Do We Really Need To Choose Between Jobs and the Environment?

And I think a second aspect that I found eye-opening in a way and put it like, there in a way, in a form that I've not seen so well documented is how also the communities that live around these industries actually suffer from the noxiousness are also the working class, right? So often enough, the media representation of this conflict of the jobs versus the environment is one of the working class versus some entitled elites that instead are there trying to protect the environment and trying to lose those jobs.

So you have a lot of stories based on a lot of underground research in different sites to show how communities in specific places have dealt with the noxiousness and with the loss of jobs around those polluting industries.

So I'd like you to give some examples, just to give a sense of how the material life of this theoretical problem is actually experienced underground.

Yes, of course.

I build on the work done by a tradition of the environmental justice literature that has presented a lot of evidence, including quantitative data, statistical analysis, to show that the communities located in the vicinity of highly polluting industries are disproportionately composed of the most disadvantaged segments of the working class.

this is not always seen in the public debate because the people living close to these industries are simply treated as citizens which is you know very vague but of course the people that have more money they have the possibility to relocate away from highly toxic sites and therefore this is the explanation of why you have more likelihood to find working class people in the vicinity of these sites, even if these people do not necessarily work in the factories in question, but they might work, for instance, in the low-end service sector.

So this is interesting in a way to see how the community is the domain in which workers experience more directly an interest in Caribbean environmental degradation because we're talking about areas, for instance, with higher than average cancer rates.

So this is not, you know, a tree-hugging preoccupation with some aesthetic conception of nature, but it is really a matter of life and death.

At the same time, the workplaces that are polluting have the workers that have the highest power to address the problem.

But the interest and the will to challenge the problem are not aligned in the sense that these workers, you know, if they're very radical in wanting to curb the pollution of their own factories, they risk ending up in jobs that are worse than the ones they had.

So this is the problem of, you know, how to bring about a dialogue and a convergence when possible at some points between different segments of the working class that are fragmented in relation to these environmental degradation.

A good example that I always use because it's very stark of these divisions within the working class itself is mining in Chile.

So 100 years ago, mining was relatively low skilled compared to today and the cost of transport was high.

So the model was that of the company town, the mining company town.

would build in the remote place where the mineral is to be found, a town to host the workers and their families just next to the mine.

Therefore, the people living close to the mine were the same people, while the male population was the same as that working within the mines, while the female labor was mostly into the productive labor within the mining communities.

So this correspondence between the community and the workplace levels ensured that the community was also used as a focus for workers to organize for workplace

disputes, etc.

Now, if you fast forward 100 years to today, mining is often a very highly technological endeavor, highly automated systems.

The workforce needs to be highly qualified, especially the core workforce.

And you need to study after high school in order to be able to get that type of jobs.

And at the same time, the cost of transport has declined.

Therefore, the hiring process is no longer based on geographical convenience and informal networks, et cetera, but on proficiency in this type of skill attainment.

Therefore, there is the fly-in, fly-out system that is more and more widespread in which, for example, workers would work for 10 days in a row for 12 hours and then have 10 days of rest.

And so they would take an airplane and go back to the city even 3,000 kilometers away where the family lives.

And I think a second aspect that I found eye-opening in a way and put it like, there in a way, in a form that I've not seen so well documented is how also the communities that live around these industries actually suffer from the noxiousness are also the working class, right? So often enough, the media representation of this conflict of the jobs versus the environment is one of the working class versus some entitled elites that instead are there trying to protect the environment and trying to lose those jobs.

So you have a lot of stories based on a lot of underground research in different sites to show how communities in specific places have dealt with the noxiousness and with the loss of jobs around those polluting industries.

So I'd like you to give some examples, just to give a sense of how the material life of this theoretical problem is actually experienced underground.

Yes, of course.

I build on the work done by a tradition of the environmental justice literature that has presented a lot of evidence, including quantitative data, statistical analysis, to show that the communities located in the vicinity of highly polluting industries are disproportionately composed of the most disadvantaged segments of the working class.

this is not always seen in the public debate because the people living close to these industries are simply treated as citizens which is you know very vague but of course the people that have more money they have the possibility to relocate away from highly toxic sites and therefore this is the explanation of why you have more likelihood to find working class people in the vicinity of these sites, even if these people do not necessarily work in the factories in question, but they might work, for instance, in the low-end service sector.

So this is interesting in a way to see how the community is the domain in which workers experience more directly an interest in Caribbean environmental degradation because we're talking about areas, for instance, with higher than average cancer rates.

So this is not, you know, a tree-hugging preoccupation with some aesthetic conception of nature, but it is really a matter of life and death.

At the same time, the workplaces that are polluting have the workers that have the highest power to address the problem.

But the interest and the will to challenge the problem are not aligned in the sense that these workers, you know, if they're very radical in wanting to curb the pollution of their own factories, they risk ending up in jobs that are worse than the ones they had.

So this is the problem of, you know, how to bring about a dialogue and a convergence when possible at some points between different segments of the working class that are fragmented in relation to these environmental degradation.

A good example that I always use because it's very stark of these divisions within the working class itself is mining in Chile.

So 100 years ago, mining was relatively low skilled compared to today and the cost of transport was high.

So the model was that of the company town, the mining company town.

would build in the remote place where the mineral is to be found, a town to host the workers and their families just next to the mine.

Therefore, the people living close to the mine were the same people, while the male population was the same as that working within the mines, while the female labor was mostly into the productive labor within the mining communities.

So this correspondence between the community and the workplace levels ensured that the community was also used as a focus for workers to organize for workplace

disputes, etc.

Now, if you fast forward 100 years to today, mining is often a very highly technological endeavor, highly automated systems.

The workforce needs to be highly qualified, especially the core workforce.

And you need to study after high school in order to be able to get that type of jobs.

And at the same time, the cost of transport has declined.

Therefore, the hiring process is no longer based on geographical convenience and informal networks, et cetera, but on proficiency in this type of skill attainment.

Therefore, there is the fly-in, fly-out system that is more and more widespread in which, for example, workers would work for 10 days in a row for 12 hours and then have 10 days of rest.

And so they would take an airplane and go back to the city even 3,000 kilometers away where the family lives.