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A Superfund for Workers: Building Bridges between Labor and the Public Interest Community

The central objective of a Superfund for Workers is the following:

No worker who loses his or her job as the result of the effort to clean up the environment, to reduce toxics, or to protect workers' or the public's health and safety should lose substantial income or benefits as a consequence of protecting public health and safety and improving the environment.

The basic concept of the Superfund for Workers is that these displaced workers will be given four years of pay (at 90 per cent) and benefits plus tuition to go to any accredited post-secondary educational institution. And if, at the end of those four years, jobs cannot be found at similar pay to the one lost, a further subsidy will be given to those workers so that they can fill community service jobs with no significant loss of income.

The first step in building a coalition in support of the Superfund for Workers will be to get as many public interest groups as possible to subscribe to this objective by pledging that they will not support bans or phase-outs in toxic-use reduction legislation until that legislation also includes provisions for establishing a fund to protect toxic workers. The environmental community is an obvious target, but since it is now well established that the vast majority of Americans, whether or not they belong to an environmental organization, support the clean-up of our environment, coalition-building should not stop there. Consumer, church, women's, senior citizen, and other constituencies should be enlisted in the cause. So should the higher education community which would reap substantial benefits from the influx of fully-funded students. Even progressive elements in the business community who understand that we have no alternative but to clean up our environment should be enlisted in this cause.

The usual kind of political "logrolling" that goes on in building a coalition of the broadest possible support for the Superfund for Workers will also doubtless occur. Thus, it would be natural to expect trade unions and other worker groups to pledge support for toxic use reduction bills if those bills also contained provisions for a Superfund for Displaced Workers.

While ultimately national legislation will be required to make the Superfund for Workers a pervasive reality throughout the country, other steps can be taken to apply the basic concept and to help establish its feasibility. Already, at the state level, there is discussion about Superfund-type initiatives, and legislation introduced in one or two states incorporates modified versions of the basic concept. Indeed, it may even be possible to introduce the concept as an element in collective bargaining negotiations between unions and industry by incorporating into agreements reached through the collective bargaining process provision for establishing a "transitional fund" for workers displaced through toxic-use reduction measures.

Moderator:

• Ward Morehouse, President, Council on International and Public Affairs, Suite 3C, 777 UN Plaza, New York, NY 10017; (212) 972 - 9877; fax: (212) 972 - 9878, e-mail: cipany@igc.apc.org. Member of Local 8 - 149 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union.

• Tony Mazzocchi, Secretary-Treasurer of OCAW and the originator of the Superfund for Workers concept.

• Andy Jones of the College of the Mainland Center for Labor Studies in Texas City will also participate, along with workers, environmentalists, and others concerned with developing practical proposals for dealing with the so-called environment/jobs trade-off.

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