands apartas the only member of the G-8 (the world’s eightlargest economies) refusing to sign Kyoto. Wemust note that this refusal not only poses a gravethreat to efforts to reverse global warming; it alsorepresents a grave threat to steelworker jobs in aglobal economy.

Consider that while the rest of the industrializedworld is now moving toward more restrictivestandards on everything from automobile fuelefficiency to pollution standards on power plants,the U.S. stands alone, insisting on its right to buildcars and industrial plants and equipment that areout of compliance with what the rest of the worldwants and needs. How long can our automotivecompanies and manufacturers compete in a globaleconomy, producing products that nobody elsewants? How can we compete with China whenBeijing produces cars that are more fuel efficientthan Detroit’s? Of course, the main reason thatChinese production is a growing threat to the U.S.automotive industry is the fact that China pays itsassembly plant workers less than one-tenth thehourly wage of their unionized U.S. counterpartsand intends to sell their cars in North America for

about $10,000. But we have seen how the lack offuel efficiency has caused a dramatic drop in thesales of SUV’s, trucks, and other low mileagevehicles in the last year.

The current Bush Administration is the mostanti-environmental administration of the last 50years. According to Congressman Bernie Sanders(VT), the Bush Administration “…has proposed orimplemented over 400 rollbacks in environmentalprotections, from permitting untreated sewage intoour waterways to curbing restrictions on toxicmercury in our air and water.”

These actions have consequences far beyondpublic health and the environment. They havegrave economic consequences as well. The U.S.automotive industry still accounts for 3.5 percent ofthe U.S. economy, employing over 2.5 million

Americans, directly or indirectly. Many of thoseAmericans are members of the USW, employed inthe steel, aluminum, tire, glass, plastics and generalmanufacturing industries. Another 2.2 million othersare employed by the economic activities that aregenerated by a successful automotive industry. Thefailure of this industry and of the U.S. governmentto meet internationally acceptable standards forfuel efficiency is resulting in millions of Americanconsumers turning away from GM, Ford, andChrysler to purchase high quality, fuel efficientimports. The go-it-alone, cowboy-style of the BushAdministration is accelerating the destruction ofAmerica’s long-term manufacturing base.

But this destruction is not inevitable. Just asAmericans responded to the challenges of WorldWar II by harnessing the ingenuity and productivityof its working people, Americans can retool ourcurrent economy and rebuild it on sound environ-mental principles. Not surprisingly, such an

What We Face

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endeavor would create millions of new jobs for oureconomy, regenerating American manufacturingand capturing the energy efficient technologies ofthe twenty-first century for America’s middle classcommunities.

Studies, such as those conducted by econ-omists for the Apollo Alliance and RedefiningProgress, have detailed how the investments intackling global warming through energy efficiency,renewable energies like wind and solar power, andmass transportation systems would create threemillion new jobs, largely in manufacturing. Animportant step to spur the production of fuelefficient vehicles in North America would be theexpansion of tax incentives for the production ofhybrid and beyond-hybrid vehicles.

Thus, we have concluded, that as we examinethe environmental challenges in front of us, weshould always remember that in solving thoseproblems we are creating the jobs and the workforce of the twenty-first century. Indeed, the jobsthat will last are those that are based on soundenvironmental principles. The jobs that are

disappearing are those that continue the destructionof our environment. As we examine our currentenvironmental challenges we will come back to thisfundamental truth.

Global WarmingGlobal warming is the greatest environmental

and economic challenge of our generation. Itsdisruptive effect on the economic life of our planetwill be far greater than that caused by the possibledisruption of oil flows from the Middle East. Somehave compared its possible consequences to theaftermath of nuclear war. Scientists have alreadydocumented an average increase in globaltemperatures during the twentieth century of 1degree Fahrenheit. That doesn’t sound like much,but the effects are significant.

In a recent publication, the Union of ConcernedScientists wrote, “Global warming is already underway. The evidence is vast and the urgency oftaking action becomes clearer with every newscientific study. Some of the most obvious signs arevisible in the Arctic, where rising temperatures and

Securing Our Children’s World


melting ice are dramatically changing the region’sunique landscapes and wildlife — as well aspeople’s lives and livelihoods.”

And despite the millions spent on fraudulentscience by the oil industry, the national scienceacademies of all G-8 nations plus China, India andBrazil have unequivocally stated that globalwarming is real, caused by human beings, andabout to have extraordinary social and economicconsequences.

Global warming, as we use the term today, is agradual rise in the temperature of the Earth itself,caused by gases we are pumping into theatmosphere. Fifteen years ago we predicted, “Atemperature rise of just 4 degrees Centigrade couldmelt the polar ice caps,flooding huge areas. Chang-ing weather patterns couldturn forests to grasslands andgrasslands to deserts. Coastalcities would be submerged,major agricultural regionswould be devastated and theweather would turn moreviolent.” Fifteen years agosuch statements wereconsidered speculative.Today, the evidence hasproven these statementscorrect. The polar ice caphas been reduced by 20percent since 1979. The 2005hurricane season with 27named storms, including threeCategory 5 hurricanes, is theworst on record. Thequestion is not whether globalwarming is happening, but how to slow it, reverseit, and manage its current devastating effects.Ignoring it or doing nothing are simply not options.

What causes global warming? Our atmospherecontains a number of “trace” gases, present in verylow concentrations. The most important is carbondioxide. Carbon dioxide has a special property — ittraps heat that otherwise would radiate out intospace — much like the glass in a greenhouse.Hence the name “greenhouse effect.” Withoutsome carbon dioxide in our air, the Earth wouldcool to well below freezing. The problem is havingtoo much. Carbon dioxide results from the burningof fuels containing carbon, like petroleum, coal,natural gas or wood. One mile of driving a car, orone-half kilowatt-hour of coal-generated power,releases about a pound of carbon dioxide.Altogether, 18 billion tons are released every year.Most of the Earth’s population contributes threetons per person to this total; North Americanscontribute twenty tons each. Over the last century,the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere

has risen by 25 percent. At the present rate, itcould double in the next century, triggering massivechanges in the global climate, far beyond what wehave witnessed in the last decade.

In fact, carbon dioxide could increase evenfaster. This past century’s rapid industrialization inthe United States, Canada and Europe was fueledby the massive burning of coal and petroleum. Asdeveloping countries take the same route, hugeincreases in the amount of carbon dioxide are beingpumped into the atmosphere. China alone has 800billion tons of coal reserves. This reliance on coal,combined with double digit economic growth forthe last 15 years, has already made China one ofthe largest emitters of greenhouse gases. Rapid

industrial growth in India isalso accelerating the threatsof global warming.

Nonetheless, the U.S.remains the largest producerof greenhouse gases,contributing over 25 percentof the world’s emissions.Since 1990, the nations of theworld have taken someimportant steps to confrontthe challenges of globalwarming. As stated earlier, in1995 the Kyoto Treaty onglobal warming wasnegotiated by over 150countries setting specifictargets for reducing carbondioxide emissions to 5 percentbelow 1990 levels. InFebruary, 2005 the KyotoTreaty went into effect when

141 countries adopted its protocols. Unfortunately,two industrial countries, the United States andAustralia, refused to participate in Kyoto. In fact,the Bush Administration, continuing its go-it-alonerole in world affairs, has refused to even bring theKyoto Treaty to the U.S. Senate for a vote. In themeantime, U.S. carbon emissions have increasedby 15 percent. Ironically, the Chinese governmenthas reduced its level of emissions by 17 percent.

In Canada, with our union’s support and thesupport of the Canadian Labor Congress, thenational government ratified the Kyoto Treaty. Thedebate in Canada is not about whether globalwarming exists, but which program should beenacted to effectuate the cuts in greenhouse gases.The Conservative Party, however, has threatenedto abrogate Kyoto entirely should it be elected. Thisis an important debate. Business-oriented politicalforces in the Liberal Party want to use the threat ofglobal warming to push the “Green Plan” (#3)which relieves most industrial emitters of significantresponsibility and relies heavily on government

What We Face

The US remainsthe largestproducer ofgreenhouse

gases,contributing

over 25 percentof the world’s

emissions.

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funded trading credits. It amounts to a huge bailoutfor industry — while no mention is made in theirprogram of workers and the effects of globalwarming on their jobs and livelihoods.

The New Democratic Party, the third majorparty in Canada founded on social democraticprinciples and supported by the USW, promotes analternative with a strong program to cut greenhousegases by investing in new renewable energies,mass transportation systems and energy efficiency,thereby creating hundreds of thousands of new jobsin Canada. Workers who are adversely affected by

the change in energy policy will be protectedthrough well-funded “just transition” programs.

In the U.S. there are encouraging signs at thelocal level in spite of the federal government’sinactivity and the Bush Administration’sintransigence on energy policy. Mayors from 194U.S. cities have signed on to the U.S. MayorsClimate Protection Agreement, pledging to takelocal action to curb global warming. And 20 statesnow have renewable energy standards. Threestates, California, Oregon, and Washington havepassed “clean car” legislation mandating increasedfuel efficiency above current federal standards forautomobiles sold in their states.

The USW, along with the United Mineworkersand United Auto Workers unions, has endorsed aproposal put forth by the National Commission onEnergy Policy (NCEP) in which our union was aleading participant. This proposal calls for realreductions, but requires a review of the progress ofother economies in greenhouse gas reductions - soas not to give them a competitive advantage overthe U.S.

Taking action on global warming is also theright policy for protecting North America’smanufacturing infrastructure. Our countries have along history of creating jobs through innovation andtechnological breakthroughs. The future ofmanufacturing in the global economy will belong tothose nations who solve the problem of the world’s

growing shortage of fossil fuels through energyefficiency technology and building redesign, masstransportation systems, and new forms ofrenewable energy. Important economic studies,produced by the Apollo Alliance, RedefiningProgress, and the Union of Concerned Scientistshave demonstrated the significant economicbenefits of public investment in these areas. TheApollo study demonstrates that 3 million new jobs,mostly in the manufacturing sector, would becreated by this approach.

New environmental regulations, enactedthrough state and national legislation like increasedCAFÉ standards (Corporate Average FuelEfficiency) and RES (Renewable EnergyStandards) that mandate increased use of wind,solar, biomass from waste wood and slash, andeven landfill methane for generating electricity, andpublic bonding for mass transportation and cleanenergy development are critical for rebuildingNorth America’s manufacturing base. Continuingthe Bush Administration policies of ever greaterreliance on the shrinking pool of Middle Eastern oilguarantees that more and more manufacturing jobswill leave North America as industry tries to offsetthe rising costs of energy with the low costs ofThird World labor.

Global warming is, as we predicted, the mostimportant environmental challenge of our lifetimes.But meeting that challenge provides us with theopportunity to fix some of our most significanteconomic problems. Imagine a twenty-first centuryClean Energy Authority whose mission is to bringrenewable energy to our communities, much as theTennessee Valley Authority and the BonnevillePower Administration brought electrification tomillions of Americans during the 1930’s and 40’swith their hydroelectric projects. Good jobs, acleaner environment, and a world made safer byless reliance on foreign oil can become a reality forboth our countries.

