Far from being our economic and employment salvation, left to its own devices the green economy could deliver the same unhealthy mix of hire-and-fire, poison-and-pain jobs that remain a blight on the reputational landscape of the not-so-green economy. This isn’t paranoia. It’s already happening, and it is happening on a grand scale. Luckily, unions and environmental campaigners are on the case, working for good, green jobs.
If you are one of those employed in the rapidly expanding green jobs sector, don’t assume your green employer is any less likely to exploit and endanger you. This is the message from Laurent Vogel, director of the European TUC’s health and safety research arm, HESA.
In an editorial in the latest issue of the organisation’s Just Transition newsletter, he cites the example of Spanish multinational Gamesa, “one of the finest examples of green capitalism, certified, labelled, and making much of its commitments to the environment, its ‘collaborators’ – in other words its staff – and ‘communities’. The company is posting enviable profits. Is it a success story for a win-win-win scenario?”
The answer, it seems, is “no”. According to Vogel: “On wind farms, upkeep and maintenance are outsourced. For example, Gamesa has hired the company Guascor to repair the blades at its wind farms. This involves injecting resin to seal the cracks, filing them down and then repainting them. Women were recruited from rural areas to do what the company described as ‘rapid and well-paid work’.”
The real story was less rosy. “A few months after having started work, several women were showing symptoms of poisoning: irregular periods, nosebleeds, headaches and so on,” writes Vogel. “Tipped off by the trade unions, the factories inspectorate investigated and discovered that these women were handling extremely dangerous substances and no protective measures whatever had been put in place. Seven women were advised by their doctors not to have children over the next two years because of the risk of birth defects!”
Vogel concludes: “Green jobs do not always involve such dramatic conditions, but private management of environmental protection activities does sacrifice working conditions for the sake of competitiveness. Whether it be health and safety or control over their working conditions, workers in green jobs often find themselves in very precarious conditions.
“The case of the Gamesa women illustrates an important aspect of the conflict between capitalism and nature: dangerous and dehumanising working conditions because of the division of labour and its hierarchical organisation.”
In an article appearing in health and safety magazine Hazards magazine and the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) website "Green Jobs: Safe Jobs" this issue is discussed at some length.
Green jobs—good for the environment, good for the economy. But are green jobs good for workers?
The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and its partners recently launched the Going Green: Safe and Healthy Jobs initiative to make sure that green jobs are good for workers by integrating worker safety and health into "green jobs" and environmental sustainability.
