Postwar cooperation between U.S. labor unions and environmentalists--the long version

What is it about?

This is a long, extended, never published version of my published article, "Working for the Environment" (1998). It includes a good deal of additional evidence of labor union/environmentalist cooperation from the late 1940s through the 1970s, especially by relatively environmentally aware and progressive labor unions such as the United Autoworkers (UAW), the United Steelworkers (USWA), and the International Association of Machinists (IAM), along with examples of early labor union anti-environmentalism from less progressive unions in more threatened industries such as the United Mine Workers (UMW), who saw their main product, coal, being replaced by oil and natural gas during the postwar decades.

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Why is it important?

See the discussion associated with the article, "Working for the Environment." This research provides evidence challenging the long-standing (since the 1980s) assumption that organized labor and environmentalists necessarily must be enemies by showing that throughout most of the early postwar period up into the early 1970s, labor unions were, overall, more environmentally concerned and progressive than the average American citizen.