Reflections: On an Environmental Paradox

...Employes in petroleum-based mineral oils suffer an even higher incidence of cancer, sometimes reaching epidemic proportions, and the lung and lymphatic cancer rates among the 1.5 million workers who process inorganic arsenic are as much as six to seven times those of the general male population...

...Given these realities, what can be done to enlist blue-collar workers as allies rather than opponents of the environmental movement...

...Public policies that seek to divert patterns of consumption into ecologically sound channels while leaving established patterns of production and community life intact are doomed to fail...

...A coalition mobilized initially around immediate and specific objectives might thereby expand its objectives as it came to understand its problems and its opposition...

...Obviously, the emergence of such a coalition faces formidable obstacles...

...Pressure on corporate elites in these latter areas could expose the strategies by which they have protected their power...

...Coke workers in steel plants assigned to the ovens for five years or more incur a risk of cancer ten times greater than that of the general population...

...But alternative programs of "environmental management" face even more intractable problems over the long run...

...It cannot as easily plug into the established system of goods and services, and it lacks the political power to establish effective and environmentally sound transportation, recreation, and health systems within the reach of the entire population...

...Asbestos workers are disproportionately afflicted with asbestiosis, which is linked to cancer of the lung, stomach, colon, and rectum...

...They then support the development of extended highway systems and urban air terminals, further drawing public resources away from mass transit...

...Yet, at the same time, the working class suffers from the high concentration of dangerous pollutants in its places of work and residence...

...Once the affluent are committed to their private escapes, they will oppose mass transit systems as well as public parks...

...When a mass transit system is allowed to deteriorate, the affluent can afford to shift to the automobile and the airplane...

...Workers perceive environmental concerns as threats to their livelihood as well as to their status as consumers...

...They will magnify the discontent and resentment of those confined within current forms of work and consumption by asking them to sacrifice their only pleasures without providing any substitutes for what is to be lost...

...Such policies are not only unjust but also unworkable, since they drive blue-collar workers into alliance with corporate interests and thus deprive the ecology movement of a constituency indispensable to its success...

...Clearly they will not respond to an environmental crusade which would reduce or alter their patterns of consumption while leaving intact the conditions in which they must work...

...Yet the proliferation of such private goods often needlessly exacerbates the strain on the environment...

...But an attack by environmentalists and dissident workers on the pollution of the workplace can be mounted immediately, and success at this level could help forge the alliance and create the understanding necessary to the development of a progressive movement...

...An effective environmental movement must, therefore, be concerned with what happens in the workplace, and this concern must extend beyond the simple issue of pollution...

...A broader coalition of workers and environmentalists would come to see the need to bring corporate pricing, hiring, and investment prerogatives under public control if ecologically rational and socially just policies are to be established...

...Similarly, the affluent can find work that is environmentally safe, escape the summer heat through air conditioning, and reside in suburbs where the air and water are at least temporarily less polluted...

...Clearly the immediate prospects for such sweeping changes are not bright...

...Only the acquisition of private consumer goods, which individuals and families can take with them, tends to generate much enthusiasm...

...Thus, black lung victims were denied compensation until the Coal Mine and Safety Act of 1969 was passed...

...Thus the system of inequality, supported by corporate power, encourages the affluent to sustain a national transportation system that is both ecologically irrational and beyond the easy reach of the poor...

...Each of these reforms would increase their tax burdens, divert public resources away from support services geared to their present needs, and reduce managerial autonomy within the corporations they inhabit...

...Corporate elites have been eager to trade wage increases, which are passed on to other sectors of the economy, for passive worker acceptance of the present work environment and the existing range of income inequality...

...this record remains dismal even after passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA) of 1970...

...The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, the research arm of OSHA, has proposed new standards for a group of particularly dangerous substances, including inorganic lead, carbon monoxide, arsenic, and sulphur dioxide, but although about five million workers are exposed to health dangers from these substances, the proposed standards have not yet been adopted...

...Furthermore, the communities in which workers live no longer are stable neighborhoods to which people can develop strong ties...

...William Connolly is a professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts...

