25 Years of United Action
New Jersey's statewide blue-green alliance, the Work Environment Council, has
accomplished perhaps more than any of the other partnerships between blues and
greens. -- Professor Brian Mayer, in his book, Blue-Green Coalitions: Fighting for
Safe Workplaces and Healthy Communities (2009)
For 25 years, volunteers, supporters, and staff have made WEC the nation's longest
standing state labor/environmental coalition dedicated to winning safe, secure jobs and a
healthy, sustainable environment.
Leaders of the NJ Industrial Union Council (AFL-CIO) and the NJ Right to Know Coalition,
which won the nation's strongest state chemical right to know law in 1983, formed WEC in
1986. In 1999, WEC became a membership coalition that now includes 70 member organizations. WEC is also the New Jersey affiliate of the national BlueGreen Alliance, a
partnership of 11 unions and four environmental groups.
Working with our partners, WEC has:
- Won the strongest policies in the nation to ensure indoor air quality in our schools
and public workplaces and for safety and security at facilities using high hazard chemicals.
Now we are successfully fighting back against politicians and their Wall Street and corporate
financiers who are attacking our basic workplace and community safeguards.
- Trained thousands of workers and neighbors on their right to know about chemical
dangers, getting an effective OSHA or PEOSH inspection, preventing health care hazards
(such as violence and lifting injuries) and disastrous chemical plant explosions, and ensuring
indoor air quality. We sponsored the nation's first joint labor-environmental workshops to
address climate change and "green chemistry". - Provided campaign and technical consulting assistance to hundreds of unions
and/or community organizations facing serious workplace and environmental hazards, from
asbestos demolition to Zimek Corporation's toxic misting process. - Alerted the public through the media to critical safety and health concerns, such
as childhood exposure to toxic substances and the consequences of chemical accidents.
WEC alerted the Trenton Times to asbestos dangers from an abandoned WR Grace plant,
prompting dozens of articles. This fall, the Newark Star Ledger and Bergen Record featured
four WEC opinion columns on why we must strengthen, not weaken, safeguards. - Issued essential publications on workplace and environmental issues. WEC
factsheets address an array of hazards and strategies to prevent them, from artificial turf to
chemical exposures. Our bimonthly newsletter, WEC@WORK, reaches 2,000+ labor and
public interest leaders statewide. Sixty WEC written columns in the NJ Education
Association Reporter reach 200,000 teachers and school staff every month. - Started or helped support other much-needed organizations, such as the NJ
Environmental Justice Alliance and New Labor, an immigrant workers'center.
Some Public Policy Accomplishments by WEC and Partners
- Won, with NJPIRG, NJ's Pollution Prevention Act (1991). NJ is one of two states in the
nation to track the use of toxic chemicals, as well as emissions. - Won occupational health training provisions in the NJ Workforce Development Act (1992)
and mandatory worker training on chemical hazard identification and security (2006). - Won NJ Public Employees Occupational Safety and Health Act amendments (1984,
1995) and millions of dollars of federal matching funds for the State PEOSH program. - Won Republican support in order to fund the US Chemical Safety and Hazard
Investigation Board established in 1990 (1997). - Won NJ Conscientious Employees Protection Act amendments, which encourage
workers to act to prevent hazards and pollution, without fear of retaliation (1986, 2004). - Won NJ Department of Environmental Protection (NJ DEP) regulations to prevent
"runaway" reactive chemical hazards (2003). - Won Executive Order on Environmental Justice establishing the Environmental Justice
Advisory Council to NJ DEP (2004). - Won, with NJ Environmental Justice Alliance, a state law to reduce diesel emissions from
school buses, garbage trucks, and other public vehicles (2005). - Won, with Communications Workers of America and other public employee unions,
improvements to PEOSH Indoor Air Quality standard, including that management must
repair water intrusion within 48 hours (2007). - Won NJ DEP regulations for using safer chemicals and processing methods. NJ is the
only state with such policies (2005, 2008). - Won NJ DEP Administrative Orders enabling worker and union participation during
inspections of high hazard chemical facilities under the Toxic Catastrophe Prevention Act
and Spill Prevention Act (2005, 2007). - Won, a policy of the US Environmental Protection Agency to fulfill worker and union
inspection participation provisions of the Clean Air Act, Section 112(R), covering agency
inspections at 13,000 high hazard facilities across the US (2011). - Won, with Health Professionals and Allied Employees and other health care unions,
NJ Department of Health rules implementing laws to prevent violence and promote safe
patient lifting in hospitals and nursing homes (2011).
In addition, we have...
- Defeated multiple attacks on New Jersey's 1983 Worker & Community (chemical) Right
to Know Act, the leading precedent for the national Emergency Planning and Community
Right to Know Act and OSHA Hazard Communication Standard. - Defeated attacks on the NJ Open Public Records Act designed to encourage
corporations to hide dangers (2005) and blocked legislation to turn workers, residents, and
reporters into criminals if they monitored toxic releases (2006). - Blocked (to-date) bipartisan legislation (S2486/S1986) that would stop NJ safeguards
from exceeding weak federal standards, unless legislators first approved every detail (2011).