Green Bans
Organizing and advocacy for social justice causes is hard. We all know that, and those of us who work to support such things often tire of the uphill battles. Even when we are winning, it feels so fragile. But then, every once in a while, you run across a story about how people dealt with something that just amazes you. Here’s one.
I just returned from Australia where I was with a delegation from the Organizer’s Forum, a project of Tides Center. Barbara Bowen has been working with this project for years. They get together groups of organizers – labor and community – and have 2 dialogs each year, one overseas. So this time around, our motley crew from Gamaliel Foundation, ACORN (US & Canada), British Columbia Government Employees Union, SEIU, Amalgamated Transit Union, and a Chicago group called Albany Park Neighborhood Council spend a full week in Sydney and Melbourne meeting with labour (Aussie spelling!) and community groups. Early on, we met with two women – Amanda Tattersall with Unions New South Wales and Verity Burgmann, Chair of Politics, Melbourne University – who briefed us on the history and general state of social movements in Australia in a somewhat dizzying, and brilliant, barrage on our jetlagged brains. It was in this process that we first learned about the remarkable Jack Mundey.
Born in the hot northern stretches of Australia, Mundey arrived in Sydney in the early 50’s, having left school at the age of 19. He soon became a metal worker and then a “builders’ labourer” working on the large scale construction projects in the fast growing city. He also became an ardent unionist. By 1968, this bright energetic unionist had led efforts to get the union involved in both workplace and broader social issues, including the war. Though still a young man, he was elected Secretary (leader) of the New South Wales Builder’s Labourers Federation, the major construction union based in Sydney, the largest city in Australia. By all reports, he broke the mold for union leaders, quite readily taking on issues from gay rights to feminism.
Before Earth Day 1970 put environmental issues on the public agenda in the US, Jack Mundey had developed the idea that labor unions should consider all the aspects of projects on which they worked, that, in the case of the BLF, they should consider whether buildings they were constructing would benefit the entire community and were otherwise environmentally friendly. It was a truly radical idea, and an opportunity to test it arose in 1971.
An area called Kelly’s Bush where the Parramatta River met Sydney Harbour had remained undeveloped open space between a middle class neighborhood (Hunter’s Hill) and an industrial area that had been abandoned for the suburbs in the mid-sixties. While under company control, the community had permission to access the shoreline and they had built a cricket pitch and community center. A developer, A.V. Jennings, purchased the land and proposed a massive development causing an outcry in the community. The local council rejected several designs and proposals and was under massive pressure. This led to about half of the site being purchased as a park by the State government, but increasingly scaled down plans kept appearing. Finally, with the high-rises gone, replaced by 2 dozen townhouses, public pressure ceased. All, that is, but for thirteen women who formed Friends of Kelly’s Bush. To them, all the open space should be public park.
They were active in every respect, approaching everyone from Prince Phillip, the Governor-General, the Premier, and any member of parliament they could access. Finally, they approached this young, very different, labor leader whose members would actually build the project. In classic sixties fashion, they called a community meeting to understand the depth and breadth of sentiment and learned just how strongly the neighbors still felt, even though their advocacy efforts were flagging. What happened next changed the skyline of Sydney forever, and deeply affected the evolution of civil society in Australia. Jack Mundey declared the first Green Ban. No Builders’ Labourers Federation member would work on the project because the union decided the project shouldn’t be built. Period.
The builder, of course, would have none of it. They’d bring in non-union labor and get those 25 townhouses built, union or no union. Fences went up and preparations continued, but then a funny thing happened. The BLF members working on all the other A.V. Jennings projects threatened to strike if Kelly’s Bush was plowed under for townhouses. It didn’t really take Jennings all that long to do the math, and they caved in. Finally, in 1977, the incoming Premier of NSW named Neville Wran proposed purchasing the rest of the site and declaring it a ‘State Recreation Area’ which serves the entire community to this day.
Green Bans continue to be a rarely used tool in the pocket of labor to this day. Dozens were declared in the early 70’s, though the brilliant Mundey was expelled from his union by the national leadership, to great celebration among developers and others. And many even now credit Mundey and his BLF rank and file for having preserved hundreds of historic buildings and a number of neighborhoods including the Rocks, where the city was first settled by the British displacing the many Aboriginal people whose home it had been for centuries.
The national BLF union leaders who drove Mundey and his allies out of the union were eventually convicted of corruption involving developers, though the case was later over-turned. But once sent packing, Mundey and friends never returned to power, and the Green Ban movement faltered. This was a remarkable period when labor groups forged the ability to use their considerable power for larger, non-workplace issues. Had they had a longer period in which to consolidate this ‘new way’ about thinking, organizing, and acting, it is quite possible – even probable – that labor would have developed differently in Australia in ensuing years. And, if successful there, who knows what effect it may have had internationally. Many in the US labor movement are struggling to reach out to community-based organizations to support their work. Blue Green dialogs and alliances are springing up ever since the Battle in Seattle. Apollo Alliance – an explicit green infrastructure strategy backed by both labor and the environmental community – is gaining traction and political recognition, so maybe there is hope that the lessons of the Green Ban movement can once again inform the movement for social justice.
The critical element, it seems to me, was the willingness of labor to take risks of its own rather than simply asking for support of others. In the now decades long period of shrinking union “density,” or percent of the workforce covered by collective bargaining, this may seem daunting to labor organizers. It’s hard enough to recruit members as it is. On the other hand, this could also be the key to a revitalized labor movement and a very different public profile or narrative. Unions seen as not just out for their own collective benefit, but rather committed to the welfare of the broader community, could play a very different role. Sydney’s BLF refused to work on projects they deemed against the broader interests of the community. Let’s try to imagine what that could look like here.
Note: thanks to Wikipedia’s article on Green Bans, and several papers by Verity Burgmann from the University of Melbourne: “Labour and the new social movements: the Australian story” and “a perspective on Sydney’s green ban campaign, 1970?74,” Burgmann, V. Power and Protest 1993.