Fusing Labour & the Environment: the ‘Green Jobs’ Solution
Introducing Green Jobs in Australia
The connection between the economic and ecological is an integral aspect of sociological research and inquiry as ecological issues increasingly impact on state policy, economic relations and electoral politics. It is within this economic and ecological milieu thatthe concept of green jobs has emerged as an important element of the solution to both economic and ecological concerns. According to HSBC Global Research by the 25 February 2009 a total of $US430 billion had been allocated by governments globally to assist low-carbon industries and jobs via economic stimulus packages (2009:2). A majority of this money was allocated to energy efficiency measures(68 per cent) and water conservation (19 per cent), with only 9 per cent allocated to renewable energyinfrastructure. The Obama administration has, for example, committed $US150 billion over ten years to create five million green jobs (Schulz 2009:15). Similar responses to support green jobs and industries have been announced by China, Japan, Germany and the United Kingdom(HSBC Global Research 2009:2). Within Australia the promotion of a green jobs agendais clearly visible in the Australian government’s $2.7 billion home insulation programme, which was announced in February 2009 as part of the government’s economic stimulus response to the global financial crisis. According to the Rudd Government the scheme was designed “[t]o support jobs and set Australia up for a low carbon future” (Rudd 2009). This paper proposes that within any progressive shift towards fusing labour and environmental protection, labour organisations must be central. This will be establishedby outlining some of the theoretical issues underlying the tensions in the relationship between labour and the environment,demonstrating the central role of labour in the transition to an environmentally sustainable future and how current attempts to create green jobs maintain the existing technical and social relations of capitalist production. Second, the paper will critically discuss the fusing of labour and the environment within Australia through an examination of the RuddGovernment’s recent home insulation programme. Third, the paper will survey the Australian labour movement’s response to the challenge of green jobs in Australia. Presentingthe state of contestation within the labour movementover the limitations and potentialof green jobs and tentatively putting forward issues that need to be addressed if labour unions are to take a lead role within future green job strategies.
Defining a Green Job
One of the critical issues surrounding the discussion of green jobs is that there is no agreed understanding of the term or measures to ensure claims of “greenness”. For example, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) defines a green job as one which “reduce[s] the environmental impact of enterprises and economic sectors, ultimately to levels that are [ecologically] sustainable” (2008:2). This definition highlights the notion that the classification of a green job should be centred on whether or not environmental impacts are being reduced to sustainable levels. However, determining what are ultimately sustainable levels is so subjective and vague that “green” maybe applied to a wide range of occupations. This ambiguity is best illustrated by the Australian Workers Union’s (AWU) claim that work in the steel industry should be classified as a green job, because steel is recyclable and is an essential component of renewable energy technologies such as wind turbines (Howes & Leahy 2009:12). A more comprehensive approach to defininga green job is provided by Kate Crowley in Table One, which divides green jobs into three distinct typologies - deep, mid and light green.
Table One. Green Jobs Typology
Deep Green / Mid Green / Light GreenMode
Scope
Nature
Objective
Operation
Aim
Jobs / Proactive
Long Term
Transforming
Redefine Growth
Rejectionist
Ecological Sustainability
Preserving Nature / Integrative
Intermediate Term
Reforming
“Ecologise” Growth
Reinventionist
Ecological Modernity
Greening Industry / Reactive
Short Term
Conforming
Enhance Growth
Accommodationist
Sustainable Development
Remedying EcologicalDecline
Source:(Crowley 1999:1017)
This typology is useful as it provides a framework within which the green credentials of occupations can be evaluated and identified. Using Crowley’s framework, it can be suggested that the AWU’s claim, that work in the steel industry is a green job, is highly contentious, as it scarcely engages any of the fields even within the light green typology. However, the Rudd government’s home insulation programme does fit into the light green category. This is because the policy is reactive, short term, accommodating of economic interests and aimed at remedying or adapting to ecological decline rather than preserving nature. Themid green job category on the other hand focuses on the pragmatic integration of environmental concern into existing industries, for example the greening of the auto industry, whilethe deep green job typology is fundamentally proactive such as the design and manufactureof renewable energy technologies. This green jobs classification system is however problematic, as its broad spectrum allows for the green label to be applied to a range of occupations with vague green credentials, often retrospectively as in the case of roof insulation installation. This typology is also limited, as it does not account for notions of decent work, pay and conditions, which the labour and environment movement argue are central to the success of any transition to green jobs (see for example: ACF & ACTU 2008; UNEP et al. 2008; Van 2008). Defining a green job is clearly complex, and the simple act of classifying a job as green does not ensure ecological benefits, create long term equitable job opportunities or transform existing jobs into environmentally sustainable well paid jobs of the future.
