Surprise Coalition: Big Labor For ``Smart Growth''
Neal Peirce
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WASHINGTON--At its convention in Las Vegas, Big Labor--the AFL-CIO--approved a resolution condemning urban sprawl, the abandonment of inner cities and "big box" retailers that suck life out of established downtowns and older suburbs.
What a surprise! Isn't a big chunk of labor the boilermakers and roofers, the bricklayers, carpenters, electrical workers and bridge construction guys who are happy to throw up any structure anywhere, as long as the pay is right? Shouldn't they be dead opposed to "smart growth" ideas?
Not at all, argues Don Turner, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor, chief author of the new AFL-CIO-approved resolution.
"Labor," says Turner, "is an essentially urban institution." Its strongest memberships are in cities and older suburbs. That's where its locals are the most vigorous, where it has the most influence. If cities wither, if urban neighborhoods are abandoned, labor suffers.
By contrast, he argues, "smart growth" aims to make cities more livable, more economically stable. The overlap with organized labor's goals is overwhelming.
Coming to that conclusion well ahead of the crowd, Turner two years ago contacted Frank Beal, leader of Metropolis 2020, a "Chicagoland" regional alliance formed by the region's heavyweight corporations.
Give my union leader members a solid education in "smart growth" agendas, said Turner, and we'll be powerful allies in efforts to curb sprawl, to rein in wasteful highway-building, strengthen mass transit and create more affordable housing.
Beal agreed. Greg LeRoy, chief of Good Jobs First, a labor-backed group aimed at holding publicly subsidized firms accountable for producing quality jobs, was recruited to come from Washington and conduct a briefing for 110 leaders of Chicago area unions at Plumber's Hall.
In a five-hour briefing, scales fell from the eyes of these labor leaders. From his own research and maps prepared by Myron Orfield, a Minnesota state legislator and expert in urban growth, LeRoy could show that sprawl has expanded the Chicago area's land consumption close to five times faster than population growth. A massive outward migration of jobs is scattering work opportunities away from labor members' homes in the city and inner-ring suburbs to outer counties where lightly unionized manufacturing plants and union-hostile big box stores have multiplied.
To make things worse, LeRoy argued, many suburbs lack public transit or reasonably priced housing. Outward job movement, he argued, is cutting city residents off from regional labor markets, increasing dependence on autos, causing longer commute times, increasing traffic congestion and health-imperiling air pollution.
At the same time, the city of Chicago has suffered a disastrous string of closings by hospitals that provided care for families in high-poverty areas. A burgeoning auto culture is costing union transit jobs. Declining economies are triggering budget strains in core areas and older suburbs, leading to neglect of infrastructure and services. Lower tax yields in the city and the older suburbs are, in turn, denying needed revenue to schools, forcing larger classes, lower teacher salaries and pressures for privatization that imperils the jobs of union-member educators.
With the new evidence, Turner soon had a mandate to join Metropolis 2020 and others in fighting sprawl across the Chicago region--and then nationally. The Chicago Federation joined in the remarkable "Metropolis Principles"--a pledge signed by about 100 big-clout local firms to make access to affordable housing and mass transit a significant factor when considering any location decisions in the Chicago region.
And now, with support of labor councils from Cleveland, Seattle, Portland and California's Contra Costa County, Turner has been able to convince national labor leaders that smart growth is a win-win concept for all. Even the skeptical construction unions, many of which first tended to regard smart growth as "No Growth" in sheep's clothing, were won over by the argument that solidarity with low-income urban populations is central to labor's mission. They also heeded Turner's argument that in the long run there are more jobs, more prosperity in rebuilding cities "than plunking down something in a cornfield."
Greg LeRoy argues that the smart growth cause desperately needs organized labor--otherwise it is "doomed to failure" because it will never be more than a white suburban movement that advocates growth limits and open spaces. Unions, he suggests, add a common peoples' constituency tied to very real needs--affordable housing, jobs in schools or public transit or rebuilding downtowns, and retail jobs paying more than bare-bones wages routinely offered by the big-box retailers that have proliferated around the urban fringe.
The argument is intriguing because unions surely are no strangers to organizing, mobilizing, taking on strikes, organizing for election days--a "can do" culture, as LeRoy puts it.
But unions do come with sharp edges and contentiousness. Is the smart growth movement truly ready for them? Stay tuned.
Neal Peirce's e-mail address is nrp@citistates.com.
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