Building The
Blue-Green Bridge

By Mike Roselle

I just got off a week-long river float so I am not interested in cooking my food outside, but because it is Labor Day I am interested in the current state of the Labor Movement and beer in Montana so I decided I’d walk down Higgins Avenue to catch up on these two important aspects of our great national holiday. Naturally, I went to the Union Club to check in on the brothers and sisters who are keeping the dream of a workers paradise alive.

Back in the gilded era at the turn of this mighty century, Missoula was a union town. The mill workers, miners, loggers, even the barbers and bartenders were all union members. The Union Club was built in 1887, a year after the establishment of the first Labor Day, in the heyday of the labor movement. It is still unionized today. Employees at the Union Club are well paid and receive good benefits. As a result it is also closed on Labor Day. Duh!

Since the only other Unionized establishment in the downtown area is the new Starbucks on Higgins, I went to Charlie’s Bar. At least here are gathered a few of the hard working and mostly divorced members of the local workforce. Of the fifteen people here on this fine sunny afternoon, only one is a union member, and he is retired. Here in Missoula the labor movement is dwindling, mostly because of the loss of old time labor jobs like mining, logging and the railroading. The railroad jobs that remain are no longer union because Denny Washington busted the unions when he bought the Montana section of the Low Line and created the non-union Montana Rail Link, one of only two railroad lines that cross the Northern Rockies, bringing the wealth of China to Chicago and beyond. And back over the newest section of the ancient Silk Road comes coal and timber to California.

I am going to get right to the point; with the opening of so many great breweries in Missoula over the last two decades, beer is doing well in Montana and in the Nation at large. The Labor Movement, on the other hand, has lost it head. By that I mean it is flat, watery and stale. Their glory days are over.

I once had to join the International Brotherhood of Painters and Paperhangers in order to get a job at the Fort Knox army base near Louisville, Kentucky. Being a dope-smoking longhaired leftist, I naturally thought being in the labor movement meant going to union meetings, organizing strikes, calling everybody brother and discussing the coming dictatorship of the proletariat. But we never had a meeting. I got a magazine twice a year that advertised paint brushes air compressors and that was about it. None of my brothers gave a dam about the union, it was just a way to have job security in an uncertain economy, and they thought the union bosses were no less crooked than the company bosses. For them a union job simply meant union wages, and more importantly, Union Breaks. Not that the Brotherhood does not have a long record of achievement in the labor struggle, it was just that my Local had breathed far too many solvents before the EPA forced the Army to switch to less toxic latex paints.

Recently, the Sierra Club has announced that it has teamed up with the United Steelworkers of America (USWA). This marriage of the interests of labor and environment would have seemed unimaginable a just a decade ago, but since the Blue-Green Alliance was formed in the days leading up to Seattle WTO protests in late November 1999, the two groups have seen their interest converge over a broad range of issues, especially globalization and climate change.

Why is the labor movement getting all environmental on us? Are they reading Al Gore’s new book? Not really. The unions have made it clear that their chief concerns are the many jobs that could be created by the necessary economic transformation that will be required to address climate change. Labor has always courted support from environmentalists when they needed it. Environmentalists have always provided that support in hopes of getting support in return for some of their positions. This has rarely happened. Stewart Brandborg, a former Executive Director of the Wilderness Society and a self-described Socialist made many attempts in the 1960’s and 1970’s to forge alliances with labor only to wind up disappointed when he needed support for Wilderness, getting rid of ORV’s on public lands, and protecting the Endangered Species Act. Historically, the Blue-Green Alliance was a one-way street. Even today the Teamsters support the Bush administration’s drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Will the new Blue-Green alliance be any different from the old one? Over the last two decades, unions have worked with environmental groups on a number of issues, particularly when they are issues that affect the health of their workers. Still, I would not so easily succumb to all the rosy new rhetoric from the union bosses about their newfound concern for the health of our Planet because the Steelworkers want something real bad, and that is to get rid of the anti-labor Republicans now holding office. As enemies of their enemy, we are now their friends.

Unions are not the only great American institutions taking it on the chin. Membership in Lodges and other civic groups are also down. This is disturbing, because like union halls, these Lodges often had good bars. While living in Wyoming in the mid-seventies and operating my own construction business, I once attempted to join the Elks Lodge. I was blackballed, which means an established member vetoed my application. I sincerely believe to this day that I was blackballed because I was an environmentalist, and therefore an anti-business radical who didn’t believe in God, and they seemed to know the only reason I wanted to join was because they had the county’s only bowling alley and kept the bar open all night. They were right.

No social institution can long endure if it doesn’t provide a tangible advantage to its members. Being an Elk meant much more than just having your own bar that never closed, you could meet local merchants make deals and even hang out with off duty cops. Somehow it was not being an Elk that was that was a problem. Elks had a distinct advantage over non-Elks, especially if you wanted to go bowling at 1 a.m.

