Newhouse News Service, June 30, 2006, Friday

Copyright 2006 Newhouse News Service
All Rights Reserved
Newhouse News Service

June 30, 2006 Friday 12:51 PM EDT

SECTION: FINANCIAL

HEADLINE: Steelworkers, Sierra Club Forge Unusual Blue/Green Alliance

BYLINE: By ALISON GRANT.
Alison Grant is a reporter for The Plain Dealer of Cleveland. She can be contacted at agrant@plaind.com

BODY:
If you think it was strange to see Teamsters and Turtles marching side-by-side at the 1999 World Trade Organization protests in Seattle, check this out.
The United Steelworkers and the Sierra Club.
The country's biggest manufacturing union and its biggest collection of environmentalists are joining forces to combat what they say is mounting damage from globalization of the economy and global climate change.
The 850,000-member Steelworkers and the 750,000-member Sierra Club say their Blue/Green Alliance will fight for energy independence, fair trade and toxic pollution reduction at U.S. factories.
The alliance used Ohio as the launch pad this week for a tour to unfurl those themes "Good Jobs, a Clean Environment and a Safer World."
Leading the tour is David Foster, a former Steelworker regional director from Minnesota and the alliance's executive director, and Larry Fahn, immediate past president of the Sierra Club.
The Steelworkers and Sierra Club insist the old tossup jobs or the environment is a false choice. While prosperity may once have smelled like dirty smokestacks, they say economic security today depends on strong environmental laws.
"It is both or neither," the union said. "We see little prospect for good jobs in a nation of depleted resources, poisoned water and foul air."
The alliance kicks off at a time when global warming is in the public eye. Al Gore's movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," has put his long crusade against climate change before a national audience. And on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to consider whether the government must regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars.
The mostly blue-collar union and the green activists say hooking up will increase their political influence on candidates and public policy.
"This represents a new level of commitment to organizing at the state and local level, engaging their members to be active in promoting policies on global warming," said scientist Daniel Lashof, who heads the Natural Resources Defense Council's climate center and pushed the two groups to affiliate.
In the 2004 election, many environmentalists supported Ralph Nader, while labor backed John Kerry. The Blue/Green Alliance overrides Democratic infighting with a focus on key policies, not necessarily a party or candidate, said John Russo, coordinator of the Labor Studies Program at Youngstown State University.
Foster, head of the alliance, said people are skeptical of the marriage.
"Everywhere I go, people say `Steelworkers, Sierra Club. Those are polar opposites,"' he said. "But both organizations share common values."
The Steelworkers actually have a long history of attention to the environment, dating back to the 1960s and '70s when they pushed for stricter controls on coke ovens and were early supporters of the Clean Air Act.
But the 1999 protests at the WTO meeting in Seattle highlighted how both unions and Earth Day lovers opposed U.S. trade agreements that they said sped job loss to countries that have weak labor and environmental laws. The Teamsters found themselves marching in the streets with people worried about endangered sea turtles.
"We're finding we have a common foe in the `free trade agenda,"' the Sierra Club's Fahn said.
The Blue/Greens say:
Trade agreements should include enforceable environmental and labor standards, so U.S. companies are not at a disadvantage adhering to stricter rules than places like China.
Clean-energy sources such as wind and solar will reduce reliance on foreign oil, limit greenhouse gases and create U.S. jobs building alternate energy equipment.
Domestic plants such as chemical factories need safeguards against toxic exposure to workers and towns where the effects of pollution fall heaviest.
The Blue/Greens are concentrating first on Ohio, Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Washington, where labor and environmental membership is strong. They are also important battlegrounds in the 2006 mid-term elections.
The Sierra Club and Steelworkers estimate that investing in clean-energy technology would create 65,000 jobs in Ohio and cut $1,300 a year from the average family's energy bill.
They point to Pennsylvania, where the Spanish wind-energy company Gamesa Corp. is investing $84 million to locate its U.S. headquarters in Philadelphia and four wind turbine plants across the state. Gov. Ed Rendell has made energy independence a centerpiece of his administration.
Outside Buffalo, N.Y., a utility has announced that a coal-fired plant considered a major polluter would get a $1.5 billion upgrade to reduce emissions. The work calls for 1,000 temporary construction jobs and 100 permanent new ones.
Lou Jean Fleron, a Cornell University economic development expert who helps labor and management collaborate on such projects, said people used to think that tree-huggers would shut down dirty industries.
"Now the questions that environmentalists and labor unions share have to do with what kind of sustainable growth we're going to have," she said. "Because this mode of having more and more of everything is running into trouble."