A Marxist Understanding of Labour and the Environment
Rather than trying to develop a concrete understanding of what a green job is, it is perhaps more constructive to briefly examine the labour / environment relationship within the structure of capitalism and to scrutinise how green jobs fit within the dominant social relations. The relationship between labour and the environment is established within the general activity of production. Indeed Marx notes that labour “is ‘first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature’” (1981:283 cited in Foster 2009:32).[1] Capitalism alters this relationship by separating labour from control over the means of production and shifting the role of labour to the production of surplus value for the purpose of appropriation within the production process (Benton 1996:158-60; Harvey 2009:238). Therefore labour’s interaction with nature is prescribed within capitalism by the social relations of production, whereby labour power is employed to appropriate and transform objects of nature into commodities for the purpose of creating surplus value for the capitalist. For instance, the production of fibreglass insulation requires the appropriation of nature in the form of mineral sands, which is mined using productive human labour and is then transformed by human labour in the production process, into a commodity. It is this basic and constant interaction within the operation of capitalist production and value creation that frames the relationship between labour and the environment.
This understanding of the relationship between labour and the environment is of course highly abstract given that the relationship is mediated by a range of factors. Of particular importance is the inter and intra sectoral competition between capitals, which means that labour works for particular companies, in particular industries, in particular regions. This competition between capitals mediates the interests of labour, places labour in competition with itself and contributes to the tension between labour and the environment noted below. Also of particular significance at a concrete levelis the state and state policy, ascapital(s) requires states to establish the rules of the game by which accumulation proceeds. The state therefore provides “the framework within which capitalist relations can exist through such activities as the provision of infrastructure, the regulation of markets, the maintenance of ‘social cohesion’ (Jessop 2002:21) or the correction of ‘market failure’ (Jessop 2002:41)” (Cahill 2005:2). This paper will look at the Rudd Government’s home insulation policy as one such example that graphically illustrates that the form of markets is variable, and hence are a question of political economic relations.
The inseparable labour / nature interaction within the activity of production generates tension between the interests of labour and the environment. This is because the basic competitive nature of capitalist production, in which labour is subordinated, is ecologically unsustainable. MoishePostone notes that the competitive nature of capitalist production creates a ‘treadmill effect’ as capitalist enterprise seeks to maximise profit through increased productivity, which “increases the amount of value produced per unit of [labour] time” (1993:289). This raised level of productivity in turn creates a new socially generalised standard of productivity, which becomes “equal to that yielded by the older general level of productivity” (Postone 1993:289). Postone’s abstract discussion of the ‘treadmill effect’ has been specifically applied to the environment by Allan Schnaiberg to explain thedestructive character of capitalist production(Schnaiberg 1980; Schnaiberg & Gould 2000). Schnaiberg argues that the self-reinforcing growth logical of the treadmill of production is ecologically harmful and unsustainable, as the treadmill requires a continuing increase in the appropriation of finite natural resources(Konak 2008:111). This constant drive for growth also intensifies pollution. An obvious example of this is the increasing level of greenhouse gas emissions in the global atmosphere. Workers seeking to avoid unemployment, are trapped into supporting a strategy of increased production, which creates tension between environmental concerns and workers interests (York, Rosa & Dietz 2003:286). It must be noted that it is not only workers who are tied to the continued operation of the treadmill, but also the state and political elites, who recognise that jobs, economic growth, state spending and electoral success are tied to the expansion of production and consumption (Konak 2008:111; Schnaiberg, Pellow & Weinberg 2002:39). The tension between environmental concerns and workers interests is clearly visible in ‘jobs versus the environment’ conflicts, where workers often seek to oppose environmental measures which are believed to harm production and therefore threaten their economic livelihood (Foster 2002:104-136; Obach 2004:29-30). The ‘jobs versus environment debate’ has been labelled by Eban Goodstein as the“trade-off myth”, given that more jobs are lost in the United States due to natural disasters and company reorganisation then are lost as a result of environmental regulation (1999:46). Current concerns over potential state policy on climate change and the impact that this may have on workers and economic growth is another example of this tension (see for example: Orchison 2009). The notion of a green job therefore presents a convenient solution to this tension by suggesting that protecting and maintaining the natural environment can be integrated into the existing technical and social relations of capitalist production.
