Blue-Green Coalitions: Fighting for Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities

5. Finding the Connections

5 Finding the Connections Defending one’s health and the health of one’s family is a powerful motivator for collective action. It drives parents to shield their children from potential harm and community groups to organize to oppose the siting of hazardous waste in their backyards. Though some workers may be willing to accept certain levels of risk in exchange for higher compensation for their labor, many industrial labor unions have made health and safety a priority on a par with wages and benefits. The three coalitions examined in the previous chapters each found some way to make health a common ground between workers and environmentalists in order to accomplish what neither group could on its own. In this chapter I examine the ability of health-based interests to bring together diverse constituencies and create enduring blue-green coalitions. Health acts as a master frame that provides leaders of blue-green coalitions with a common language that can be used to engage labor and environmental organizations in a discussion about developing a common agenda. In order to understand the significance of health-based blue-green coalitions, I contrast and compare the three case studies and explore how health is used to overcome ideological differences and past stereotypes regarding the relationships between labor and environmental organizations. Though the three blue-green coalitions operate in somewhat similar political and structural contexts,there are significant differences that affect both the process of coalition formation and the development of additional Finding the Connections 165 campaigns. In particular, the context of political opportunity structures is unique to each coalition. There are differences in the various types of organizations that are potential participants in the coalition.And there are differing coalition tactics. In addition, there are also significant differences in the level of union power and the type of industrial sector challenged by the coalitions. These dissimilarities suggest how political context and organizational resources enable and constrain both the formation of bluegreen coalitions and their potential for political success. Despite these differences, a similar pattern emerges in how each coalition attempted to construct an identity that resonated with the individual partner organizations . Each coalition pursued a similar framing strategy to promote their agendas, building on the primacy of health in motivating individuals to act and organizations to partner. Constraints on Coalition Formation Though health can act as a powerful motivator, its utility as one is often limited by constraints on the actions of both labor and environmental organizations. Both political and economic factors can limit the ability of organizations to realize and act on the common ground that health provides. Political opportunities, organizational structures, and coalition tactics all help explain variations in the formation and trajectory of the blue-green coalitions examined here. The previous three chapters have provided numerous examples of the contextual differences in the political and organizing environment in which the coalitions developed. Despite these differences, however, the coalitions developed very similar organizing strategies in their approach to bridging the divide between the labor and environmental movements. First, it is important to examine the contextual differences with specific attention to the effect of political opportunities on the formation and political success of the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, the Work Environment Council, and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. The political environment in which each of the coalitions operates is influenced by variations in the state structures, the presence of political allies, and the presence of political opponents. Though the coalitions operate in relatively similar political environments and have benefited from socially minded political regimes in power at key moments, there are important differences in the configuration of political opportunities that help explain how the coalitions developed and why some campaigns 166 Blue-Green Coalitions were more successful than others. McAdam (1996) defines the “open” or “closed” nature of political opportunities as the degree of access to which groups have to sources of political power and influence and the propensity of those sources to respond favorably. In the context of the blue-green coalitions, political power is largely defined in terms of an ability to influence regulatory and legislative outcomes. The relative “openness” of political opportunity structures available to the three coalitions varies along a spectrum, with the WEC enjoying the greatest degree of openness, the AHT a more moderate degree, and the SVTC furthest toward a closed political...