Today the Fraternal Orders of Elks, the Lions Club, the Moose Lodge, the Odd fellows, the Masons, and many other organizations, which for a century were once a major part of the civic landscape, are slowly fading away as membership sharply declines. The Elks, whose average member is 65, have lost 600,000 members since 1980 to old age, death and just plain apathy. Overall, the Elks are still losing about 19,000 members a year to decline and age. Other groups are experiencing similar declines.

There once was a time when belonging to a union or one of these other organizations was an important way to develop relationships and contacts that could benefit a member’s social and economic status. Not only did the groups provide workers with opportunities to cultivate business connections, but also they appealed to those who found satisfaction in exotic rituals. How else can you explain the shiny jackets, funny hats and secret handshakes? The lodges provided its members with a kind of religious experience and a masculine 'family' vastly different from anything experienced at home or at work.

The charitable work done by these organizations was an important part of the experience. Since 1878, the Elks have given away more than $3.5 billion to charitable, welfare, educational and veterans programs. They award an estimated $3.3 million in college scholarships a year. Before the New Deal created a wider social net, community groups such as the Elks provided medical care, homes for orphans, education and other social benefits now provided by government. In the first half of the century, immigrants relied on fraternal orders to learn English, find jobs and become more Americanized. In poor neighborhoods, the working classes used the groups as the center of civic life.

The social functions of the lodge were not limited to performing charitable work and masking business connections. These groups were also societies that celebrated risk-taking, adventure, variety, pleasure, drinking, and other manly pursuits like hunting and fishing. These functions were not provided by the workplace or within the established mainstream protestant religions, and because these things were so important, the bonds formed at the lodge were stronger than among worshipers at the same church or workers at the same shop.

Of course the presence of so many women in the workforce has changed attitudes about male-dominated organizations, and the lack of success in recruiting more women has presented a challenge. The real benefits for women in being an Elk must not be very significant.  Another reason for the current decline in memberships is new technology that allows people more meaningful ways to participate in their community. Automobiles, phones, television and computers have replaced the need for men to meet in a local tavern to make deals and share the news of the day.

Good family men are not supposed to hang out in bars no matter haw many light bulbs they sell or how much money they raise for disadvantaged children. They must now drive their children to soccer games and go to PTA meetings. Slowly but surely, the wood-paneled beer halls of the Elks, Masons and Moose, many designed to resemble the traditional German hunting lodges, are going dark. Nature abhors a vacuum so there is no doubt that today other groups, associations and societies are springing up to take their place. The problem as I see it is that none of them have bars or after hours bowling.

But the real story in all this bad news is that the labor movement and the Fraternal Orders are shrinking while the environmental movement is growing. It is getting more and more difficult to win elections without the support of environmental organizations like the Sierra Club. More Americans are members of environmental groups today than are members of labor unions, and that gap is widening, even though the labor movement is now growing at a modest rate. Steelworkers are no doubt just as concerned about getting their share of the new energy economy as they are about melting glaciers and rising sea levels.

Both the Sierra Club and the Steelworkers have about three-quarters of a million members each. A recent survey done at the University of Oregon found 15 percent of U.S. consumers were members of at least one environmental organization. The percentage of union members in the total workforce has declined sharply since it last peaked at 35 percent in the 1940’s, to about 12.5 percent today. While there are more people in unions today then in the 40’s, there are a lower percentage of American’s who belong to one, and even when they do, it is not an indicator they are in anyway active in politics or their communities.

Although this cannot be good news for organized labor anymore that it is for the Elks, it would be a mistake to equate this sagging recruitment to a movement that is in danger of becoming obsolete. Much of the decline in union membership is due the disappearance of union jobs in manufacturing, and other changes in the economy, and union membership is growing rapidly in the ever-expanding service industry.  In many areas of the U.S., and in many areas of the economy, labor is still a powerful political force, and support from the big unions is still critical to winning local elections.

However, something bigger may be going on here, and I hope that this recent move by the Steelworkers is more than political opportunism and truly represents the union bending to pressure from their rank and file to take environmental issues more seriously. In the past, the Steelworkers had only sent only a few low-level representatives to coalition meetings. An office was set up for the Alliance for Jobs and a Sustainable Environment in San Francisco, but was not adequately funded or staffed. A real alliance of Unions and environmentalists will need to have a robust campaign to mobilize its membership during the election and that is what I expect we are going to see this November. The question is, when posed with a choice between an environmental candidate who stresses making hard choices to deal with climate change and one that stresses jobs and property rights over more government regulations, how will the rank and file vote?

To get to the answer of where this new alliance will likely lead us we must first look at why some people are members of a union, why some are members of environmental groups, and why some are members of both. People belong to unions to realize the hard-won benefits of collective bargaining. They are rightfully proud of the role their movement has played in gaining rights for workers around the world. They are aware of the great sacrifices that their predecessors made in the struggle for release from the tyranny of the iron boot of a laisser-faire economic system that had enslaved many workers in a Dickinsonian nightmare.

