Author: Omar Manky
When do workers commit to environmental action? Labro Process and the production of local blue-green alliances in the Peruvian mining industry.
There are two major gaps in the studies about blue-green alliances. On the one hand, they focus predominantly on the global or national scales, and get most of their data from those leaders that support these alliances. In spite of their richness, this research doesn’t say much about the shop floor’s dynamics, or about rank-and-file workers’ involvement. On the other hand, previous studies have focused on the relations between environmental activists and labor leaders, but they have said less about the role played by local people, whose livelihoods are daily affected by contamination, in these alliances.
In this paper, I aim to fill these gaps through a study of the Peruvian mining industry. This is a convenient sector given (a) its strong labor union tradition; (b) the increasing amount of environmental conflicts within it; and (c) the rich, diverse, but understudied links between local communities and workers the unfold around mining operations.
My goal is to analyze the conditions under which workers support or ignore the environmental concerns of local communities. Through the comparison of three cases, ranging from collaboration to ignorance about environmental demands, I argue that it is crucial to understand the production of commitment behind any blue-green alliance. Specifically, I map the initial environmental concerns on labor’s side, the trajectories of the relations, and the tensions that emerge out of any alliance. I analyze these themes through Bourdieu’s concept of habitus, showing that, when combined with literature on labor process, it can be a powerful tool to analyze the foundations of blue-green coalitions.