Global warming is affecting many otherindustries, in addition to those that consume largeamounts of energy, where USW members areemployed. In Canada, the infestation of pine barkbeetles in the western provinces threatens thecountry’s timber supply and the long-term viabilityof its forest products’ industries. The pine barkbeetle’s habitat was once limited by severeCanadian winters; three weeks of constant -40degree weather killed off the beetles each year,stopping their spread. Now, warmer winters areallowing the beetles to reproduce uncontrollably,killing off huge sections of the boreal forest,permanently, and changing it forever.

Can we act fast enough to halt the changes ofglobal warming and its devastating economicimpact? We don’t know, but we must try. Over12,000 USW members and retirees were affected

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Can we act fast enough tohalt the changes of global

warming and itsdevastating economic

impact? We don’t know, butwe must try.


What We Face

by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The economiclosses of these two storms were in the hundreds ofbillions of dollars. Doesn’t it make more sense toinvest those billions of dollars in a preemptiveprogram to develop new clean sources of energyand create millions of jobs, thus avoiding futureeconomic catastrophes?

Our union faces powerful corporate interests thatcare more about the next quarter’s profit report whilewe care about saving our children’s world. Eventually,corporate interests will have to recognize the severityof this problem, but at much greater cost. And as ourexperience shows in Canada, the programs to dealwith global warming can differ widely. Conservativeprograms will force these costs off on consumers andtaxpayers, while protecting corporate interests. Wehave no choice but to fight around this vital unionissue.

Air PollutionSteelworkers know about air pollution. In

October of 1948 a temperature inversion trappedthe smoke and dust from zinc smelters and railroadlocomotives in Donora, Pennsylvania. By the time itwas over, 20 people had died from breathingpolluted air. More than six thousand suffered lungproblems. Shortly afterward, the Donora smeltersshut down forever.

Almost 60 years after the Donora incident and,in spite of significant steps forward, many publichealth risks remain as a result of air pollution. Inthe U.S., for instance, the rates of childhoodasthma more than doubled between 1980 and 2001according to the Environmental Protection Agency.Asthma now affects 8.7 percent of all children inthe U.S. or 6.3 million kids.

Today’s air in some industrial settings may becleaner, but is it clean enough? Union membersmust contend with dirty air in many of the plantswhere they work. And what children breatheoutside the plant is similar to what their parentsbreathe inside the plant. A great deal of pollution isalso caused by non-industrial sources, likeautomobiles, power plants, and waste incineration.

New laws in both countries have led to cleanerair. Through our union’s involvement, the exposuresto toxic air pollution that affected millions of NorthAmericans have been substantially reduced. Inparticular, criteria pollution control has improved inthe U.S. And it was with Steelworker leadershipthat the first community right-to-know laws werepassed which made it possible for nearby residentsto monitor their exposures to toxics, thus forcingcompanies to control their emissions.

However, since the passage of the 1990amendments to the Clean Air Act, we have movedbackward in the U.S.

The Bush Administration is attempting to rollback the “New Source Review” permits on power


plants which will greatly increase power plantemissions of sulfur dioxide. Auto emissions whichwere on the decline 15 years ago are nowincreasing again as a result of the doubling ofvehicle miles driven, combined with the failure ofCongress to pass improved fuel efficiencystandards. And lastly, 52 percent of the U.S.population, or 152 million people, still live in areasthat fail the U.S. Environmental ProtectionAgency’s health-based air quality standards.

In Canada, “Smog Days” have become aregular feature in many large cities, leading toincreasing public health concerns and in remotesmelter communities like Flin Flon and Thompson,Manitoba, our members children have higher ratesof respiratory illness and risk of cancer because ofthe continuing smelter emissions. More than 4.1billion kilograms (4,165,490,502 kg) of pollutantswere released into the air from industrial facilitiesin 2003.

Alarmingly, of the ten top emitters ofcarcinogens in Canada in 2002, six were inworkplaces organized by the USW.

Clearly we have work to do. We have shownour ability to succeed. For instance, lead emissionsin the air dropped by 93 percent when it wasphased out of gasoline. But until we force ourgovernments to act, millions of North Americanswill continue to be threatened by polluted air.

Water PollutionNorth America is blessed with abundant water.


Some pollutants are especially common:

● Sulfur dioxide, emitted by power plants, nonferrous smelters and coke batteries,causes severe respiratory problems and contributes to acid rain.

● Oxides of Nitrogen, from auto exhaust and industrial plants, cause lung irritation,increase susceptibility to viral infections, and are a secondary cause of acid rain.

● Particulates, tiny particles of dust from many industrial sources, also cause lungdamage.

● Carbon monoxide, mostly from automobiles, affects the blood’s ability to carryoxygen, thereby leading to heart disease.

● Hydrocarbons, from automobiles, chemical plants, spray painting and many othersources, react with other chemicals and sunlight to produce urban smog and causebreathing problems.

● Ozone is formed in the atmosphere by reactions between hydrocarbons and oxides ofnitrogen. Thirty miles above the Earth, naturally-occurring ozone helps protect usfrom harmful solar radiation. But at ground level, ozone formed from pollutants is acorrosive poison, irritating the respiratory system and aggravating heart and lungdisease.

● Air toxics are thousands of especially dangerous chemicals such as benzene and lead,mostly emitted from industrial plants. They cause a variety of diseases, includingcancer.

Canada alone has 20 percent of the world’s freshwater. But there are regional shortages, especiallyin the American Southwest.

Today, our two countries’ water quality isthreatened as never before. Although newregulations have cut the amount of pollutantsflowing directly from municipal sewage treatmentand industrial plants, it is still possible to detectpesticides, toxic metals and industrial chemicals inmany of the lakes and rivers we depend on for ourwater. The pesticides come from agricultural runoffand aerial spraying of forests and residential areas;toxic metals and chemicals come from industrialsources, and from consumer products dumpeddown the drain.

In the U.S. 48 of our 50 states have fishadvisories because of mercury pollution. Thequality of life that our members enjoy in their non-working hours has been seriously impaired by thecontinuing pollution of our rivers, lakes andgroundwater. In Wyoming, USW local unions havejoined active coalitions of ranchers andenvironmentalists to make important public lands“off limits” to coal-bed methane drilling that leadsto long-term contamination of ground watersupplies. Many of our members live in rural partsof the U.S. and Canada where enjoyment ofoutdoors’ lifestyles depends on sound conservationof our natural water systems. Our union supportsprotecting the natural environment in which ourmembers hunt, fish, hike, and camp.

In Canada, the Great Lakes, the Fraser River,and the St. Lawrence River are, and continue to

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be, seriously contaminated by toxic chemicals. TheWalkerton, Ontario tragedy in 2000 raised concernsabout drinking water quality that reverberatedacross Canada. Six people died and over 2000became ill when the public water system becamecontaminated with E. coli bacteria. The failure ofthe government to act promptly and investadequately in public infrastructure became anobject lesson in global economics that scrimps onpublic safety while glorifying the privatizationschemes of public services around the world.

Allocation of the world’s fresh water resourcesis becoming one of the great economic andenvironmental issues of our time. Already thethreat of bulk shipments and diversion of water tothe U.S. from Devil’s Lake is becoming an issue inCanadian/U.S. politics. Recently the states andprovinces that border the Great Lakes signed aninternational compact restricting access to theirwater outside the immediate watershed. As theactivities of the large French multinationalcompanies, Suez and Vivendi, have shown,privatization of the world’s public water systemsrepresents a great untapped source of globalprofiteering and exploitation.

Lake Erie, which washes the shores of bothcountries, provides an example of what we can doto clean our waters, and what remains to be done.

In 1960, that lake was considered “dead” becauseof the accumulated effects of municipal sewage,fertilizer runoff and industrial waste. Thick greenmats of algae floated on its surface and beacheswere littered with dead fish. But through a jointprogram between the U.S. and Canada, more than$9 billion was spent on new sewage treatmentplants and other measures. Phosphates, whichpollute the lake, were banned from laundry de-tergents and industrial discharges were restricted,as a result, the lake lives again. It is used forrecreation and fishing is coming back. Buthundreds of dangerous chemicals can still be foundin its waters. Some comes from industrial dis-charges, some from municipal agricultural runoff,and some from overhead. Much of the con-tamination in all the Great Lakes comes from airpollutants drifting down from the sky. It will bemuch harder to control these sources.

Water is growing scarcer in some areas. In-tensive irrigation aids agriculture, but much of thewater is lost to evaporation. Groundwater suppliesare diminishing, and some have been contaminatedby hazardous chemicals. Access to water is beingaffected by global warming, also. Snow pack levelsin the Pacific Northwest, for instance, havedropped to historic lows, glaciers are shrinking andthe available energy from the regional hydroelectric



system is diminishing. This, in turn, affects industry,agriculture, and native fisheries. As the nation’senergy appetite increases, the failure to adoptsustainable production methods limits our ability toproduce energy, grow food, and maintain thediversity of our species. Sustainability must becomea core value of our union and the industries wherewe represent our members. Without it, we cannotprovide the job security our members deserve.

Toxic ChemicalsMore that 75,000 chemicals, metals and

minerals are currently used in industry. Moderncivilization depends on them. Almost everything weeat, drink, wear, walk on, use or even touch wasproduced using one or more of these materials.

Many are hazardous, even when the finalproducts of the plants using them are safe. Vinylplastic, for example, poses few risks. But the vinylchloride gas used to make it causes liver cancer.Chromium is essential to stainless steel. Butchromium compounds leaching out of hazardouswaste sites are suspected carcinogens. We oncesaw toxic chemicals only as a threat to the workersusing them. But it is essential to look at the entirelife cycle of a chemical, from its manufacture, tostorage, use and ultimate disposal.

Every year, billions of pounds of toxicchemicals are released into U.S. and Canadian airand water. Working class communities are hitespecially hard, with industrial workers exposedboth inside and outside the plant.

Most of these releases take place slowly, as anormal and routine part of a company’s operation.But the potential for a sudden catastrophic accidentalso exists. The 1984 tragedy in Bhopal, India,which took more than 2,500 lives, occurred when asingle tank released 30 tons of methyl isocyanate tothe air. In 1988, an explosion at the PEPCONrocket oxidizer plant in Nevada killed two, injured350, and caused millions of dollars of damage to thesurrounding community. The jobs of the 64members of USWA Local Union 4856 working inthe plant also vanished in the explosion. Even moreterrible accidents occurred in 1989 and 1990, whenexplosions in two petrochemical plants outsideHouston killed 40 workers. Most recently, anexplosion at the BP oil refinery in Texas City, Texasclaimed 15 lives and injured 170 others.

Many toxic materials are dumped on land.While disposal practices are safer now than in thepast, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agencyestimates that 29,000 chemical waste sites in theUnited States alone pose a potential threat to theirneighbors. As many as a million undergroundstorage tanks in North America may be leakinggasoline and other chemicals into the soil andgroundwater. And many chemicals are virtuallyindestructible; putting them in landfills only

relocates the problem. Despite all our recent lawsand regulations, toxic chemicals are increasing inour environment.