...If we were to create a society in which all of us could enjoy roughly similar conditions of living, each of us would be more acutely aware of the community's achievements and failures...

...One out of every six uranium miners will die of lung cancer within ten years...

...That environmental concerns demand profound changes in consumption habits is widely recognized today, but the need for corollary changes in patterns of production and community life has been less widely acknowledged...

...A more egalitarian society would not necessarily establish more rational policies of ecological control, but it would be more likely to do so...

...Is it realistic to propose a program that would tame corporate power, reform work life, and reduce class inequality...

...Work-related illnesses include leukemia, lung and skin cancer, kidney disease, asphyxiation, and heart disease...

...Of the half million synthetic substances introduced into the work environment, threshold limits have been established for only 250...

...Corporate and government elites have displayed little interest in cleaning up the environment inhabited by the blue-collar worker...

...The death rate of coal miners from respiratory diseases is five times higher than that of the general working population...

...Yet the connection becomes clear if we examine the relationship between inequality and community development...

...Any environmental movement that ignores the need for taming corporate power, reforming work life, and reducing inequality will either produce a repressive corporate-labor backlash or confine itself to lobbying for bicycle paths and litter bins...

...They are co-authors of "The Politicized Economy, " to be published by D. C. Heath...

...Michael Best is an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts...

...In present circumstances, workers find no other reason for work than the consumer goods they can purchase with their wages...

...The structure of work life itself, organized solely around material incentives, generates precisely those consumer pressures which must be deflated and diverted if we are to have a production system compatible with the needs of the environment...

...They will resist building codes which minimize the need for air conditioning and regulations which ensure production of durable consumer goods...

...The blue-collar work environment is frequently full of deadly fumes, carcinogenic dust, high noise levels, and intense heat...

...Such a policy agenda will surely drive blue-collar workers into the arms of corporate elites in common opposition to policies that would reduce consumption opportunities of the former and diminish the decision prerogatives of the latter...

...REFLECTIONS On an Environmental Paradox MICHAEL BEST and WILLIAM CONNOLLY A peculiar paradox confronts the environmental movement—a paradox that most environmentalists have, to this point, failed to resolve: While blue-collar workers are prime victims of pollution and environmental destruction, they are often aligned with their employers in resisting attempts to establish ecological integrity...

...The poor, denied the transportation system best geared to their income and needs, must then buy automobiles—they must, somehow, plug into the only transportation system available...

...Because the debilitating effects of poisonous fumes and cancinogenic dust rarely strike at the time of maximum exposure, these elites are normally able to deny or minimize the connection between workplace pollution and worker disease...

...If none of us could afford to indulge ourselves in private escapes which burden others, we would all be more likely to support those public facilities and social services from which most of us could benefit...

...Indeed, the Nader Health Research Group contends (with persuasive supporting evidence) that Richard M. Nixon's campaign strategists used the promise of relaxed OSHA controls to obtain corporate contributions during the 1972 election campaign...

...In such a setting, projects tied to the common benefit of the whole community— community recreation centers, transit systems, collective living units, and the like—lack strong appeal...

...The three million workers employed in primary and fabricated metals, as well as those in stone, Clay, and glass production where concentration of dust is intense, suffer from a high incidence of such irreversible respiratory diseases as silicosis, bysinosis, and emphysema...

...Each of these private escapes, however, first intensifies pressure on the environment and then undermines collective efforts to devise ecologically sound alternatives that would be available to all segments of the population...

...Advocates of such programs would institute penalties for industrial pollution and the use of nonrenewable resources while leaving the established structure of ownership, power, work, income, and social life intact...

...Routinized, repetitive, and mindless work cannot provide basic satisfaction to workers...

...In this way, the system of inequality combines with the system of corporate power and debilitating work to intensify the pace of environmental degradation and to dissipate the political energy required to curtail it...

...work under such conditions can in no way be an end in itself...

...They can afford to replace those shoddy products that strain the waste-absorbing capacities of the environment...

...Clearly the workplace is a focal point of ecological assault...

...Neighborhood instability makes it difficult for people to take pride in their community and advance its welfare...