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Abstract

Strategies to protect workers' health and the environment outside of the workplace, were, respectively, once based on the notion of control: a series of controls (engineering and administrative) in the workplace and emission controls to protect the public environment. Two parallel changes occurred. The first was a shift from the general principles of control to the notion of a hierarchy of control measures and the second was a recasting of the Hierarchy of Controls into what has been called a Hierarchy of Prevention and Controls. This article cites the Canadian experience to show that this twofold shift is a progressive and constructive move; the United States provides both the sources of the problem and some solutions. “Just Transition” for workers during environmental change was developed in the context of chemical bans and phase-outs. The concept is now much broader. The article argues that certain pollution prevention measures have been construed as an attack on workers' rights; but this problem can be resolved to the benefit of both workers' health and environmental protection. Explanation of the relation of pollution prevention to Just Transition is a part of the solution.

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References

Proctor

N. H.

Hughes

J. P.

, Chemical Hazards of the Workplace, Philadelphia and Toronto, 1978.

Sax

N. Irving

, Dangerous Properties of Industrial Materials, Fifth Edition, Section 1, Page 10, New York, 1979.

Plog

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(ed.), Fundamentals of Industrial Hygiene, Third Edition, pp. 457–458. National Safety Council, 1988 (originally published in 1971). Ironically, a contemporary example is the furthest removed from the grading of control methods in terms of preference: see The Occupational Environment—Its Evaluation, and Control, DiNardi

S. P.

(ed.), Chapter 31 by D. J. Burton, pp. 829–830, American Public Health Association, 1997.

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These issues are discussed in Bennett

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This is from the definition of pollution prevention by the Government of Canada in its 1995 publication Pollution Prevention. A Federal Strategy for Action.

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One of the first publications pointing out the perils of confusing prevention and control was Rossi

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See The Workplace Killer: Occupational Cancer Should Be Called an Epidemic, Outfront, the magazine of the Canadian Labour Congress, 2:3, Fall 1998; also the CLC National Pollution Prevention Strategy, Ottawa, 1998, an advanced version of a strategy reported in New Solutions, 3:3, Spring 1993.

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The Hierarchy of Prevention and Controls was derived from an entirely original idea, Towards A New Hierarchy of Controls, on the part of J. Penney, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Work Environment, University of Massachusetts Lowell.

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See Worker Empowerment in a Changing Economy, Wykle

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The Canadian Labour Congress Policy on Just Transition For Workers During Environmental Change was endorsed by the CLC Executive Council on April 29, 1999.

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See the ICFTU-TUAC Convention Trade Union Statement to the U.N. Climate Change Convention Conference of the Parties (COP4), November 1998.

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Wages

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A Just Transition For Jobs and The Environment, produced by the Public Health Institute and the Labor Institute, New York, p. 81, 1998.

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New Solutions, 1:3, Winter 1991. More clearly, Miller

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S. J.

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Grossman

R. L.

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Prevention and Transition

Abstract

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References