The regulation of these toxics has becomeincreasingly difficult as global trade agreementshave eroded the rights of sovereign nations, states,and municipalities to control their own exposures.Two infamous “Chapter 7” cases under the NorthAmerican Free Trade Agreement illustrate thispoint. The state of California has been prohibitedunder NAFTA rules from stopping the use ofMTBE, a cancer causing gasoline additive, in theirstate. And in Mexico the same rule was used toforce the state of San Luis Potosi in Mexico toaccept a toxic waste dump opened by the foreigncompany, Metalclad, under the rules of “freetrade”.

One of the most significant dangers to thoseliving in the U.S. today is the failure of the BushAdministration to protect our people from thedangers of catastrophic toxic releases caused byterrorist attacks. In spite of heavy lobbying by ourunion and millions of concerned Americans, theadministration refuses to pass a meaningfulChemical Security Act as the cornerstone for U.S.homeland security. Currently 23 states in the U.S.are home to chemical facilities where a terroristattack could expose over 1 million Americans toharmful releases. Texas, alone, has 28 of these

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What We Face

sites.Instead the Bush Administration and its allies in

the chemical industry are trying to weaken existingRight-to-Know laws that require companies todisclose potential dangers to the workers andcommunities that might be affected by toxicchemical releases.

In Canada, large USW-represented employerslike INCO, Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting, andFalconbridge continue to be among the top tenlargest emitters of toxic chemicals in Canada,including sulfur dioxide, mercury, and cancercausing dioxins. Many urban USW-organizedcompanies are on the National Pollution ReleaseInventory, the nationwide comprehensive list ofchemical exposures prepared by EnvironmentCanada. Recent studies show an increasing bodyburden of toxics in individuals across Canada.Consequently, there is much work to be done byour union in cleaning up our work places andsurrounding communities.

Acid PrecipitationIt’s called acid rain, but the problem is much

larger. Acid can fall to earth as rain or snow, fog ormist, or on fine particles of dust. But regardless ofits source, the problem of acid rain can and must beaddressed. The economic consequences to the for-est and tourism industries as well as the profound

public health implications compel us to act.The source of the acid is sulfur dioxide and

nitrogen oxides, which react with oxygen and waterin the atmosphere to form sulfuric and nitric acids.The oxides, in turn, come from industry andautomobiles, especially coal-burning power plantsnot equipped with the proper controls.

The acid does not respect national boundaries.Copper smelters in Mexico drop acid rain on theRockies. Power plants in Indiana and Ohio sendmillions of tons into Canada. Sulfur dioxide fromOntario poisons lakes in Vermont. Acid rain killsforests and lakes and it corrodes buildings. Acidrain is damaging the tourist, hardwood forest andsugar economies of rural Quebec and the NewEngland states. Recent evidence indicates that itmay be a leading cause of lung disease,contributing to 50,000 premature deaths in theUnited States and Canada every year.

Acid rain has caused significant tensionbetween our two countries. The U.S. governmentpoints to the Inco nickel smelter in Sudbury,Ontario, as the largest single source of sulfurdioxide in North America. Canadians counter thatInco’s emissions are dwarfed by those from coal-fired power plants in the U.S. Midwest. In addition,Inco has made major efforts to fit pollution controlson its equipment, in part through the pressure ofUSWA Local Union 6500.

Fifteen years ago we thought that majorimprovements would be made in U.S. power plantemissions with passage of the Clean Air Actamendments of 1990. Unfortunately, the BushAdministration’s ill-named “Clear Skies Initiative”aims to undo the effect of this legislation, rollingback its “New Source Review” provisions. Inaddition, the failure of the Energy Bill of 2005 toarticulate a coherent energy policy, stressing thedevelopment of clean, renewable energies, hasencouraged the electrical power industry toconcentrate on meeting our growing power needsthrough increased utilization of coal without the useof new carbon sequestration technology. The USWrecognizes that coal-fired power generation willcontinue to play a significant role in U.S. powergeneration for years to come, but strongly rejectsthe notion that there should be any roll back of“new source review” and strongly supports the useof carbon coal sequestration as a legitimatecondition for the construction of any new coal-firedpower plants in the U.S.

Ironically, the widespread effects of acid rainresult from an earlier misguided attempt at pollutioncontrol — the smokestack. A hundred years ago,smokestacks were mostly used to create greaterdraft for furnaces. Air pollution made the areasaround smelters and steel mills into smoky infernos,but the problem remained local. Forty years ago,however, companies began to build very tall stacks

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What We Face

in order to inject the pollutants high in the air, so asto dilute them to “acceptable” levels. In Sudbury,Inco built the tallest smokestack in the world as itssolution to an air pollution problem that had turnedthe surrounding area into a virtual moonscape. Itworked — locally. But it is those same pollutantsthat turn to acid, eventually damaging forests andlakes throughout the Northeast.

Acid rain teaches an important lesson — thatthe only real solution is controlling pollution at itssource.

In Canada, it is estimated that a further 75 per-cent reduction in sulphur dioxide emissions beyondthat agreed to by the U.S. and Canada by 2010 isrequired to prevent further damage to easternCanada’s forests, soil, and lakes. There is likewisegrowing concern for acid rain damage, caused byemissions from tar sands in Alberta and smelters inManitoba, to boreal forest and lakes of the westernprovinces.

As widespread and serious as is the problem ofacid rain, there are solutions. Throughout thisdocument we will review some of the policies thatwould reverse the destruction of the relatedproblems of acid rain and global warming.

Sustainable ForestryGreen plants remove carbon dioxide from the

air and put oxygen back in. It was plant life thatkept carbon dioxide levels balanced before humansbegan burning huge amounts of fossil fuels andwood.

Forests are, therefore, the lungs of the Earth.Especially critical are the tropical rain forests ofSouth America, Latin America and Africa. Butendemic poverty and reckless forest managementare destroying the earth’s tropical forests at anunprecedented rate. More than 27 million acres oftropical rain forests — an area the size ofPennsylvania — disappear every year. For themost part, they are burned, adding still more carbondioxide to the air.

Deforestation of these tropical rain forests hasanother consequence. Millions of species of plantsand animals, 50-90 percent of all living organisms,many undiscovered by humans, live in theseforests. Many of these species may be extremelyvaluable to human welfare. Important new med-icines have been derived from rain forest plants,including the most effective treatment for childhoodleukemia. But these species are disappearing alongwith their rain forest habitat.

In the lesser developed countries that are hometo these tropical forests, much of the cleared land isused for agriculture, in some cases for huge ran-ches exporting beef to richer countries, in othercases for subsistence farming by those driven tothe countryside by urban poverty. But tropical rainforest soil is low in nutrients, so the farmers and

ranchers usually have to clear another stretch in afew years. Sometimes the land is logged, often togain foreign exchange to repay the enormousforeign debts owed by many developing countries.

Saving the rain forests of the Amazon basinhas become a major issue for the people of thatregion, often at great cost to their own safety. Oneexample was Chico Mendes, the leader of a unionof Brazilian rubber tappers who depend on theforest for their livelihoods. Mendes gained world-wide attention through his fight to stop the unre-stricted clearing of tropical rain forest land bywealthy ranchers. But in 1988 he was gunneddown, joining thousands of workers, peasants andIndians who were murdered when they got in theway of the developers.

More recently, Sister Dorothy Stang fromDayton, OH, an advocate for the poor and theenvironment, was murdered for leading protestsagainst the illegal logging of the Amazon.

Sustainable forestry. The USW representsalmost 200,000 members in the paper and forestproducts industries in the U.S. and Canada. Here,more than in any other industry, issues of jobs andthe environment stand in contrast to each other andcan only be resolved by adopting forest manage-ment practices that sustain both jobs and theenvironment over the long haul.

In answering this complex question, a pred-ecessor union to the USW, the Industrial Wood andAllied Workers Union of Canada (IWA) produced,in 1990, an important policy statement, “The ForestIs the Future”. IWA Canada pointed out thatsustainable forestry was the solution:

“Our forests must be managed forlong-term sustainability. That means wemust constantly work to find a balancebetween our environmental, social andeconomic concerns.

“It also means that we cannot takeone-sided positions that sacrificebiological diversity, waterways or forestsoil, any more than we can ignore theneeds of people, jobs, communities orthe economy.

“Forest management and forestpractices must consider a wide range ofvalues and respond to numerousconcerns. It takes careful and reasonedanalysis; research; consultation;planning; careful design andconstruction of forest facilities, sites androads; monitoring and enforcement. Italso takes an ongoing commitment toinvest in new, environmentally-friendlyways of harvesting timber; reforestation;intensive silviculture; research; productdevelopment; training and new markets.

“To achieve the balance we en-

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vision, forest management must take intoaccount the full range of humanconcerns for our forests. These includeenvironmental considerations such asbiodiversity and our forests’ role in theexchange of gases that makes lifepossible on the Earth. It includes acommitment to protect forest soils,waterways and life forms that dependon them. It includes economic factorssuch as employment creation, thegeneration of wealth and exportearnings; it also includes socialconcerns, such as the health and safetyof forest workers and the preservationof viable communities based onforestry.”

The USW believes in the principles of sus-tainable forestry, but what exactly is “sustainableforestry”?

Properly managed, forests represent a renew-able resource that can provide a wide range ofopportunities, both for people today and for futuregenerations. Steelworkers and our precursor unionshave long fought for sustainable forest practices inspite of opposition from industry and governments.

That struggle has never been more importantthan today. In many parts of the world, forests areunder pressure. As we have already noted, in theAmazon Basin — home to the world’s largestrainforest — millions of poor subsistence farmersare pushed by poverty to large-scale landclearances, for instance. There is also widespreadillegal logging and, in some instances, extremelypoor forest practices by companies bent on short-term exploitation and profits rather than long-termstewardship of people or the forests.

Similarly in Russia and Southeast Asia, illegallogging is on the rise, with the result that illegally-obtained timber appears to be abundantly feeding

China’s low-wage, dangerous mills andmanufacturing plants.

In the Southern U.S., meanwhile, forests areincreasingly crowded by urban expansion. Theresulting rising prices for timber helps make un-viable many Southern pulp mills, paper mills andsawmills, creating pressure that helps, for example,perpetuate the unhelpful and damaging lumberdispute between the U.S. and Canada. Too often,as well, vibrant natural forests are replaced bysterile plantations that ecologists call “biodiversitydeserts” — row on row of look-alike trees spacedso that they can be serviced by tractor-drawnsprayers dispensing herbicides and fertilizers.

Over-capacity in worldwide paper production,meanwhile, not only puts downward pressure onpulp prices and thus threatens jobs and wages. Italso puts unneeded pressure on forests to supply anincreasing amount of fibre in a shorter time. Wemust find a way to stop this downward spiral.

In the Interior of British Columbia, meanwhile,forests are currently being devastated by mountainpine beetles. Some scientists believe that theinfestation is a symptom of global warming —mountain pine beetles historically were killed off bythree weeks of subzero weather. Today companiesare ramping up production and expanding output,harvesting the beetle-infected timber. In less than adecade, however, those same mills will be idled asthe beetle wood is exhausted and becomesunusable. Without firm commitments to dramaticremedial action by companies and governments,Steelworkers and their communities will beabandoned when the current boom runs out.

