Labor's disenchantment with nuclear power

...Department of Energy by Goodyear Atomic Corporation...

...But they are easing away from their once almost exclusive commitment to nuclear power...

...Everett was arrested with 600 other anti-nuclear protesters...

...Steelworkers officials, including Alice Peurala, the fiery president of local 65 at United States Steel in Chicago, and Balanoff are often seen at anti-nuclear rallies in the area...

...While working at Long Island Lighting Company's Shoreham nuclear construction site he was frightened by slipshod construction practices...

...For several years, Grossman and his colleagues have worked to convince labor and environmentalists that they are natural allies...

...Nonetheless, he was convicted in a union trial for "willfully harming" the Utility Workers through "collaboration with the SHAD alliance" which "substantially aided SHAD in its effort to close our Indian Point plant...

...Without abandoning support for nuclear development, leaders of the Sheet Metal Workers' and Laborers' international unions now publicly urge rapid expansion of solar development, declaring that it will create thousands of jobs for their members...

...I told him he would be replaced because a shop steward represents the union and we can't have our representative testifying on the quality of a contractor's work," the official who removed him told The New York Times...

...Though pro-nuclear views like Brennan's still command considerable support among labor leaders, they face an intensifying challenge...

...But Kirkland combined those strong words with a declaration that a halt to nuclear development would imperil America's economic future...

...They overwhelm readers with evidence that dollars invested in conservation or solar power create many times more jobs than equal spending for nuclear power...

...They want everyone in this country to go along with their fantasies...

...Also among the conference sponsors were three key building trades internationals: the Carpenters, Electrical Workers (IBEW), and Boilermakers...

...worker...

...Until Three Mile Island, it seemed that EFFE's coalition-building effort was doomed to failure...

...Ostrowski's "crime" was that he asked the anti-nuclear SHAD alliance (Sound/Hudson Against Atomic Development) to help him set up the meeting...

...The plant was closed down last fall...

...The building trades have earned their reputation as labor's staunchest defenders of nuclear power...

...They rallied to the side of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers during a thirty-three-week strike against the Portsmouth, Ohio, uranium enrichment plant operated for the U.S...

...He left the Shoreham job, but returned to demonstrate against the plant...

...Neither the AFL-CIO nor its powerful building trades department are likely to follow such union dissidents as Balanoff or such worried workers as Everett into the anti-nuclear movement...

...Across the country, local and state construction union leaders by the dozens have joined the industry's Committees for Jobs and Energy...

...Thus Kirkland and the building trades unions have declared that they will continue to stand with their enemies in industry against labor's friends in the environmental and anti-nuclear movements...

...From its founding, EFFE urged environmentalists to reach out by supporting labor struggles...

...The environmental movement, charged Searby, "is actually an anti-energy movement designed to compel drastic change in America at the cost of immense suffering for the mass of people...

...The anti-nuclear movement's most vigorous labor supporters are frequently the same progressive leaders and rank-and-file activists who challenge the status quo on other political issues or internal union questions—such leaders as United Steelworkers Chicago-Northern Indiana district director James Balanoff, the highest ranking USWA official allied with the steelworkers' reform movement spearheaded by Edward Sadlowski of Chicago...

...Later, Georgine showed the industry that his early declaration was merely a paper threat...

...Anti-nuclear groups are finding new ways to join their concerns to those of union workers...

...In their thoroughly documented book on Energy, Jobs and the Environment, Grossman and co-worker Gail Daneker marshal an impressive array of government, industry, and independently sponsored research to demolish the myth that nuclear power is good for employment...

...Because it would be in the heart of the nation's biggest steel-producing area, an accident at Bailly could, Balanoff charged, shut off one-fourth of America's steelmaking capacity and disrupt the livelihood of many of his district's 120,000 steelworkers...

...Their support lends credence to the industry's most persuasive argument for construction of nuclear plants: "Atomic power provides jobs...

...Even Robert Georgine, the AFL-CIO Building Trades Council president who once appeared in Edison Electric Institute ads touting nuclear development, briefly flirted with nuclear power's opponents...

...Union officials like Brennan are · among nuclear power's most influential backers...

...When the International Association of Machinists sponsored a similar gathering, fifty unions sent representatives...

