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

Methodological Appendix

Methodological Appendix Labor and environmental organizations operate in fairly different social contexts. Union halls are welcoming places with staff people generally in place to help out strangers walking in through their doors. Environmental groups, depending on their size, are slightly less organized. Many of the interviews I conducted with environmental activists were conducted in someone’s home or at a local restaurant. These contextual differences provided an interesting backdrop to the common story of learning that the stereotype of the other group was completely incorrect. When my fieldwork took me to coalition meetings or joint activities, the similarities between activists from each movement became immediately evident— suggesting that collaboration could simply begin when relationships were given the opportunity to form. My primary research question focuses on the construction of a joint identity by labor and environmental groups based on a shared concern with health. Given the nature of this question, I rely primarily on qualitative methods for data collection and analysis. Qualitative methods, in the form of interviews, ethnographic observations, and document analyses provide the greatest opportunity for gaining insight into how these collaborative identities are forged and evolve. Data collection began in 2003, although additional interviews from an earlier project involving the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow were collected as early as 2001 and are used to supplement the primary data. 212 Methodological Appendix I began my research with the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, primarily due to its proximity to Brown University. As the AHT is categorized in this book as representative of the formation stage of a blue-green coalition , it is appropriate that my initial foray into the phenomenon of laborenvironmental coalitions began there. In 2004 I began my fieldwork in New Jersey and California, conducting interviews, making observations, and gathering documents from the Work Environment Council and the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition. Initial and follow-up interviews were completed in spring 2006. This appendix reviews the selection process for the case studies, the collection of these data, as well as the research methods, sampling design, and comparative logic utilized in this book. Case Selection To date there has been no systematic study of the prevalence of bluegreen coalitions in the United States. Studies have just begun to assess the degree to which either the labor or environmental organizations that are working together attempt to enter some formal alliance of interests. Electoral coalitions of the two movements are incredibly common, as the Democratic Party is at the base of both movements (Gordon 2004; Obach 2004). Other efforts to represent a united front on legislative proposals are common as well (Gordon 2004; Gottlieb 1993; Obach 2004). International coalitions between labor and environmental movements are starting to become subjects for analysis (Gould, Lewis, and Roberts 2005). Even within this limited body of literature on the subject of blue-green coalitions, many levels of analyses are used to examine how and why coalitions form. To advance our understanding of these bluegreen coalitions, I argue that in-depth analysis of specific coalitions is required. Whereas Obach (2002; 2004a) explores the phenomenon of blue-green relations at the state level and Gordon (2004) at the national level, I believe that focusing on specific examples of coalitions offers the best unit of analysis for the purposes of understanding the social dynamics of linking labor and environmental ideologies. This level of analysis is more in line with Rose’s (2000) examination of local labor-environmental coalitions and Gould, Lewis, and Robert’s (2005) case study model. However, my work departs from these studies by limiting the number of potential bluegreen coalitions by specifying the centrality of health-related issues in the case-study selection process. Methodological Appendix 213 I define a health-centric blue-green coalition as a formal alliance involving labor and environmental organizations resulting in a separate social movement coalition whose stated mission is to improve situations involving occupational and/or environmental health. By occupational health or environmental health, I refer to issues linked to the prevention of disease in human populations. Often this type of health issue is expressed in terms of structural change, such as states or the federal government enacting legislation granting communities and workers the right to know what toxic substances they might be exposed to or legislation to ban certain harmful substances. Where health is not articulated in terms of structural change, there is often a reference to “toxics,” as there...