In spite of these and similar problems, forestsnonetheless remain an important source ofopportunities and hope for humanity. Forestsprovide a wide range of values — beautiful woodproducts that provide shelter, utility and warmth;paper products that equally satisfy important human



What We Face

needs; botanical forest products and other non-timber resources; habitat for a wide range of plant,animal and fungal species; refuge and a variety ofrecreational opportunities.

Forest-sector workers from USW precursors,PACE and IWA Canada, play an important role inensuring sustainable forest stewardship. Ourmembers, after all, know that in a very real way,the forest represents their future and theirchildren’s future. We have a built-in, immediateinterest in ensuring that forests are managed notonly for short-term gain but also for long-termsustainability. We want to continue producing woodand paper products under conditions that allow ussafe, secure jobs in stable communities whereworkers produce useful products for peopleworldwide. Forest communities also offer a unique,satisfying way of life, often in locations far fromurban centres where alternate employment is rare.

That’s why, for instance, members of IWACanada participated in a succession of land-useplanning processes and forest round tables inBritish Columbia, Saskatchewan and Ontario andsupported worker-friendly government’s efforts toimprove forest environment standards. Forest-sector workers sincerely want to achieve the kindof balance that maintains some forests in theirnatural state — as a result of planning processes inBritish Columbia, for example, more than 13percent of the land base is now permanently setaside as parks, off limit to timber harvesting andother economic pursuits — while setting science-based and reasonable conditions for timberproduction on other parts of the land base.

Achieving a sustainable balance has neverbeen easy, of course. Some forest companies havealways resisted best forest practices in favor ofgetting the wood out and making a profit. There is,in fact, increasing pressure on companies operatingin a global economy to turn a quick profit. Thatstance is incompatible with the needs of a naturalresource which requires decades of care toproduce a profitable stand of timber. Such a short-sighted perspective can also be detrimental to thehealth and well being of forest workers and theircommunities. The pressure to produce andincreased contracting out lower workers’ pay and

benefits and threaten safety and environmentalstandards that protect the forests.

Companies everywhere have also resorted toextensive mechanization of logging and woodmanufacturing processes, resulting in the loss ofjobs. Forest-sector workers have therefore workedhard to convince governments and corporations todiversify their product lines and increase theirefforts in silviculture, regeneration and forestrenewal work. We have also advocated moreresearch into new markets and new products. Webelieve that more attention to sustainable forestryand improved forest practices can contribute toincreasing long term employment in resource-basedcommunities.

In addition, by raising the value-added to eachunit of timber harvested, we can ensure that eachunit produces not only a higher return on invest-ment, but also add more jobs. Thus, less timberwould be harvested to ensure a consistent standardof living. This is a crucial part of a sustainablemanagement strategy that must be pursued by theUSW, governments and industry alike.

As a result of the consolidation andglobalization of the forest products and paperindustries, there are many possible avenues forcooperation between forest workers andenvironmentalists. Our members are deeplyconcerned about many of the recent trends inforest management, for instance. USW-represented companies are increasingly bent onshort term economic strategies regardless of theirpotential harm to forest health and viability. Thereis an increase in the incidence of firms harvestingonly the most readily accessible and most valuabletimber while leaving the rest to rot in the forestbecause it cannot be processed in a sufficientlyprofitable way. Such practices impact both ourmembers’ employment prospects and long termforest health. It also undermines the public’s faiththat we are doing our best to steward andsafeguard the resource base.

Another concern to the USW and someenvironmentalists is the increase in contracting outof work done by company crews. Subcontractingnot only leads to poor safety standards but oftenforces small companies with few financialresources to take unnecessary risks while failing totake appropriate care of the land base. Smallcontractors often cannot hire or consult specialistsin forest management or planning and thereforeneglect important aspects of the ecosystems inwhich they operate.

The USW and environmentalists also shareconcern on toxic exposures. In some workplaces,workers are forced to use and apply herbicides,fertilizers and other chemicals to standing timber orto manufactured products. There are many

Forest-sector workers fromUSW precursors, PACE and

IWA Canada, play animportant role in ensuring

sustainable foreststewardship.

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instances of severe damage to workers’, commu-nity or forest health as a result of improper handlingof hazardous chemicals.

In Canada, the USW is committed to the prin-ciples of sustainable forestry and to a process ofchange designed to realize the goal of more sus-tainable production of wood and paper products.

In the U.S., our union advocates dialogue withresponsible environmental organizations over howthe principles of sustainable forestry should beapplied on both private and public lands. We knowwe won’t always agree on every issue or on everytimber sale, but we believe that the previous con-flict over forest management issues has been ex-ploited by right-wing corporate interests to the det-riment of our union.

Additionally, in the U.S., our union continues itslong support for the Endangered Species Act(ESA), its opposition to drilling in the Arctic Nat-ional Wildlife Refuge, and its opposition to loggingin the Tongass National Forest. The ESA has beenthe legislative cornerstone for maintaining bio-diversity in the U.S. since its passage in 1973.Managing a complex ecosystem is essential to ourown survival. Just as miners once carried canariesinto their mines to warn them of bad air, so loss ofour planet’s unique species is a warning of possiblemismanagement of the earth’s resources.

In both the U.S. and Canada, we oppose therenegotiation of the Softwood Lumber Agreementin a way that encourages the export of Canadiantimber, resulting in the loss of value added jobs inCanada and the destruction of logging jobs in theU.S. In general, the globalization of the world’sforest products’ industries has led to the displace-ment of North American workers and destabilizedtheir communities. Companies like InternationalPaper and Georgia Pacific (now Koch Industries)have focused on developing foreign sources offiber in Chile, Russia, Brazil and Indonesia insteadof concentrating on long term sustainable forestpractices in North America. These trends towardglobalization, in turn, put pressure on domesticlogging companies to adopt destructive environ-mental practices and to cut safety programs.British Columbia, in particular, has seen a tragicrise in forest fatalities in the logging industry.

Public policies that affect land managementand logging are fundamentally different in the U.S.and Canada. In the U.S. public lands make up onlyabout 5 percent of the available timber resource. InBritish Columbia, virtually the opposite is true;public lands make up over 90 percent of the landavailable for logging. In Canada, our union ad-vocates public policy collaborations betweenreasonable stakeholders to advance sustainableforestry.

In the U.S., where regulatory frameworksfrequently affect private landowners, collaboration

is more difficult. The U.S. National Forest Servicepolicy has encouraged more litigation than isnecessary. The USW advocates collaboration withenvironmental organizations to jointly lobby forresolution of national forest management plansearlier in the process. For instance, a joint labor/environmental initiative to build consensus in theWestern states on federal forest managementissues would help win support for sustainableforestry and reduce the boom and bust cycle socommon in forest communities.

In spite of the challenges and obstacles theforest sector faces today, wood remains an impor-tant part of a worldwide strategy for economic sus-tainability. Timber, after all, is a renewable re-source. Through the product life cycle fromplanting to recycling, wood uses less water, energyand raw materials than many other buildingmaterials. Wood and paper products contribute in amyriad of ways to human health and well-being.That’s why it is crucial that we establish the rightbalance between our environmental, social andeconomic needs in the forest sector. And it’s whySteelworkers are committed to sustainable forestmanagement and the sustainable production anduse of wood and paper products.

Ozone DepletionFifteen years ago, we warned that carbon

dioxide was not the only trace gas threatening theplanet. Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are a group ofchemicals including Freon and Halon. They werewidely used as refrigerants, solvents, fire sup-pression agents, aerosol propellants, and in themanufacture of plastic foams.

CFCs, and certain chlorinated solvents, canfloat to the upper levels of the atmosphere, wherethey react with naturally occurring ozone gas.Ozone is a poison at ground level, but 30 miles up itshields the Earth from damaging ultravioletradiation. If we lose the ozone layer, the result willbe widespread skin cancer, crop failure and theextinction of many species of animals and plants.

CFCs are extremely stable. They can last for75 years or more in the upper atmosphere. Onemolecule of Freon can destroy a hundred thousandmolecules of ozone. By 1990, holes in the ozonelayer had already begun to appear around the northand south poles, where frigid temperatures accel-erated the process. CFCs also contributed to thegreenhouse effect and global warming, through anentirely different mechanism.

The regulation and phase out of CFCs hasbeen an environmental success story. In 1990 newinternational treaties were ratified leading to thereplacement of CFCs and other ozone damagingchemicals. At the Buffalo Research Lab of AlliedSignal, whose 70 workers were represented byUSW Local Union 8823, research on HCFCs

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What We Face

(hydrochlorofluorocarbons), helped discover a sub-stitute that will not damage the atmosphere at all.As a result, the destruction of the earth’s ozonelayer has ceased, and its restoration is slowlyunderway.

Originally, scientists expected the ozone layerto be restored over the next 25 years. However, itwas recently discovered that the recovery is slowerand the damage more persistent than first estimat-ed. Now, scientists expect the repair of the ozonelayer to take at least 40 years.

The example of the ozone depletion problem isan important one from which to learn. In 1990,refrigeration manufacturers complained thatbanning CFCs would result in massive job loss intheir industries. They claimed that the public healthrisks from banning their refrigeration products weremore serious than the long term effects ofdestroying the ozone layer. They also claimed thatthe regulations would be unenforceable sinceforeign manufacturers would take advantage ofloose regulatory processes in their own countriesand continue to use CFCs. While regulation isalways an issue, these claims all turned out to befalse. The companies were simply trying to protecttheir short term profit margins at the expense of thepublic’s long term health interests.

The company arguments against environmentalregulation are not new. These are the same

arguments we hear everyday in our life as a unionwhen we try to improve the wages, benefits andworking conditions of our members. Regulations ofthe environmental practices of corporations, whenthey are uniform and consistently enforced, do notcost jobs. They improve the quality of ourenvironment both inside and outside of theworkplace.

The OceansThroughout the history of civilization, the ocean

has been one of the chief food sources for humanbeings. Until recently, the ocean’s ability toregenerate most species was consideredinexhaustible. However, the expansion of industrialfishing fleets has proven that not only are largeoceanic mammals like whales at risk — so aremost fish species.

From the famous cod fisheries of the NorthAtlantic to the orange roughy of New Zealand,contemporary fisheries can now be exhausted in afew short years. As coastal waters have becomeexhausted, new species are subject to commercialfishing in ever deeper waters. In its 1998 report,Year of the Ocean—Ensuring the Sustainability ofOcean Living Resources, the U.S. governmentacknowledged, “Both U.S. and world fisheries,with a few exceptions, exhibit flat or decliningtrends in harvests and the majority are thought tobe fully or over-utilized.”

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Consider the Chilean sea bass, unknown as acommercial fish until the 1990’s. Today, the Chileansea bass, for a few short years a favorite in restau-rants around the world, is an endangered species.This particular fish lives in the deep, cold watersoff the southern coasts of South America, takingten years to reach reproductive maturity. Modernrefrigeration and transportation systems turned theChilean sea bass into a global commodity andquickly led to its near extinction.