...With Balanoff s support, they convinced a USWA district conference to condemn nuclear power as "the most expensive, unreliable, capital-intensive, job-eliminating, dangerous energy source known" and to declare that "safe, clean, economic, inexhaustible energy sources and technologies are available [but] are blocked by the energy monopolies to maximize their profits...

...Why is it, he asked, that "the energy industry persists in its support for efforts to undermine the labor movement...

...Brennan, the New York Building and Construction Trades Council president who served Richard Nixon as Secretary of Labor, was performing in a new role: labor advocate for the nuclear industry...

...Brennan was speaking to 8,000 people at a pro-nuclear demonstration organized in 1979 by the plant's United Steelworkers of America (USWA) local and partly paid for by Rockwell International, the $6 billion-a-year aerospace giant that runs Rocky Flats...

...Environmentalists and union activists in Cleveland and San Francisco have jointly sponsored local conferences on labor's role in the anti-nuclear movement...

...Moreover, even the more conservative sections of labor leadership are backing away from their once intense commitment to nuclear power...

...In Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, the Greater Harrisburg Labor Committee for Safe Energy and Full Employment has put out a call to a rally March 28, to observe the second anniversary of Three Mile Island...

...it is the way of death, disease, and poverty...

...intransigent union-fighting stance, and, in the case of some unions, enlightened self-interest have forced significant shifts in labor positions on nuclear power...

...Ironically, that official was Jack Everett, the father of the anti-nuclear construction Where labor unions and environmentalists meet "Solar won't have a chance unless unions get behind it," says Richard Grossman, head of Environmentalists for Full Employment (EFFE...

...Despite the historic, constructive role of labor in American life and industry's frequent lip-service to labor-management cooperation for ends of interest to business, the energy industry has often been in the vanguard of business assaults on unions and union-supported programs...

...A union business agent ousted Everett from the shop steward post...

...Kirkland angrily reiterated Georgine's plea for an end to corporate anti-unionism...

...Carpenter John Everett was scared into the anti-nuclear movement...

...USWA rank-and-filers have enlisted wholeheartedly in the drive against Bailly, and today are among the key organizers of anti-nuclear action in the area...

...For now, at least, foes of nuclear power must turn for union support to the industrial and service sector unions which have traditionally been identified with labor's political Left...

...They prodded environmental groups to endorse labor reform, the J.P...

...At one such rally, Balanoff declared, "Nuclear power is not the way of the future...

...Job blackmail is central to every industry argument: 'If you don't do what we say, we're going to shut off the energy supply, and you will freeze and starve in the dark.' Frankly, the anti-nuclear movement does not have the credibility or the clout to stand up to job blackmail...

...The AFL-CIO has shifted from a 1977 stance calling nuclear fuel and coal "the ones this nation must rely on in the immediate future" to a mixed approach giving equal status to solar power and other renewable resources, at least on paper...

...Ostrowski insisted that he didn't support SHAD's campaign to close the plant and had acted only to help workers learn about job-related health hazards...

...In a speech to the energy advocacy group, AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland carefully outlined the limits of the labor federation's dispute with the nuclear industry...

...Their participation allows industry front groups to masquerade as broad-based community organizations...

...The shift has been dramatically swift...

...Retaliation came swiftly...

...The labor movement does...

...Since then, new initiatives on both sides have changed the picture dramatically...

...Dialogue between the two movements is becoming much more common...

...Labor's disenchantment with nuclear power The honeymoon may be coming to an end Steve Askin The kooks want to take your jobs away," Peter Brennan warned demonstrators outside the Rocky Flats, Colorado, nuclear weapons factory...

...In October, nearly 1,000 trade unionists gathered in Pittsburgh for the National Conference for Safe Energy and Full Employment...

...Even in the construction unions, such strident opposition to alternative energy is waning...

...The energy industry has often been in the vanguard of business assaults on unions...

...At the Indian Point nuclear power plant north of New York City, members of Utility Workers Local 1-2 voted to suspend shop steward Richard Ostrowski after he arranged for a doctor to speak to workers on the health problems caused by exposure to low-level radiation...

