Labor unions have been criticized for focusing on jobs without considering environmental consequences, with some unions supporting controversial projects like the Dakota Access Pipeline, and others opposing bans on fracking. Meanwhile, environmental groups are accused of being divorced from working-class realities, sometimes neglecting lost employment and wages related to the energy transition. The urgency of cutting emissions and phasing out fossil industries to mitigate climate change has brought the seemingly contentious relationship between labor and environment into sharp focus.
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“Corporate America has painted everyone into a classic dilemma,” said Anthony Mazzochi in 1977, when he was the legislative director for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union. “Now it’s jobs versus the environment. The worker has a choice between his livelihood and dying of cancer.”
I’ve seen this apparent contradiction since I was young. Growing up in a working-class area in Mumbai, India, I felt alienated, like many in my community, by mainstream environmental and climate advocacy, despite studying environmental sciences and facing harmful exposure to pollution in my neighborhood. Upper- and middle-class environmental activists’ assertions that we face “existential threats” rang hollow, as their claims often overlooked the day-to-day struggles of working-class people to maintain their existence in a society where we have to earn a living.
This experience informed my dissertation research, where I explored the social and economic underpinnings of environmental injustices in India. I showed that both caste and class need to be accounted for and that focusing on labor relations can help us understand how social, economic and environmental inequalities are perpetuated.
My research and recent engagement with the labor movement have made it clear to me that the tale of “jobs versus the environment” does not capture the full story. In reality, the exploitation of workers and the extraction of natural resources are at the core of the economic system that has created existential threats to humanity. Throughout history, we’ve seen glimpses of what can be achieved when labor organizing and environmental justice activism work together, and this kind of union is our only path to a livable future.