The same is true of species ranging fromCaspian sturgeon to swordfish to certain kinds oftuna. Huge industrial “floating fish factories” roamthe world over with nets that are several miles long,catching and processing fish at an ever-escalatingrate. We must note the role that globalization hasplayed in forever altering the relationship betweenhumankind and the oceans. Where once the oceanprovided local food stuffs and a transportationmedium between local economies, today the oceanis mined as a natural resource for commodities asfar ranging as oil, natural gas and halibut steaks.Unless the ocean is treated and regulated as theexhaustible resource it is, the impact on its ability tosustain human life will be profoundly altered.

In this regard, we must mention one of theprimary tenants of the The United Nations’International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights,“In no case may a people be deprived of its ownmeans of subsistence.” In Asia alone over 1 billionpeople depend on the ocean as their primary sourceof protein. Managing the ocean in a sustainablefashion is one of our great challenges.

The ocean is also at risk from pollution. OnMarch 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez spilled11 million gallons of oil into Alaskan waters. Theaccident could have been much worse; the spilledoil represented only 6 percent of the ship’s cargo.Even so, despite billions of dollars of “clean-up”, a2001 study showed that 58 percent of 91 testedshoreline spots still suffered from oil pollution. Theultimate damage to the environment is still notcompletely known.

Oil spills are not the only threat to the oceans.About one quarter of North American waste wateris dumped directly into the sea, including millions ofpounds of toxic chemicals. Some solid waste also isdumped at sea, out of sight of the shore. The hypo-dermic needles and other medical waste washingup on our beaches are only the most visible signs.

Much of the life of the sea is nurtured bynatural bays and marshes along the coastline. Butmany of these natural areas have been destroyedby unrestrained development. Everyone recognizestoday that the severity of the damage of the 2005hurricane season in the U.S. was greatly aggra-vated by destruction of the natural coast line on theGulf Coast.

The pollution of the seas already threatensshellfish in many areas. In the future, it could ser-

iously diminish the supply of fish needed to feed theworld’s population. Plankton — microscopic marineplants — help remove carbon dioxide from the air,and provide the ultimate food source for mostcreatures in the ocean’s food chain. If they are lostby oceanic pollution, the result will be globalcatastrophe.

Population, Poverty and the EnvironmentIn 1800, at the start of the industrial revolution,

the earth’s population stood at about 500 million.Today, it is a thirteen times greater — 6.5 billionand 1.3 billion more than when our original reportwas written. At current rates it will double in lessthan 40 years. Most of this growth will take placein developing countries. As societies becomewealthier, population rates have tended to fall. Inthe U.S. childbirth rates are 14 per 1000 womenand in Canada they are 10. By comparison inMexico childbirth rates are 23 per 1000 women.Economists have noted that none of the world’swealthy societies have raised their standards ofliving without first stabilizing their population growthrates at 1 percent for at least a century and havingan economic growth rate that substantiallyexceeded their population growth rate. The pop-ulation growth rate in Canada is 0.3 percent, in theU.S. 0.6 percent, while in Central America it is 2.0percent.

Some environmentalists believe that overpop-ulation is a fundamental cause of environmental



What We Face

degradation. In various forms, economists from thedays of Robert Malthus in the late eighteenthcentury have argued that population growth is alsothe cause of poverty. However, the world producesmore than enough food to feed its current popu-lation. For example, enough grain is produced togive everyone on earth two loaves of bread a day.Even more could be produced through moreefficient use of our agricultural resources. The realproblem is one of distribution — of poverty andwealth. Most poor coun-tries could feed their ownpopulations throughagricultural and economicdevelopment. Done right,that development couldoccur in ways that do notcause environmentaldamage.

In fact, developmentalso is linked to population.It is no accident that richcountries are approachingstable populations, whilepoor countries must dealwith rapidly increasingnumbers. Persons inimpoverished societiestend to have morechildren, because children,

and what they can earn, are essential to survival.Population growth cannot be limited without aworldwide attack on poverty.

In 1992, the Rio Conference on Environmentand Development linked the issues of economicand environmental sustainability on a global basisfor the first time. Its Third Principle reads, “Theright to development must be fulfilled so as toequitably meet developmental and environmentalneeds of present and future generations.” TheKyoto Treaty of 1995 on global warming was adirect outgrowth of this historic conference. Eachyear since Kyoto, the Conference of the Parties tothe Climate Change Convention (COP) has met totake measure of the progress achieved by theglobal community.

In December, 2005 the COP-11 was hosted byCanada in Montreal. At this conference represen-tatives of the USW appeared with other NGOrepresentatives of the International Confederationof Free Trade Unions and argued strongly forimmediate engagement by the governments of theU.S. and Canada on the critical goals of the globalwarming treaty and economic and environmentalsustainability.

In the era of modern globalization, we will beunsuccessful in solving critical environmentalchallenges without also solving the challenges ofglobal poverty and the political and socialinstability that accompanies in it. In a funda-mental sense, the connection between economicjustice and environmental sustainability on aglobal basis has linked the labor and environ-mental movements in every country. Without thetwo movements acting in concert, neithermovement can succeed.



A Union Issue?


A Union Issue?The problems of global warming, acid rain,

ozone depletion, oceanic pollution and worldpoverty remind us that we can no longer think ofourselves solely as citizens of the U.S. or Canada,or even as North Americans. The potentialcatastrophe is global. The environment must be aglobal issue.

But is it a union issue? Should we work toprotect the environ-ment merely as goodcitizens, or is there aspecial role for ourunion to play? Andwhat about industrieswhere environmentalregulations areopposed by theemployers where ourmembers work?Whose interestshould we support,the environment orthe employer?

In a global econ-omy, the issues oflabor, environmentaland human rightshave becomeinseparably linked.During the lastfifteen years, wehave seen the devas-tation that lack of la-bor standards in tradeagreements causedindustrial commun-ities. Millions ofmanufacturing jobswere destroyed inNorth America,relocated to low-wage, poorly reg-ulated economies.Middle class commu-

nities deteriorated. Living standards declined rap-idly in economically abandoned areas of both ourcountries.

The enormous downward pressure of theglobal economy has eroded environmental stan-dards as well. Common sense solutions to cleaningup the environment have been replaced by cor-porate recklessness in the face of mounting evi-dence that the effects of global warming arealready upon us.

In a global economy, sustainability should bethe true measure of both corporate conduct andpublic policies. The union must now ask on behalfof our members whether a company’s policies are

sustainable over the long run. Or will they onlybenefit a few shareholders for a few short years?For instance, we must have sustainable forestmanagement practices if our members’ jobs in theforest products and paper industries are to last andtheir communities survive.

Sustainable economies recognize strong laborrights. They also promote sound environmentalpractices. And they stabilize the climate, avoidingthe disastrous consequences of global warming.

The answer to our question is clear. Theenvironment is an essential union issue, the sameway that globalization and trade are essential unionissues. If we are to be successful in pursuing aworld that is more economically just and sustain-able in the long-term, environmental work must bepart of our mission at every level of the union.

First, we must protect our children’s world.Steelworkers have always fought for a better

life for their children. Most of us are the des-cendants of immigrants who came to the UnitedStates or Canada seeking a better future, not justfor themselves, but for later generations as well.They sacrificed enormously to build a finer tomor-row for their offsprings. They created this union asa force to ensure that their sons and daughterswould have a better life.

Today, the greatest threat to our children’sfuture is the destruction of their environment. Someof the worst consequences of environmental dam-age, such as global warming and the death of theoceans, we once believed would not occur in ourlifetime. But today we realize that many of theseproblems are upon us now and, if we do nothing,will devastate the world of our children.

The Bush Administration believes we canignore the problems and simply adapt. Others stillbelieve that we can leave the problem to futuregenerations — that is a delusion. Like a bad debt,the cost increases every day. CFCs were first de-veloped in the 1930s. By the early 1970s severalscientists warned about their capacity for damagingthe ozone.

However CFC manufacturers, led by DuPont,argued for delay. CFCs were banned from aerosolsprays in the U.S. and Canada in 1978, but otheruses quickly filled the gap. It took almost ten moreyears to achieve an agreement cutting the use ofCFCs, during which time 15 billion pounds wereproduced. The ultimate damage has been muchgreater as a result.

The longer we wait, the worse it will get. It willcost billions to clean up toxic waste problems thatcould have been avoided for far less money, andwith far fewer cases of death and disease. It willcost our children much more to tackle theseproblems than it will cost us. Leaving it all to themis the worst sort of irresponsibility.

The answer to ourquestion is clear. The

environment is anessential union issue,

the same way thatglobalization and trade

are essential unionissues. If we are to be

successful in pursuinga world that is more

economically just andsustainable in the long-

term, environmentalwork must be part ofour mission at everylevel of the union.



A Union Issue?

But if we act today, many of the problems,particularly global warming, can be solved in a wayin which far-reaching economic benefits are real-ized by the people of North America. As we havestated before, the global economy can be restruc-tured in a way that raises standards of livingworldwide and insures environmental sustainability.The alternative, the current path of globalization,traps all of us in a race to the bottom in whichshort-term corporate profits demand ever lowerlabor and environmental standards.

Second, protecting the environmentultimately protects our jobs.

In the 1970’s when the environmentalmovement first started winning legislative victoriescleaning up our air and water the common assum-ption was that protecting the environment woulddestroy the jobs of thousands — maybe millions —of workers in our basic, smokestack industries.What actually happened?

In hindsight, the great loss of manufacturingjobs in North America over the last three decadeshad very little to do with the rise of environmentalregulation and everything to do with the integrationof the world economy. At the time it was easy formanufacturers to point at environmental costs andblame them for the decisions to close or relocatefactories. Today, we can recognize that companieswere really making these decisions based on thelong-term profitability of operating in low wagecountries. The auto industry didn’t outsource itspart suppliers to Mexico and China because ofenvironmental costs, but because labor costs couldbe reduced by as much as 90 percent. New mineswere opened in South America and Indonesiabecause of lax labor laws and low labor costs. Inthe last five years, we can clearly see that thethree million manufacturing jobs that vanished fromthe U.S. economy had almost nothing to do withdomestic environmental regulation, and everythingto do with U.S. corporate trade policy.

In a technological sense, the solutions toenvironmental problems are well within our grasp.Some may require continued research while wetake the first steps, but none are beyond ourtechnical capacity. Air and water pollution can bevirtually eliminated by redesigning manufacturingprocesses, switching to cleaner products, installinggood control technology, and recycling more ofwhat we currently throw away.

Many toxic chemicals can be replaced by saferones. Those that cannot, can be confined to closedmanufacturing systems and recycled after use.Abandoned waste dumps will be with us for a longtime, but they too can be cleaned up through aconcerted program.

Acid rain is caused by a particular form of airpollution — oxides of sulfur and nitrogen.

Acid rain canbe controlled bycapturing thosepollutants throughthe use of scrub-bers and otherdevices installedon power plants,certain industrialsources, andautomobiles.

