For Immediate Release:
June 7, 2006
Contact:
David Willett, Sierra Club, 202-675-6698
Gary Hubbard, USW, 202-778-4384
Sierra Club, United Steelworkers Announce 'Blue-Green Alliance'
Good Jobs, Clean Environment, Safer World Cited as Uniting Principles
Washington, DC-The United Steelworkers (USW), North America's largest
private sector manufacturing union with 850,000 members, and the Sierra
Club, the nation's largest grassroots environmental organization with
750,000 members, announced today the formation of a strategic alliance to
pursue a joint public policy agenda under the banner of Good Jobs, A Clean
Environment, and A Safer World.
"The Blue/Green Alliance is one of the most important initiatives
undertaken by the environmental movement in decades," said Carl Pope,
Executive Director of the Sierra Club. "We have reached a point in the
development of a global economy where we can either use our planet's
resources for long-term sustainability or to create an ever more dangerous
polarization of wealth and poverty. Our new alliance allows us to address
the great challenge of the global economy in the 21st next century--how to
provide good jobs, a clean environment and a safer world."
"Good jobs and a clean environment are important to American workers--we
cannot have one without the other, said Leo Gerard, International President
of USW. "In fact, secure 21st century jobs are those that will help solve
the problem of global warming with energy efficiency and renewable energy."
A joint resolution establishing the Blue/Green Alliance was signed by
Gerard and Pope, declaring that, "This alliance will focus its resources on
those issues which have the greatest potential to unite the American people
in pursuit of a global economy that is more just and equitable and founded
on principles of environmental and economic sustainability."
Gerard and Pope also announced their intention to launch a "New Vision for
America" tour designed to highlight the economic benefits of dealing with
global warming. The tour will feature events in several cities across the
country whose mayors have embraced the Climate Protection Agreement, a
movement of more than 200 U.S. mayors who have vowed to take action in
support of the Kyoto Treaty on global warming.
Mayor R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis, one of the signers of the Climate
Protection Agreement, said, "This alliance between the Steelworkers and the
Sierra Club is exactly what America needs to help promote positive choices.
We can have stable jobs based on sound environmental principles. I look
forward to welcoming the 'New Vision' tour to Minneapolis."
The USW and the Sierra Club have worked jointly on issues of mutual concern
for many years, including the Clean Air Act, trade reform, and corporate
responsibility. Currently, the two organizations have joint projects in
fifteen states. The new Alliance will build on these existing programs and
focus initially on three key issues-global warming and clean energy, fair
trade, and reducing toxics. The work will begin in four
states-Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Ohio, and Washington with plans to expand
into at least 10 more states in the next two years.
The Alliance will be headquartered in Minneapolis, MN in the USW District
#11 office. The first Executive Director of the Alliance will be David
Foster, former District #11 Director of the USW. The Alliance's Blue/Green
organizers will be housed in USW offices around the country.
The USW also released its new Environmental Policy Statement in conjunction
with the Alliance announcement. Carl Pope called the statement, "the most
important environmental statement to be issued by any trade union in North
America-and indeed would make most environmental groups proud. American
public policy debate is deeply polarized and paralyzed today. By reaching
across the divides of class and geography, the Sierra Club and Steelworkers
are showing that there is another way. "
The document provides North American workers with a strategic vision on how
to fight for both job security and an improved quality of life. North
American workers know that the global economy is not being managed in their
interest.
Leo Gerard concluded, "We believe that the complex problems of a global
society are interrelated and that a coalition such as ours can focus the
country's attention on the positive solutions-whether global warming or
outsourcing, public health or public safety, or workers' rights and
environmental standards."
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Josh Dorner
Associate Press Secretary
Sierra Club
408 C Street NE
Washington, DC 20002
tel 202.675.2384
cel 202.679.7570
fax 202.547.6009
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