Labour and the Greening of Capitalism
The strategy of fusing labour with environmental protectionshould be understood as an aspect of the broader strategy to promote ‘sustainable’ or ‘green’ capitalism as the most appropriate remedy to the current ecological crisis facing modern society. This is because the growth and promotion of green jobs is explicitly linked to the development of green industries, which are being transformed by capital, driven by competitive and political pressures, to be environmentally sensitive. The notion of greening capitalism is closely tied to the sociological theory of ecological modernisation, which “assumes that environmental and economic interests are compatible and that major environmental problems can be solved within the current industrial/economic development trajectory without radical social or political change” (Beder 2006:93). Thus, green capitalism is not a critique of capitalism but a solution to current environmental problems.
Protecting the environment has been transformed into a cutting edge investment and production opportunity, “a new frontier for accumulation” (Foster 2009:139). This accumulation strategy is visible in the two dominant solutions put forward by the proponents of green capitalism, the market and technology (Wallis 2010:35).[2] Examples of these solutions include genetic modification, energy efficiency, clean coal, green consumption, pollution markets and trading schemes and the privatisation of natural resources such as water.[3] Neil Smith suggests that such production and accumulation strategies are altering the social relationship with nature, as “[n]ature is increasingly if selectively replicated as its own marketplace” (2007:33). This transformation of nature is described by Smith as the ‘production of nature’, as ‘first nature’ is increasingly becoming subsumed in ‘second nature’, as capitalism incorporates ‘first nature’ into the social relations of capitalism by attaching the logic of exchange value to nature (2008:72-8).[4] Thus, the notion of the production of nature “is a continuous process in which nature and capital co-constitute one another in temporally andgeographically varied and contingent ways” nature is therefore increasingly understood as internal to capitalism (Castree 2000:28). This is arguably akin to David Harvey’s notion of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ (2003:137-161; 2005:160-165), because current responses to environmental protection expand the accumulation frontier of capital “by incorporating resources, peoples, activities, and lands that hitherto were managed, organized, produced under social relations other than capitalist ones” (Swyngedouw 2007:52).
The current push to combing green jobs with processes of capital accumulation and the broader operations of capitalism has a number of important consequences for both labour and the environment. This is because green jobs help to legitimise capital accumulation through environmental protection by embedding solutions to environmental problems within the current structure and processes of capitalism.[5] This leads to a second major outcome whereby the fusing of labour and the environmentreinforces the exploitation of labour, as solutions to environmental concern become tethered to the dominant social relations of capitalist production. Here the uneven and competitive development of capitalism becomes apparent, as the interest of both green workers and the environment are subordinate to the economic imperative to accumulate. Hence,the potential exploitation of workers involved in green industries isvariable. For example, there is an obvious difference between workers involved in low skilled and low paid industries such as the Rudd Government’shome insulation programme, and trades people such as plumbers or builders who are supplementing their existing skills with ‘new’ green qualifications and being more generously remunerated for their new skills. Fundamentally, the current push to develop green jobs fails to address the rights of labour and capitalisms ecologically destructive drive for growth. The consequences of this failure are highlighted by Harvey in his recent book Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom;
Any project that does not confront the question of who has the power to organize human labor and to what purposes and why is missing the central point. Not to address that point is to condemn ourselves to a peripheral politics that merely seeks to regulate our relations to nature in a way that does not interfere with current practices of capital accumulation on a global scale (Harvey 2009:246-7).
Thus, green jobs and the greening of capitalism fail toquestion the power of capital, the organisation of labour or the production of labour, but reinforce the current social structure and thedestructive treadmill of production. The solution of fusing labour and the environment within the current structure of capitalism clearly brings into question whether or not green jobs canactually lead to a sustainable relationship between labour and the environment.