The ozonelayer is beingrestored byphasing out thechlorofluorocarbonsand other chem-icals that destroyit. The interna-tional agreementson ozone deple-tion and the suc-cessful use ofsubstitutes showthat even world-wide problemscan be solved.

Solutions to global warming will be much moredifficult. Cutting carbon dioxide emissions will takea massive worldwide effort — but it can be done.However, the U.S. must engage in the internationalprocess initiated by the Kyoto Treaty. Techno-logical barriers are not the problem. Politicalbarriers, thrown up by the oil and coal lobbies are.

Immediate gains can be made by more effici-ent use of energy, such as better building insulation,greater automotive fuel efficiency, new mass tran-sit systems and improved energy recovery in in-dustrial plants. West Germany and Japan, forexample, are almost twice as energy efficient asNorth America, as measured by the amount ofenergy it takes to produce an equivalent amount ofgross national product.

The future energy needs of the U.S. can eitherbe met through the construction of 120 plus newcoal-fired power plants or through investment inalternate nonpolluting sources of energy-like wind,solar, and biomass. Today, Germany directly em-ploys 40,000 people in its wind energy industrywhich consumes more steel in Germany than anyother industry except automotive. Germany, with afraction of the U.S. land mass and one-fourth ourpopulation, produces three times as much windenergy. Capital costs for the production of windenergy in prime locations are now lower than forcoal. Economic studies from the Union of Con-cerned Scientists show that investment in renew-able energy sources also creates more jobs — fourtimes more jobs than with natural gas and 40

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percent more than with coal. No one believes thatcoal and natural gas will disappear from our energymix, but our expanding energy needs can and mustbe met from clean renewable energy sources. Wealso need to study the role of safe and well-securednuclear power in our power mix to determine whe-ther its challenges, such as the development of anexperimental safe nuclear reactor and the perma-nent disposal of nuclear waste, can be resolvedsatisfactorily.

None of this, however, will be easy. The realproblems are not technical — they are economicand political. Our society will change enormously

regardless of which path we choose, either throughour efforts to save our environment, or becauseenvironmental destruction finally overwhelms us. Ina very real sense we can either choose to preventthe future generation of storms like Katrina andRita or we can choose to rebuild repeatedly froman ever increasing cycle of destructive weatherdisasters. Regardless, our countries will have toprovide equitable and effective emergencyresponses to such tragedies, including the buildingof levees even in poor neighbourhoods. As a union,we cannot stand aside from these issues. Ourchoices are to be the victims of change, or tocontrol that change to the benefit of ourselves andour children.

We also want to note the trend towardgovernment and private enterprise outsourcingwhich makes accountability more and moredifficult. When the essential functions of anyorganization are increasingly fragmented and

responsibilities are diffused throughout multiplecompanies — each of which is driven by its ownprofit-motive — effective social outcomes are lesslikely. Overall environmental goals become difficultto achieve. And health and safety concerns ofworkers and communities are brushed aside. Thisis especially true in British Columbia (BC) today inthe logging industry where the dismantling of gov-ernment enforced standards has led to the highestfatality rates in modern BC logging history.

Steelworkers have heard the argument beforethat environmental protection causes job losses. Formany years companies have tried to use economic

and environmental blackmail on theunion and its members. In every fightfor a new health and safety regu-lation, or better wages, or improvedpensions, there is a corporate econ-omist to tell us that if we persist, thecompany or the industry will fold,with hundreds or thousands of lostjobs. It rarely turns out to be true, andfor good reason. Someone has to de-sign the cleaner process or equip-ment. Someone has to build it. Some-one has to install it. Someone has tooperate it. Someone has to maintainit.

In the long run, the real choiceis not jobs or the environment. It’sboth or neither. What kind of jobswill be possible in a world of de-pleted resources, poisoned waterand foul air, a world where ozonedepletion and greenhouse warmingmake it difficult even to survive?Securing our children’s world, en-suring clean jobs, and planning adecent future are too important to

leave to management alone.Even in the short run, companies that exist only

by destroying their resource base, or pushing theirenvironmental costs off onto others, will not be inbusiness very long. Some plants have shut down,not because they acted responsibly toward theirneighbors, but because they did not. For example,the Johns Manville Corporation declared bank-ruptcy in 1982 after projecting billions of dollars ofpotential liability for diseases caused by the com-pany’s failure to warn users about the risks ofasbestos. Thousands of workers lost their jobs inthe resulting shake-up.

Jobs can be lost in any time of change — andthe changes ahead are enormous.

Sometimes the cause is short-term greed, thedesire to make a fast buck and get out, abandoningworkers and the community. Sometimes the causeis management’s unwillingness or inability to adaptto changing conditions. The Ethyl plant in Baton

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A Union Issue?

Rouge, La., was a major producer of lead additivesfor gasoline. When the government banned leadedgas in 1985, management shut the plant down,putting more than a thousand members of USWALocal Union 12900 out of work. Yet the plant couldhave adapted to the manufacture of other products,as Allied Signal is doing in the example cited earlier.

Or look at the current example of the U.S.automotive industry which has steadfastly opposedimproved fuel efficiency standards. Now, in an eraof high gas prices, consumers cannot afford todrive inefficient engines. The U.S. Big Three’sshare of the North American auto market is now atan all time low. Failure to operate in an environ-mentally sustainable fashion has grave economicconsequences for workers.

Some corporate managers try to pass the costof their own misdeeds off onto their workers. Forexample, at Uniroyal Chem-ical, near Guelph, Ontario, 230members of USWA LocalUnion 13691 went on strike inMay 1990, when the com-pany demanded concessionsin order to pay the cost ofcleaning up a leaky, poorlydesigned waste site.

The Steelworkers TorontoArea Council has embarkedon a program to include envir-onmental issues in bargainingwith those employers who useor produce large quantities oftoxic materials. Instead ofwaiting for those employers todemand concessions becauseof their failure to address environmental concerns,the union is building a pro-active approach, iden-tifying the problems, meeting with the community,and devising strategies for improvement. Workingwith local environmental groups and other unions aswell as City Council and Public Health, the Steel-workers are part of the city’s “Community Right toKnow” initiative to clean up the city and reducechemical hazards.

Some companies understand that their ownsurvival depends on their environmental record, butmany do not. We cannot expect the company orthe government to defend our interests for us.Protecting our children’s future and our own jobsrequires collective bargaining and political action.We must push our own companies to improve, notonly as a way of protecting the environment, but asa way of preserving jobs as well. At the same time,we must recognize that some plants will close nomatter what we do. It does not help these workersto argue that other jobs will be created somewhereelse, in some other industry. Protecting the environ-ment does create jobs overall, but displaced work-

ers need jobs in their own communities, not theknowledge that others are benefiting from theirsacrifice. It is, after all, the worker, not the govern-ment or corporate stockholder, who has the most tolose when a plant closes.

Just transition. It is fundamentally unfair torequire working people to absorb the cost of envir-onmental controls that benefit society as a whole.Nor is it politically workable, since it inevitably cre-ates opposition to environmental reform, and pitsworkers against environmentalists.

The only answer is to link environmental re-form with economic justice. Cleaning up the envir-onment and improving public health should never beaccomplished on the backs of workers. In partic-ular, income protection and job retraining should beautomatic for those who are displaced because ofnew environmental regulations, or the failure of

their employers to adapt.In the past, the USW and

other unions lobbied intens-ively to add an EnvironmentalAdjustment Assistance pro-vision to the Clean Air Act,and to make similar impro-vements to the unemploy-ment compensation systemsin Canada. In addition, com-panies that curtail operationstemporarily in order to installnew equipment, or to complywith pollution regulations,should be required to con-tinue the earnings of affectedworkers. In fact, such a pro-vision was written into the

1977 Clean Air Act Amend-ments in the UnitedStates, for workers in copper smelters that shutdown temporarily in order to reduce their averageemissions to allowable levels. At the Rocky Flatsnuclear plant in Golden, Colo., USW Local Union8031 won an order from the U.S. Department ofEnergy requiring full earnings protection whileproduction was suspended for a thorough cleanup.In Canada, Local 1064 continues to actively lobbyfor work for its members in the clean up of thecoke ovens and tar ponds of Sydney Steel, nowthat the steel mill has closed.

Ultimately, protecting the environment will re-quire cleaner products, methods of production andsources of energy. That, in turn, will take research.Direct steelmaking that bypasses coke ovens andblast furnaces is one such technology. Inert anodeand wettable cathode technology in the aluminumindustry is another. These new methods couldgreatly cut plant pollution and energy costs andincrease the competitiveness of North Americancompanies. But without proper planning, it couldaffect thousands of jobs and further impoverish

Ultimately,protecting the

environment willrequire cleaner

products, methodsof production andsources of energy.

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steelworker communities. Technological improve-ments are essential to a cleaner environment.However, new technology — especially that fund-ed by the government — must be subject to dem-ocratic planning, and introduced in a way that pro-tects the economic interests of workers and com-munities, as well as companies.

We cannot serve our members by ignoringenvironmental issues. We cannot protect them bypretending to resist change. Our mission is to adaptto change and to channel it for the long-termbenefit of our members and all working people.

Third, Globalization is our common foe,linking the environment to other unionissues.

Economic forces are the key to almost everyunion issue. Environmental issues are no differ-ent.

Companies usually try to “externalize” theircosts — to make someone else pay part of the realcost of production, for example when workers areasked to pick up part of the cost of their healthinsurance.

Sometimes those costs are hidden. Bad work-ing conditions lead to an increase in occupationalaccidents and illness. Some of that cost is paid bythe workers’ compensation system; most of it,however, is absorbed by the victims themselves indisability and lost income, and by all the rest of us,in higher overall medical and insurance bills.

Often these externalized costs are much largerthan the costs the company avoided by refusing toimprove conditions in the first place. But the com-pany’s concern is its own bottom line, not the over-all cost to society.

As trade unionists, we understand this processwell. Our efforts to win higher wages, improvedpensions, adequate insurance and safe workingconditions are efforts to stop the company fromdumping its costs onto us.

Environmental economics work the same.Some companies try to maximize their profits byignoring the cost to the environment. Pollution ispumped into the air and water, toxic chemicals areallowed to escape, greenhouse and ozone-depletinggases are generated because the cost to the envi-ronment never appears in the company’s balancesheet.

But the cost is real. And while the cost of en-vironmental damage may be external to the com-pany, the earth itself is a closed system. Consider-ing the earth as a whole, there is no such thing asan external cost.

A healthy economy is essential to a healthyenvironment. Protecting the environment ultimatelymeans more efficient production, with less drain onthe earth’s resources, and less waste. But it willcost money to research, design and implement newcontrols; it will cost money to substitute new pro-ducts for old.

Economic justice is critical. Without a full em-



A Union Issue?

ployment economy, workers displaced becausetheir companies failed to adapt will be unable tofind new jobs. Labor rights are important also, toensure that jobs provide decent wages and bene-fits. In fact, the environment impacts almost everylabor issue. Our health care system, for example, isstressed by the burden of environmental disease.The problems of poor people and minorities aremade worse by the fact that they are often forcedto live in the most polluted areas.

