High Country News asks: “Where
were the environmentalists when Libby, Mont. needed them most?”
(HCN, 2/21/05: Where were the environmentalists when Libby needed
them most?). However, the more interesting question, closer to the
bone, is: “Where were the labor unions?”
As
Montana’s congressman for 18 years, I knew many of the miners
from W.R. Grace’s Libby mining operation: Not one of them was
a member of an environmental organization, but each of them was a
dues-paying member of organized labor. Why weren’t
Libby’s workers and families protected by those union leaders
who were being paid to do so?
The late Don Wilkins, a
former president of the Operating Engineers Local 361 (who
eventually died from asbestosis), began asking questions, beginning
in the 1970s, about the increasing illnesses among his fellow Libby
miners. Wilkins found a receptive ear in labor’s umbrella
organization, the Montana AFL-CIO and its then executive secretary,
Jim Murry. However, their efforts, particularly throughout the
1970s and ’80s, were met with derision by many others within
the state’s union movement.
High-ranking union
officials created a political atmosphere that was almost as toxic
as the asbestos slowly seeping into the lungs of its victims.
Instead of uniting with those organizations whose causes were
common — community, environmental and worker safety groups
— unions joined forces with mining and timber companies that
viewed clean water, air and worker health and safety as a threat to
their bottom line. Through those new alliances, the companies,
rather than the workers, defined the issues, particularly those
affecting working safety.
And throughout the decades from
the ’60s to the ’90s, what of Libby’s workers?
Were they demanding to know why they were attending so many of
their friends’ funerals? Were they insisting that their
unions, the Justice Department and the U.S. Congress confront the
W.R. Grace mining company?
Tragically, no!
Poisons and funerals and economic tragedy would soon engulf them.
However, for three decades most of them believed they were
protecting themselves and their families by protecting their
company.
It was the obligation of the union leaders to
sound a clear and certain alarm. Organized labor could have saved
hundreds of lives and spared Libby, Mont., from its tragic and
unnecessary calamity.
Pat
Williams
Missoula, Montana
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Where were the unions?.
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