Environmental Unions: Labor and the Superfund by Craig Slatin, was released this winter.  Published by Baywood Publishing as part of its Work, Health and Environment Series, the book provides a historical analysis of the U.S. Superfund Worker Training Program, a 22 year national worker health education intervention.

The book starts with an exploration of how organized labor came to establish a highly successful health and safety training program for workers engaged in hazardous waste operations and emergency response to hazardous materials incidents.  In response to a fledgling hazardous waste management industry, in 1979, labor unions began to seek federal health and safety protections for workers in that industry and for firefighters who responded to hazardous materials fires. In 1986, those efforts led to a worker health and safety section in an environmental law - the Superfund Amendments and Reauthorization Act of 1986.  The legislation mandated hazardous waste operations and emergency response worker protection regulation and the establishment of a national health and safety training grant program - which became the Worker Education and Training Program (WETP) at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

Environmental Unions provides a history of a key health and safety success labor achieved on the coattails of the environmental movement and in the middle of a rightward shift in American politics. The book explores how the NIEHS Worker Education and Training Program established a national worker training effort across multiple industrial sectors. A case study of the NIEHS effort details the measures taken to build on what was learned from the OSHA New Directions program.  Slatin explores the challenges of building a successful program, conflicts that arose between awardees, and how these were resolved.  Two more case studies present the health and safety training programs of two labor unions in the WETP - the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers (which has since merged into the United Steel Workers Union) and the Laborers' Union. Despite different histories and sectors, we are shown how the political economy of the work environment led to unexpected similarities between the programs.

Slatin's analysis calls for a critical survey of the social and political tasks facing those concerned about worker and community health and environmental protection in order to make a transition toward just and sustainable production.  Based on empirical evidence, the book provides examples that can inform new efforts to create a green economy and make a transition toward sustainable development built on a foundation of public health. 

Environmental Unions presents the story of what essentially was the first national green jobs program - a health and safety training program for workers engaged in work that involves hazardous waste, its remediation, treatment, storage, and disposal, and/or emergency response actions for hazardous materials incidents.  In the mid-1980s and 1990s, cleaning up the hazardous waste crisis was our national emphasis on greening industrial production and the environment.  Now, finally in a period with greater national focus on greening energy production and consumption to prevent the worst potential impacts of global warming, our national attention may be shifted away from greening that involves remediating hazardous waste sites and establishing clean production. Environmental Unions can help the occupational health and safety and labor movements to focus on both aspects of greening work and life on our planet and putting worker health and safety as a central aspect of creating green jobs.

Environmental Unions: Labor and the Superfund can be ordered from the publisher at the following link:

http://baywood.com/books/previewbook.asp?id=978-0-89503-389-5