On a global scale, it is useless to work for aclean environment without also working for eco-nomic justice and human rights. It is no accidentthat a country like Indonesia, where the U.S.-basedNewmont Mining Company was recently exposedfor polluting coastal fishing areas with dangerouscarcinogens and Freeport Mining acknowledgedbribing the country’s military leaders, has both lowwage levels and repressive labor rights. It is noaccident that the residents of maquiladora areas onthe U.S.-Mexican border live in polluted hovels sur-rounded by raw sewage, walking to work in fac-tories like the Alcoa wire harness plant in PeidrasNegras that pays $.87 an hour doing jobs onceperformed in the U.S.

Our union is well aware that the same com-panies who are the worst violators of labor lawsand human rights standards, invariably are theworst polluters and violators of environmental reg-ulations.

Some companies may try to avoid strong envir-onmental regulations by moving overseas. But theanswer is not to repeal our own laws, any morethan the answer to global competition is to cut ourown wages to poverty levels. Instead, we shouldwork with unions and governments in developingcountries to improve conditions there. This is ex-actly the reason the USW has recently signed stra-tegic alliances with seven major unions in Europe,South Africa, South America, and Australia. Wealso need to form strategic alliances with environ-mental organizations in North America and othercontinents to influence corporate environmentalconduct.

A good first step would be to stop making theproblems of developing countries worse than theyalready are. Some industrialized countries havetried to use poorer nations as a dumping ground fortoxic waste. That practice should be prohibited byinternational law. In addition, we should forbid theexport of products and processes prohibited in theexporting country because they damage health orthe environment, and work to ensure that all otherexports can be used safely.

Correspondingly, we should restrict the importof products made in ways that damage the envir-onment. It does not help the world environment toexport pollution — and jobs — to countries unwill-ing to meet fair standards. Since the WTO protests

in Seattle in 1999, the world has come to under-stand the powerful linkage between labor rights andenvironmental standards. All trade agreementsshould contain enforceable labor and environmentalstandards. Without this safeguard the countries ofthe world will have no protection against the un-ethical conduct of corporations that move aroundthe globe to escape protections for workers and theworld we live in.

The World Commission on Environment andDevelopment, set up in 1983 by the United Nations,has defined its goal as “sustainable development,”finding a way to meet our present needs withoutdestroying the ability of future generations to meettheir own needs. In the words of the commission:“Sustainable development requires meeting thebasic needs of all and extending to all the oppor-tunity to fulfill their aspirations for a better life. Aworld in which poverty is endemic will always beprone to ecological and other catastrophes.”

These prophetic words are even more impor-tant today. As the rapid expansion of the economiesof China and India has accelerated the shortage ofnatural resources throughout the world, raising theprices of commodities from oil to iron ore, econom-ic and environmental sustainability have becomecritical to our survival, our prosperity and a peace-ful planet.

Taking Action—A Strategic Alliancebetween the Labor and EnvironmentalMovements

Fifteen years ago we pointed out that unionshave always led the fight for economic justice andhuman rights. We have sought to increase the in-come of all workers, organized and unorganized.We have struggled for better working conditionsand fair treatment on the job. We have worked toensure better pensions for our parents, and a bettereducation for our children.

Frequently, we have fought for safer workingconditions — in other words, for a cleaner envir-onment inside our plants. Workers have a gut un-derstanding of environmental issues — 100,000North Americans die each year from workplacediseases caused by the same chemicals that laterfind their way into our air and water. The environ-ment outside the workplace is only an extension ofthe environment inside.

Today, the greatest threat to our children’sworld is the destruction of their environment. Pro-tecting it is more than good citizenship; it is an es-sential program for unions and their members. Andin the era of globalization, an alliance between thelabor and environmental movements is fundamentalto building a powerful, progressive movement forchange.

The USW and its predecessor unions have hadan environmental program for almost 40 years. We

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held our first conference on air pollution in 1969,more than a year before the first “Earth Day.” Aconference in Denver examined pollution fromsmelters in the western United States in 1973. In1973 the OCAW conducted the first environmentalstrike against the Shell Oil Company. USW District6 held air pollution conferences as early as 1966. A1980 USWA Convention resolution warned of thedangers of global warming, years before it becamea matter of widespread public concern. In 1989, theCanadian Policy Conference adopted a strongpolicy paper on the environment. And from 1992 to1995, the Canadian National office ran an educa-tion program that was delivered at local union andarea council meetings focused on environmentalprotection and energy conservation issues.

In our early years, the USW saw environ-mental protection as a legislativeissue. We provided strong lobbyingsupport for nearly every major en-vironmental bill in the U.S. Con-gress, the Canadian Parliament,state legislatures, and provincialassemblies. In the United States,the USW has been an active mem-ber of the National Clean Air Coal-ition, and was instrumental in thepassage of the 1990 Clean Air Actand earlier legislation. In Canada,the USW participated in theCanadian Coalition on Acid Rain.In turn, environmental groupshelped us achieve many of theright-to-know laws in the United States, andeffective chemical testing regulations in Canada.

Some USW locals have worked hard onenvironmental issues. Local Union 6500, at theInco nickel smelter in Sudbury, Ontario, foughtsulfur dioxide pollution since the local was char-tered in 1961. The local helped force the Ontariogovernment to begin measuring pollution levels inthe town. In coalition with neighboring environ-mental and community groups, Inco steelworkerswon dramatic improvements in pollution control.

Environmental committees were also estab-lished by Local Union 1010, District 31, at InlandSteel in Indiana, and Local Union 480, District 3, atthe Cominco Lead/Zinc smelter in Trail, BritishColumbia. The committees work with environmen-talists from the community to protect both jobs andthe environment.

These locals pointed the way. The environmentwas not just a legislative issue. Protecting our child-ren’s future and our own jobs from the threat ofenvironmental destruction is a job for all levels ofthe union. In recognition of this truth, the unioncreated its new “Health, Safety and Environment”department in 1990.

Throughout the 1990’s our union learned that

one of the keys to winning its struggles against ro-gue global corporations was to build alliances withenvironmental organizations which were also con-cerned about corporate misconduct. These allian-ces were critical to winning our major labor dis-putes at Ravenswood Aluminum, Bridgestone-Firestone, AK Steel, Kaiser Aluminum, and Asarco,to name just a few.

However, some people still say the task ofenvironmental protection is too big for any onelocal, or union, or country. Certainly it is. But thathas never stopped us from fighting for economicjustice or human rights in the past. The biologistRene Dubos coined a phrase that sums it up:“Think globally; act locally.” We should not forgetthe global nature of the problem, but we must notbe paralyzed. In this issue, as in any other, an ac-

tive union can have an impact.In fact, workers are in a key

position in the fight forenvironmental quality. Violationsof pollution regulations can bedifficult for the public to spot.Nor is it possible for thegovernment to monitorcontinuously every potentialpolluter. It is much harder to hideillegal behavior from plantworkers. And through collectivebargaining and the power of theunion, organized workers have anespecially effective tool for for-cing a cleanup.

Some maintain that environmental problemscan be solved through individual actions, liketurning off lights, reusing plastic bags and carpooling to work. Individual efforts are valuableand they should be promoted. They can help cutpollution and decrease the waste of our resourc-es. More important, they can help establish apersonal commitment to protecting theenvironment.

But individual efforts are not enough. Carpooling will not force Detroit to build vehicles thatdo not pump carbon dioxide into the air; cutting ouruse of plastic bags will not lead to the developmentof safer manufacturing processes for plastics;turning off the lights will not get scrubbers built oncoal-fired utility plants or expand the use ofrenewable energy. In fact, individual energy useaccounts for only about 30 percent of totalconsumption.

As union members, we have learned the valueof collective action. We do not tell oppressedworkers to handle it themselves, individually. Weattack the problem with the strength that comesfrom organization. We do promote individual efforts— consumer boycotts are a good example. But wefocus our efforts on organizing, collective bargain-

As unionmembers, wehave learnedthe value ofcollective

action.


A Union Issue?

ing and political action. Protecting our children’sworld and our own jobs will require a coordinatedprogram, involving all levels of the union.

Securing Our Children’s World—A StrategicAlliance against Corporate Globalization.

Historic times demand historic responses.Since our original policy statement was published,the shape of both the labor and environmentalmovements has changed in North America. Thehistoric protections fought for by both movementsare under serious attack from corporate-ledglobalization. We have been forced to defend thevery right of workers to form unions. Landmarklegislation like the Clean Air Act is being consider-ed for repeal by the U.S. Supreme Court.

That is why the United Steelworkers (USW)has proposed joining forces with the environmentalmovement to build a visionary, values-based re-sponse to the anti-environmental and anti-workerpolicies of the Bush Administration that threaten todrive us back to the 1930’s.

We need an energy policy that promotes vision-ary solutions like clean cars and clean energy, notone that rips off consumers; fouls our land, air, andwater; threatens our children’s health; and placesour armed forces at risk to defend an everincreas-ing addiction to foreign oil. We need a fair tradepolicy that benefits low income and working peopleand protects workers’ rights and the environment.And we need to protect workers and their commu-nities from irresponsible corporate practices thatrelease toxic chemicals in our workplaces andneighborhoods, endangering us all.

Most importantly, we need a strategic messageand concrete actions that unite the labor and envir-onmental movements in providing answers to thegreat public policy challenges of our time. Together,we can fight for and win “Good Jobs, A Clean En-vironment, and A Safer World.”

A sound twenty-first century energy policy

can create a new generation of domestic manu-facturing jobs while reducing global warming andair pollution. Hybrid and other clean cars, publictransportation, efficient heating and lighting sys-tems, and clean renewable power plants are thekeys to our energy freedom. Producing them cancreate more than 1.4 million new jobs andstrengthen our economies while simultaneouslymaking us more secure.

A just trade policy for the twenty-first centurycan promote growth and prosperity across allsectors of global society, not just for multinationalcorporations and a few elites, and would embedenforceable labor, environmental, and human rightsstandards in our trade agreements.

An informed twenty-first century policy ontoxic chemicals can protect workers and com-munities from dangerous chemicals by sounding

the alarm on dangers and promoting safer alter-natives.

Our countries are at risk. A century of environ-mental and workers’ rights protections are in dan-ger of being rolled back. We can and must act.

Our Next Steps. As always, the most im-portant actions must take place at the local unionlevel. First, local unions should establish a structurefor dealing with environmental issues. In large lo-cals, an environmental committee should be for-med. In smaller locals, the issue can be handled bythe safety and health committee. Whatever thestructure, the committee should have the supportand interest of the local union officers and the staffrepresentative.

The first job of the local environmental com-mittee must be to provide education to our mem-bers on the critical environmental issues of the daysuch as global warming or air quality and how theydirectly impact our members, their jobs, and theircommunities. In order to adequately arm our envir-onmental committees, the International Union willprovide educational materials for training our mem-bers on environmental issues. We have alreadyfound that both environmental organizations andsome foundations will collaborate with us in thiseffort. Just as we taught the importance of inter-national trade to our members’ jobs and commu-nities, now we must do the same around environ-mental issues.