Mostly, though, people join unions because the can, or because they have to, and because it gives them job security. If the Unions couldn’t deliver on those most basic needs of the rank and file, they’d soon be out of business. Concern for their impact on the environment was never a core value. If Unions want to be taken serious about climate change, then they will have to demonstrate that they care about more than just the jobs that await them in the new energy economy. Unfortunately, the 1.25 million workers in the petroleum industry will cancel out the 850,000 votes of the Steelworkers, even if the Steelworkers vote in a block, which they won’t. The Teamsters, which support drilling in the Arctic Refuge, hope to pick up 25,000 jobs from oil field development on Alaska’s coastal plain.

People join environmental groups for very different reasons than they do labor unions or fraternal organizations. There are no job benefits derived from membership, and if you work for an environmental group, you are probably not going to receive the benefits that a union worker receives. No environmental organization in the U.S. owns a bar, much less a bowling alley. If you live in a rural, resource dependent region like the coalfields or in timber country, joining an environmental organization could cause you to lose friends and even alienate your own family. It could get you branded as a terrorist, kicked off a jury, or hurt your chances of job promotion. Yet no one would be joining an environmental group if there weren’t any tangible rewards. So what are the functions that environmental groups serve, what are the benefits derived from membership?

As far as I can tell, the most important benefit is knowing that you are at least trying to do the right thing. Whether you send a check to a large group or show up to meetings in your community, the only thing you get out of it is the feeling that you are fighting the good fight. Another great benefit is the people who you work with. Fighting alongside so many dedicated and talented people creates a sense of community that rivals that of a church congregation or local union. This is critical, because as I have mentioned, in many places coming out as an environmental activist can have adverse impacts on your social life, especially if you attempt to organize your friends and family.

Working in an environmental organization is ultimately about coming together in the common defense of the community, more like the working with the volunteer fire department or search and rescue teams than drinking with the Elks or Masons. In both groups camaraderie is forged by working together on a common goal, the difference is that environmentalists are more likely to see themselves as putting out fires and rescuing people rather than just doing good works. For environmentalists, success is not measured by how much money you raise for cancer research, but whether you succeeded in winning a campaign. It is a form of ritualized warfare, good against evil, complete with all the risks and rewards.

Union membership in the U.S. is declining because it is less relevant to core function of getting and keeping a decent job. The environmental movement is growing because it gives meaning and purpose to life. It fulfills a valuable social function now being vacated by unions and lodges. The environmental movement also seems more about getting, and keeping friends. Studies have found that some types of organizations, like environmental, human rights, and peace groups tended to be the more connected to their community and to each other then trade unions, religious groups and sports and recreation groups. Still other studies have shown that people who are involved in these organizations live longer, happier lives.

While most Americans probably think of a Sierra Clubber, Greenpeacer or Earth Firster as the most common examples of an environmentalist, the reality is far more complex than that. In every city, and almost every town in America there are a wide variety of environmental organizations doing everything from restoring wetlands to buying open space or fighting coal development. Many of these people are members of more than one group and most of them are also involved in local politics.

Something is striking in all of this data. Environmental groups have been around for little over a hundred years and even though they were never large, they have played an important role in setting government policy. This was due to the fact that in years past, conservationists were largely an elite group of wealthy and well-educated citizens. They had access that some of today’s corporate lobbyists would envy. It wasn’t until the first Earth Day that environmentalism went mainstream. In the ensuing years it has outpaced the labor movement as both a political pressure group and a political community. This growth has not come at the expense of the labor movement nor is it now seen as a threat to the labor movement by the current leadership. This is a seismic shift from the antagonistic and asymmetrical days of the recent past.

In the modern world, countries are now graded on their adherences to the international principles of human rights and on weather or not they have a robust environmental movement. By the norms of today, along with labor organizations, a functioning environmental movement is universally recognized as indispensable to a thriving democracy. Conversely, totalitarian governments will move quickly to squash unions and environmental groups in the quest for total control over the people. And more than any other movement in the history of the world, the environmental movement is international, with unsurpassed global cooperation by governments and Non Governmental Organization alike.

The greatest challenge of our time is forging a citizenry that can effectively wield the tools of modern democracy. In the 21st Century, participation in the environmental movement has become the highest form of civic engagement. Environmentalists are willing to pay higher taxes if they feel they are going to receive better health care, a healthier environment and better education for their children. They want more oversight for the multi-national corporations, and to get corporate money out of politics. These are positions we share with the labor movement. Union membership and belonging to environmental organizations are not mutually exclusive. It is great that the unions are joining into the good fight. It seems they should now also join an environmental organization. If belonging to an environmental, human rights or peace group can help integrate union members in their community and help them live longer happier lives, then this will be good for the labor movement, and it will be good for our democracy.