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EMAGAZINE.COM, 4 Nov.2009 – Read a fascinating story about how the “Teamsters and Turtles” alliance was started to protest a meeting of the World Trade Organization. How USW and the Sierra Club in the U.S. founded the National Blue Green Alliance to develop fair trade, healthy workplaces and global warming as key issues.
Perhaps it began in Seattle in 1999, with the epic “Teamsters and Turtles” alliance to protest a meeting of the World Trade Organization. Unions and environmentalists, at the time seen as an unlikely pairing, united against a version of globalization that, they argued, spurs a “race to the bottom,” encouraging corporations to undercut both worker rights and environmental standards. The Seattle protest itself came out of earlier opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and to illegal logging in Indonesia. “All were clearly understood as global, both bad for the environment and bad for workers,” says Leo Gerard, international president of the United Steelworkers. The Steelworkers and the nonprofit conservation group the Sierra Club are the founding partners of the national Blue Green Alliance. Gerard points to fair trade, healthy workplaces and global warming as key shared issues.
Read the Full Article in EMAGAZINE.com
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BLUE-GREEN ALLIANCE