In the current political climate in the U.S., wemust make labor/environmental alliances a realpolitical force in our communities and in state andlocal government. Our local union political actioncommittees must take up this task. In the last fiveyears Blue/Green Alliances have emerged in morethan a dozen states taking on initiatives rangingfrom Renewable Energy Standards to corporatecampaigns against rogue USW employers like AKSteel, Kaiser Aluminum and ASARCO. Buildingcoalitions to gain strength for progressive causesshould become a priority for our local unions.

The make up of the U.S. Congress illustratesclearly the natural alliance between the labor andenvironmental movements and also the benefits to

In the current political climate inthe U.S., we must make labor/environmental alliances a real

political force in ourcommunities and in state and

local government.

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be gained from exploiting it. A study of 2004 votingrecords of the U.S. House of Representativesshows that the pro-labor and pro-environmentalmembers of Congress (as measured by their AFL-CIO and League of Conservation Voters votingrecords) are virtually identical. One hundred eight-three members of Congress voted for both laborand environmental issues more than 60 percent ofthe time.

Only 11 members of Congress voted for envir-onmental issues more than 60 percent of time with-out also supporting labor. And only 27 membersvoted for labor issues that often without also votingfor environmental issues. In other words, thefriends and enemies of the labor and environmentalmovements are virtually identical.

It is interesting to note that if the labor move-ment succeeded in making these 27 pro-labormembers of Congress pro-environmental and if theenvironmental movement changed the views ofthese 11 pro-environment members on labor issues,then the labor/environmental coalition would havethe support of a majority of Congress, 221 mem-bers. The ten-year domination of anti-labor, anti-environmental forces in the U.S. House of Repre-sentatives would be over. Together, we win;divided, we fail.

Take the example of one right-wing congress-man from Calif., This member was elected tocongress vowing to repeal or gut the EndangeredSpecies Act, the law that helped save the baldeagle from extinction. In addition to having a 3percent voting record on environmental issues, thiscongressman has only a 12 percent lifetime votingrecord on labor issues, including votes in 2004against providing an extension of unemploymentbenefits to laid off workers while voting for legis-lation (HR 4520) that provided $40 billion in ForeignSales Corporation tax breaks to companies thatexported American jobs . This congressman is aperfect example of why the labor and environ-mental movements in the U.S. must work collabor-atively to stop corporate-led globalization frompushing all of us back to the nineteenth century.

In Canada, the value of labor and environ-mental coalitions expresses itself differently. Theright-wing corporate agenda of globalization has notyet taken root to the degree it has in the U.S.Nonetheless, many cherished Canadian values likeits national health care system are under attack.The progress on environmental issues of the 1980’sand early 1990’s has stalled. Federal politics isdominated by a corporate agenda. And corporatetrade deals threaten the security of Canadian jobs.Historically, the USW in Canada has supportedimportant environmental initiatives such as theKyoto Treaty through its support of the New Dem-ocratic Party and Parti Quebecois. Alliance buildingwith the Canadian environmental movement can

help strengthen these political alliances and avoidsplitting the anti-corporate agenda between theNDP and the Green Party. Unity in future federaland provincial elections will be important to turnback the right-wing assault on both labor andenvironmental protections.

In the area of trade reform, the labor andenvironmental coalitions in both countries haveprovided a powerful critique of the failures ofofficial U.S. and Canadian trade policies over thelast 15 years. The USW has had no better ally in itsefforts to stop the North American Free TradeAgreement, Fast Track, Permanent Normalizationof Trade Relations with China, the World TradeOrganization, the International Monetary Fund, theWorld Bank, the Free Trade Area of the Americas,and the Central American Free Trade Agreement,than the environmental movement, led by suchorganizations as the Sierra Club, Natural ResourceDefense Council, U.S. Public Interest ResearchGroup, Friends of the Earth, and the Union of Con-cerned Scientists. Time and again, these organiza-tions have stood with us in opposing these tradeagreements and calling instead for labor and envir-onmental standards that lift up other societies whilesupporting our own protections.

In both countries more work must be done ondefining what are acceptable “Just Transition”programs to create new jobs, training and skills forworkers who are displaced by the changes in oureconomy and environment. If we are to be succes-sful in managing structural changes of this magni-tude, adequate resources must be allocated in tak-ing care of the human needs generated by envir-onmental changes. The 2005 hurricanes illustratedthe depth and complexity of these needs.

Other Local Steps. But there are other act-ions that our local unions should also take. Theenvironment or safety and health committee shouldresearch their company’s environmental record.Are their sources of raw materials threatened?Where does their waste go? What are they dump-ing into the air and water? Are their products harm-ful? Are they in violation of any environmental lawsor regulations? Much of this information is a matterof public record. All of it should be legally disclosedto the union as information needed for collectivebargaining. Any of it could be critical to devising along-term program for protecting jobs.

Armed with information, the local union could,where necessary, work to negotiate a cleanup, or aswitch to safer products, before the company isforced out of business. In 1982, for example, LocalUnion 6887, at the Noranda copper refinery inMontreal, helped the company negotiate a temp-orary variance from new water pollution regula-tions, in return for a commitment to install state-of-the-art controls assuring the plant’s long-term com-pliance. In 1989 Local Union 1066, at the USX

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A Union Issue?


Gary Works, used its political power to force awaste handling company on the plant site to re-duce its inventory of dangerous chlorine gas, and tobegin working with USX on an emergency re-sponse plan.

Most USW contracts give workers the right torefuse abnormally hazardous work. This pro-visionshould be extended to orders that threaten publichealth, or violate environmental regulations.“Whistleblower” language should be negotiated,protecting workers who report suspected environ-mental problems to the union or outside authorities.

Local unions can also join with environmentalgroups on common issues. We need them to sup-

port and understand the concerns of workingpeople. They, in turn, can benefit from our or-ganizational strength and knowledge of the work-place. Our corporate campaign work over the lasttwo decades shows that the labor and envir-onmental movements can develop “CorporateCodes of Conduct” on labor and environmentalissues that change company behavior.

USW local unions at Kaiser Aluminum play-edan important role in convincing the BonnevillePower Administration to adopt such a code dur-ingtheir long labor dispute. The BPA requiredcorporate purchasers of their power to observe allexisting labor and environmental regulations toreceive preferential industrial rates.

Legislative Action

At the level of the International Union, we must continue to work for progressive legislation. Thisincludes laws:

● Improving air and water quality.● Requiring reductions in toxic waste, and restricting the use of toxic chemicals.● Promoting recycling, in ways that protect union jobs.● Protecting “whistleblowers” who report suspected environmental violations, and workers who

refuse to carry out an order that violates environmental laws or endangers the public.● Guaranteeing “Just Transition”—income protection and job retraining for workers displaced

because of environmental problems.● Ensuring that new technology is introduced in a way that is subject to democratic planning,

and protects the interests of working people and their communities.● Banning, or defining as an unfair trade practice, the import of products made abroad under

conditions that do not meet environmental standards.● Prohibiting the dumping of toxic waste from North America in developing countries, and the

export of products or processes that are banned in the exporting country for environmentalreasons. Working to ensure the safe use of all other exports.

● Supporting strong international agreements on greenhouse warming, ozone depletion, andother global issues.

● Giving financial aid and debt relief to developing countries, in order to help them achievesustainable development.

In addition, in the U.S., the union supports the maintenance and expansion of our basicenvironmental protections:

● Continuation of the Endangered Species Act● Protection of the integrity of the National Parks’ system● Increased CAFÉ standards● A continued ban on oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge● Opposition to the “Clear Skies Initiative” of the Bush Administration● Ratification of the Kyoto Treaty● Passage of a Chemical Security Act● Maintenance of the Community Right-to-Know Act● Passage of a national Renewable Energy Standard of 20 percent by 2020● Maintenance of the new source review standards of the 1990 Clean Air ActLastly, in recognition of the importance of this work in the era of globalization, the USW will

charge the IEB Task Force on Environmental Policy to review our work in this area on at least anannual basis. In addition, a committee of our key staff in the U.S. and Canada, assigned to thiswork, will meet regularly to assist in the ongoing implementation of the recommendations of thisreport.


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Conclusion

None of this will be easy. Environmental issuesinvolve difficult technical, economic and politicalquestions. In the era of globalization, we havewitnessed the power of new economic forcesdestroy well-known companies and the jobs andcommunities that they supported. We havewitnessed massive economic dislocation. We havealso come to realize that these same economicforces, if unchecked, can also destroy ourenvironment with even more disastrous economicconsequences than the 2005 hurricanes or the pinebark beetle of western Canada. As daunting as theproblems are, we believe that meeting suchchallenges also holds the promise of a better life.

As trade unionists we are fundamentallyoptimistic in our belief that humankind only setssuch problems for itself as it can solve. The issue is

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not simply our ability to solve environmentalchallenges. The issue is how they will be solvedand to whose benefit.

Economic and environmental sustainability arethe keys to our success, both as a union and ascitizens of our two countries. These must becomethe watchwords of our union. Are our employersembracing these two principles? Are our electedpolitical leaders? If we believe in a future of GoodJobs, A Clean Environment, and A Safer World,then we must act.

An essential part of our moral responsibility asunion leaders is to defend the long-term interests ofworking people. It has been said that we inherit theearth from our parents. But in reality, we borrow itfrom our children. It is our children’s world. Wemust not fail to protect it.

A Union Issue?


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International Executive Board UnanimouslySupports Securing Our Children’s World

On March 1, the members of the International Executive Board of the UnitedSteelworkers (USW) voted unanimously to support the recommendations set forth inthe report, Securing Our Children’s World.

Leo W. GerardInternational President

James D. EnglishInternational Secretary-Treasurer

Thomas M. ConwayInteternational Vice President (Administration)

Fred RedmondInternational Vice President (Human Affairs)

Ken NeumannNational Director for Canada

Richard LaCosseInternational Vice President

James E. PannellAdministrative Vice President

Ron HooverExecutive Vice President (R/PIC)

James H. DunnAssociate Secretary-Treasurer

Lewis PeacockVice President (Organizing)

James K. Phillips, Jr.Vice President at Large

Kenneth TestCo-Director

David McCallDirector, District 1

Gerald P. JohnstonCo-Director, District 1

Jon GeenenDirector, District 2

Stephen HuntDirector, District 3

William PientaDirector, District 4

Gary B. CookCo-Director, District 4

Michel ArsenaultDirector, District 5

Wayne FraserDirector, District 6

Jim RobinsonDirector, District 7

William R. GibbonsCo-Director, District 7

Ernest R. “Billy” ThompsonDirector, District 8

Robert E. SmithCo-Director, District 8

Connie EntrekinDirector, District 9

Donald L. LanghamCo-Director, District 9

Lloyd WaltersCo-Director, District 9

John DeFazioDirector, District 10

Robert BratulichDirector, District 11

Terry L. BondsDirector, District 12

Roger A. HeiserCo-Director, District 12

Gary W. BeeversDirector, District 13

securing our children's world - united...

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