The social responsibility of labour versus the environmental impact of property capital: The Australian green bans movement

Burgmann, Verity

doi:10.1080/09644010008414525

Cited by 12 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…My intention is not to revisit the details of the green bans, which are already well understood, but rather to take a wider perspective on the campaign and position it in its appropriate historical context. In doing so, the paper reframes our understanding of the extent to which the New Left influenced the conservation campaign carried out by the trade unions, and also emphasises potential opportunities for collaboration with trade unions on environmental justice issues (Burgmann, 2000;Sparrow, 2004). Even so, the existing literature on the campaign (and the period around it) provides useful information essential to constructing a more complete appreciation of the events in question.…”

Section: Green Bans In New South Walesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This article sets out to problematise the traditional conflation of the trade union movement with an Old Left that is only concerned with labour rights, to the exclusion of other, intersectional social justice issues (Barca, 2014;Stevis et al, 2018). The green bans have often been explained as a product of New Left influence on the unions (including in hagiographic work by those at the forefront of the movement) (see Burgmann, 2000Burgmann, , 2008. However, historical evidence suggests a different reality: New South Wales unions were already steeped in a radical tradition of social justice campaigning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Unconventional Labour: Environmental Justice and Working-class Ecology in the New South Wales Green Bans

Bleakley¹

2021

SSJ

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The New South Wales union movement embraced the principles of heritage and conservationism in the 1970s through the imposing of “green bans” – a strategy wherein union members refused to work on construction projects that were a threat to the state’s natural or built environment. Led by radicals like Builders Labourers’ Federation leader Jack Mundey, the green bans were seen in several sectors as a departure from the traditional “Old Left” priorities of securing workers’ wages and conditions. Rather than a hard shift towards radicalism, this article proposes that the green bans were instead reflective of an already existing conservationist tradition in the New South Wales union movement. This reinterpretation is predicated on a content analysis of extant historical material such as contemporaneous news articles, personal memoirs, transcripts of political speeches and archival documents related to the policing of left-wing activism in the 1960s and 1970s. The results show that an existing tradition of engagement with a broad spectrum of social issues in the New South Wales union movement predates the emergence of the New Left, including the commitment to environmental justice principles that underpinned the green bans.

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Section: Green Bans In New South Walesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unconventional Labour: Environmental Justice and Working-class Ecology in the New South Wales Green Bans

Bleakley¹

2021

SSJ

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“…However, the social ecological approach is a distinguishable trend at the global and national levels. The climate strategy devised by the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF) is a good representative of this last trend, but similar proposals have emerged from national unions in countries around the world, such as South Africa (Cosatu 2011), the UK (Neale 2010), Canada (Burrows 2001), Australia (Burgmann 2000;Snell and Fairbrother 2013), the European Union (Coutrot and Gadrey 2012) and the USA (Labor Network for Sustainability-see Uehlein 2010). The ITF (2010: 46-52) offers a radical interpretation of just transition by relating it to the balance of power in society.…”

Section: Just Transition and The Social Ecological Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

Global labour unions and just transition to a green economy

Stevis

Felli

2014

Int Environ Agreements

245

154

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Questions of justice in the transition to a green economy have been raised by various social forces. Very few proposals, however, have been as focused and developed as the “just transition” strategy proposed by global labour unions. Yet, labour unions are remarkably absent from discussions of the transition towards a green economy. This is surprising as labour unions are arguably the largest organizations in the world fighting for basic rights and more just social relations. This paper tries to advance the potential contribution of labour unions in this arena by asking: what is the full scope of “just transition” today and how have labour unions developed and refined it over the years to render the move towards a green economy both environmentally and socially sustainable? The concept of just transition is hotly debated within labour unions and has different interpretations, and hence different strategies. The last section assesses these interpretations by means of a normative framework, which seeks to fuse political economy and political ecology. Empirically, we add to the growing literature on labour environmentalism, as well as transitions more generally. Analytically, our goal is to place the various approaches to a “just transition” within a heuristic framework of environmental justice that is explicit about power relations when demanding justice, two themes central to this special issue

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“…In Australia, the 'green bans' movement showed a number of features which were suggestive of a syndical ecology although the primary union organisation behind the green bans was not a syndicalist organisation [Burgmann, 2000;Burgmann and Burgmann, 1998]. Beginning in the early 1970s in New South Wales, the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) worked to stop the destruction of green spaces, historic districts and working-class communities by refusing to work on those projects.…”

Section: The Emergence Of Green Syndicalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The BLF did all of this against its own economic interests, taking advantage of labourers' newfound economic clout in the midst of a massive development boom which was transforming Sydney and destroying low-income neighbourhoods. Between 1971 and 1975 more than 49 bans halted projects worth more than A$5 billion [Burgmann, 2000]. Forest and island reserves were defended and parks were saved from destruction.…”

Section: The Emergence Of Green Syndicalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red-Green Vision

Shantz¹

2002

Environmental Politics

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Most approaches to Red and Green (labour and environmentalist) alliances have taken Marxian perspectives, to the exclusion of anarchism and libertarian socialism. Recent developments, however, have given voice to a "syndical ecology" or what some within the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) call "green syndicalism". Green syndicalism highlights certain points of similarity between anarcho-syndicalism (revolutionary unionism) and radical ecology. These include, but are by no means limited to, decentralisation, regionalism, direct action, autonomy, pluralism and federation. The article discusses the theoretical and practical implications of syndicalism made green.

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The social responsibility of labour versus the environmental impact of property capital: The Australian green bans movement

Cited by 12 publications

References 3 publications

Unconventional Labour: Environmental Justice and Working-class Ecology in the New South Wales Green Bans

Unconventional Labour: Environmental Justice and Working-class Ecology in the New South Wales Green Bans

Global labour unions and just transition to a green economy

Green Syndicalism: An Alternative Red-Green Vision

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