EDITORIAL — Business, labor have bridges to build — Forging alliances

Glen Clark, premier of British Columbia, has realized something that completely escaped his predecessor, Michael Harcourt — namely that labor and business can work together to fight policies that will harm the economy and dampen job creation.

Clark and the labor movement have sided with the business community to ensure that environmental extremists do not dominate policy-making in the area of resource development. Harcourt frequently bowed to such pressures, a case in point being his decision to include the Windy Craggy copper deposit in a wilderness preserve where no resource development is allowed. A more sensible decision would have been to turn down the mine proposal (assuming it was deficient in certain areas) until such time as the environmental risk could be reduced and mitigated by more advanced techniques and technology.

Good mineral deposits are difficult to find, and the one prospect that makes the grade has to provide sufficient return to help compensate for the expense of testing the other 999 that do not. Governments seem to have trouble understanding this point and believe that reimbursing companies for the dollars spent on an expropriated mineral resource is compensation enough. It does not even come close.

But that aside, the labor movement in British Columbia did not lift a finger to help the mining industry make its case with the government. And that was a shame, because Windy Craggy had the potential to produce high-paying jobs.

Environmentalists have not eased off in their efforts to persuade government to render huge areas of the province off limits to resource developers.

Everyone loves parks, trees and wilderness, but people need jobs too. And small communities that are dependent on resources are often left out of loop on policy-making, while the few people who chain themselves to trees and the like get to call the shots. This had been the case for years, until the labor movement finally woke up and decided that two can play the publicity-seeking game. Of course, one-upmanship is not the answer, but at least labor has started to have its voice heard in matters of public interest.

Meanwhile, south of the border, business interests are teaming up with labor groups to enter the debate on proposals to restrict “greenhouse gas” emissions caused by economic activity. Again, everyone wants a safe and healthy environment, but we can not go back to the Stone Age. And we must not lose sight of the fact that, for all the so-called evils of civilization, human beings are living longer, more productive lives than they did centuries ago.

Earlier this year, the executive council of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) met in Los Angeles to discuss a proposal being examined by the U.S. government that would see developed nations reduce their emissions below 1990 levels, without similar restrictions having to be placed on developing nations, such as China and India. The union leadership argues that the government has not yet completed a thorough economic analysis of the effects of the treaty.

U.S. Vice-President Al Gore attempted to persuade the AFL-CIO to approve his efforts to reach a treaty agreement. But the unions rejected the plea and, to make their position clear, went to Europe to protest what they described as “harsh, arbitrary flat-rate reductions in greenhouse emissions [imposed only on developed nations], which are being proposed and contemplated without regard to their impact on working people.”

The labor movement argues that placing limits on industrial activity solely in developed countries will cause plants to close and be replaced by inefficient plants in lesser developed nations. Their argument is no less valid because it is shared by business.