The Energy Efficient HomesPackage
TheRudd government’s insulation policyprovides a valuable entry point from which green jobs can be scrutinised. The programme aimed to provide free ceiling insulation to approximately 2.7 million uninsulated homes across Australia, stimulating job growth in what Crowley’s typology considers to be a light green job sector and reportedly reducing greenhouse gas emission by 49 million tonnesby 2020, the equivalent of taking over 1 million cars off the road(Rudd 2009). The Insulation Council of Australia and New Zealand claims that prior to the announcement of theRudd governments home insulation programme “there were around 200 companies doing retrofit installation” in Australia (2009:10). The Australian Federal Department of Environment has reported thatas of December 2009 over 6000 insulation installers had registered with the government programme (Australian Government 2009:23).[6] The insulation industry clearlyexperienceda ‘gold rush’expansion; however, this rapid expansion also led to a number of serious issues relating to health and safety standards and the training ofinsulation installers. Sincethe programme commencedon 1 July 2009 there have been four fatal incidents involving insulation installers, issue relating to the electrification of roof cavities and numerous house fires. An appalling example of employer negligence underthis programmewas that of nineteen year old insulation installer Marcus Wilson. Marcus, who had an intellectual disability, was on his first day of work installing insulation in a roof in Sydney. The roof cavityin which Marcus was working wasestimated to be at least sixty degrees. Shortly afterhe came down from the roofthat afternoon Marcus collapsed from heat exhaustion and later died in hospital due to organ failure(Fife-Yeomans, Noone & Campion 2009). Three otherinstallers, including a sixteen year old installing Pink Batts, and a twenty two and twenty five year old installing foil insulation, have alldied as a result of electrocution(Taylor 2010; Uhlmann 2010). Some of these fatal incidents and many of the house fires which occurred in newly insulated homeshave been directly linked with the use of highly conductive foil insulation being incorrectly installed by inexperienced and poorly trained workers. On 9 February 2010 the Minister,suspended the use of foil insulation from the programmeafter the third fatal electrocution of an insulation installer(Taylor 2010). The thermal standard of insulationwhich has been installed in over one million homes has also been questioned by the Polyester Insulation Association of Australia. Tony Zuzul from the Association told a Senate Inquiry on 17 February 2010 that thirty to forty per cent of all insulation installed under the programme may not meet Australian standards; this claim has been strongly rejected by other insulation suppliers(Berkovic & Lunn 2010:6). The government programme has also been lambastedby a number of unions for being poorly organised and for not providing sufficient health and safetytraining controls. For example, the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) President Sharan Burrow,declaredthat the programme “hasnot been up to scratch” and that “from the outset, unions have called for improved safety standards, better training...and a bigger role for qualifiedtradespeople”(ACTU 2010). The environment minister responsible for implementing the programme, Peter Garrett, has been heavily criticised for failing to heed repeatedwarnings about potential dangers, dodgy operatorsand inadequate training(Garrett under pressure over insulation deaths 2010; A Lethal Miscalculation 2010). Eventually, the home insulation programme wascancelled by Minister Garrett on 19 February 2010and replaced with a new insulation initiative called the “Renewable Energy Bonus scheme”(Garrett 2010). The new schemewas due to commence on 1 June 2010 and aimed to insulate 1.9 million homes by 2011. This includedhomesalready insulated under the previous programme,and was a reduction of 800, 000 homes from the original target(Garrett 2010). Peter Garret was also demoted and stripped of all responsibilities relating to the implementation of the Government’s new energy efficiency scheme. However, on the 22 April 2010 the Rudd Government revealed that the controversial home insulation programme would not be revived in any form. The cancelation of the programme was announced after anindependent reportquestioned the environmental benefits of the scheme and suggested that there were likely to be ongoing health and safety problems if the programme was to be reinstated(Hawke 2010). It was also revealed that the Rudd Government would need to spend up to $1 billion carrying out safety audits and repairs on the 1 millionhomes insulated during the life of the insulation programme,as these home maybe exposed to electrical and fire hazards(Berkovic 2010:1; A Lethal Miscalculation 2010).