Environment

Our Union’s Special Role

Corporate priorities are responsible for the degradation of our environment. Unifor, as a major industrial and transportation union, needs to be heard on the environment. As a social union, we are committed to finding just solutions. Emissions of noxious pollutants from cars and trucks – hydrocarbons, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxide and sulphur oxide – have helped to create unhealthy cities, acid rain, the greenhouse effect and the depletion of the ozone layer. Unifor is committed to helping develop transportation policies that are environmentally sound, yet will not lead to the destruction of the transportation industry. We support high emission control standards to limit pollutants emitted by automobiles. By taking a stand for a cleaner environment through tougher controls on our employers, we reject the blackmail of choosing job security over the environment.

The Right to Refuse to Pollute

Workers’ health is not for sale nor is the health of our world and our children’s world. Our fight for a healthy and safe environment is an extension of our long-standing struggle for a safe and healthy workplace. Unifor health and safety and environmental committees know that hazards are not confined to the workplace. The chemicals in our water supply and high rates of cancer and birth defects near some industrial sites, are examples of the clear links between the environment in the workplace and the outside community. Unifor health and safety and environmental committees will mount a ‘greenwatch’ to ensure that the environment outside their workplace is not damaged. As workers we need to have the right to refuse to pollute! Unifor will fight for ‘whistle blower’ legislation to protect employees who report the crimes of their employers.

Working with Allies

We will continue and extend our work with local environmental activists and organizations. Most green activists understand that workers cannot be expected to pay the penalty, through the loss of their jobs, for decades of corporate environmental neglect.

Local union environmental committees and health and safety representatives are the Unifor emissaries to the green community, province and country. Our union will continue to provide our voice for change within the house of labour provincially and federally.

Education

The corporate community and their government friends have been fast to capitalize on sincere public concern over the environment. The focus of blame quickly shifted to the responsibility of the individual citizen. While ‘blue box’ solutions can play a role, the real issue is to get to the source of the problem and work towards a global approach to environmental cleanup. Formation of committees at the local level, the development of Unifor environmental materials, and the utilization of our Unifor Education programs and conferences will all promote worker awareness. Just as health and safety activists have gained the necessary skills and expertise to combat hazards in the workplace, so too worker environmental activists can become leaders in salvaging and restoring our community and world environments.

For Unifor members, the battle for a healthier environment is being fought on many fronts; in the workplace, at the bargaining table, in the community and through political activism. The interests of the union and the environmental movements largely coincide and we must work together at each stage on the four R’s of the future: Reduce, Reuse, Recover, Recycle

Members

RICHARD LABONTE
Chairperson
[email protected]
1 (519) 890-9809

The Committee