...The shock of Three Mile Island, new information on the job-creating potential of renewable energy sources, the nuclear industry's Steve Askin has written on labor for the National Catholic Reporter and other magazines...

...The younger Everett lost a suit against the Suffolk District Council of Carpenters, charging that his father, acting for the union, violated his free speech rights...

...Since then, the United Mine Workers have reaffirmed and strengthened earlier declarations of opposition to nuclear power...

...Since then, the federation has urged that "every substantial commitment be made toward advancing solar, gasohol, and geothermal technology," with special emphasis on solar because of its "tremendous potential for making a significant contribution to meeting this nation's energy needs...

...Stevens boycott, and, most recently, the labor campaign to block potentially crippling restrictions on the Occupational Safety and Health Administration...

...Angered by industry opposition to labor law reform and by attempts to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act, which guarantees union wages for all workers in Federally funded construction, Georgine wrote to more than three dozen utility chief executives in 1979 warning that he would "recommend a re-evaluation of our energy position" unless companies mended their ways...

...During the strike, Goodyear kept the plant open by substituting managers and . office workers for strikers...

...Though American unions are hardly ready to emulate the French trade unionists who have demonstrated in protest of hazardous plant operations and struck to block the fueling of a shoddily constructed reactor, a growing minority within American organized labor has enlisted in the anti-nuclear movement...

...S.A...

...He reaffirmed building trades support for nuclear power and stunned some of his anti-corporate allies by endorsing a Chicago pro-nuclear "Energy Advocacy Conference" organized by the corporate Right's Heritage Foundation...

...He became a defense witness for one of them, declaring in court that he believed weak welds and improperly poured concrete made the plant so unsafe that it would threaten the lives of Long Islanders if completed and put into operation...

...At the same time, EFFE effectively challenged the supposed link between nuclear power and jobs...

...Despite his disagreements with the industry, Bob has decided to recommit himself to the nuclear industry," one of Georgine's advisers told The Progressive...

...The union, joined by such groups as EFFE and SANE, charged that operation of the plant by untrained personnel endangered the surrounding community, and that mistakes made by strikebreakers during a previous walkout had caused release of uranium hexafluoride into the atmosphere...

...The "kooks" Brennan railed against were the anti-nuclear activists who make Rocky Flats a frequent protest target...

...The unions have sometimes served as conduits for the transmission of industry views to their members, as the International Brotherhood of Carpenters did when it published an article by Robert W. Searby, the head of the New York jobs and energy group, in its national magazine...

...In June of that year, however, the United Auto Workers leadership joined him, as the UAW executive board voted to oppose construction of new nuclear plants so long as any safety questions remain unresolved...

...In Balanoff's district, union and environmentalists were brought together in Northern Indiana Public Service Corporation's decision to build the Bailly nuclear power plant near the ecologically fragile Indiana Dunes, on a site adjacent to a Bethlehem Steel mill with about 8,000 workers...

...Shortly after Three Mile Island, David Livingston, president of the United Auto Workers District 65 and one of the first union leaders to oppose the Vietnam war publicly, called together leaders of more than a dozen unions for a meeting with scientists on the dangers of nuclear power...

...When union members traveled to Washington to demand that the Department of Energy close the plant for the duration of the strike, environmentalists joined them in demonstrations, lobbying, and meetings with Federal officials...

...Members of the rank-and-file caucus in Balanoff's home local at nearby Inland Steel were the first steelworkers to voice public opposition to the plant...

...The elder Everett reversed his story, claiming his son quit...

...As recently as May 1979, The New York Times could accurately report that the International Association of Machinists' maverick president, William Winpisinger, was the only top leader of a major union to endorse a nuclear moratorium...

...His employer, a construction contractor at the Brookhaven National Laboratories, then took away Everett's job...

...Among building trade workers, anti-nuclear activism is rare, though not unheard of...

...In 1977, the labor federation declared that solar and geothermal power "will be neither cheap nor developed overnight...

...And the conventions or executive boards of smaller unions of hospital, chemical, longshore, and wood workers have taken even stronger anti-nuclear positions, in some cases calling for the phase-out of existing atomic plants...

...But the construction worker who speaks against nuclear power is likely to feel the wrath of both union officials and fellow workers...