EcoHearth: Come Home to the Earth

OK, overthrowing a monarchy and fighting for a shorter workweek aren’t in the same league. I’ll let the French keep their claims to a revolutionary spirit, though, even if their modern examples sometimes fall short of the mark. Coming from the United States, where organized collective action is not as deeply ingrained (it’s our old ‘rugged individualist’ ethic), the French protest tradition can be refreshing.

What’s disturbing, however, are protests that cause harm and have nothing to do with the issue at hand. (This is why terrorism disgusts us—innocents are hurt, even though they’re in no way involved with the stated grievance.)

In mid-August, employees striking at a Serta depot near Rouen (Serta is a trucking company facing bankruptcy; Rouen is an industrial city in northwestern France) threatened to dump 8,000 liters (2,100+ gallons) of fuel additives into a tributary of the Seine River unless laid-off staff were promised 15,000 euros ($21,000) extra compensation per worker on top of the legal minimum payment workers are owed here.

Forget that that’s a whole lot of money to demand since they’re probably already receiving a good redundancy package (France isn’t a bad place to be fired).

Poison the Seine River? Willful environmental destruction as a protest strategy because you’re not being paid off? See, that’s where I lose it. I don’t see the connection. Who comes up with this stuff? According to unionist Jean-Pierre Villemin, “this is our only weapon."

What kind of world have we found ourselves in that the only weapon to fight layoffs is polluting the nearby river? (And not a small one at that—the Seine stretches 482 miles and, of course, runs right down the middle of Paris.) Is this bizarre strategy effective?

This seems to be a summer of bizarre strong-arming. The truckers’ environmental blackmail is one example. The current healthcare debate in the US—with its specious claims and the unending coverage of them—is another. Dragging the discussion completely off-topic seems to be the new rule of the game to get what you want. Sadly, this strategy seems to be working in the US. In the French case, thankfully, they’ve reconsidered. (The union withdrew its threat last week).

So the Seine River is safe for now. The ramifications of this story, however, are still worth considering. Environmental, social, and class issues. Even strategic and tactical implications. They’re all wrapped up in these events.

It seems to me that threatening "environmental terrorism" took the focus off whether these workers even had a valid claim. Polluting the Seine wouldn’t have hurt the owners of the failing trucking company in any way; it would have only hurt the marine life, the quality of the water, and all of us who happen to live anywhere close to the toxic dumping ground.

Extreme actions have been on the rise in France recently (the summer of our economic discontent). Disgruntled employees have threatened to blowup factories, and “bossnappings” actually occurred (and became a word).

The pollution threat seems to be just another case of things heating up. The workers might have been following a very unfortunate example from nine years ago, however, in which workers at a Cellatex factory actually did pour sulfuric acid into the nearby stream. Their actions resulted in a redundancy package whereby they were paid 80% of their salary for a year. Outrageous.

Now, I studied sociology. I try to understand the motivations and social forces shaping people’s behaviors rather than dismissing them outright. I care as much about social justice as I care for our planet. I don’t know the situation of the striking employees, but I imagine it’s desperate. Rouen is a depressing, depressed town with few opportunities I can think of. The shift from lifelong careers to constant uncertainty is a much newer phenomenon in France than in the States. And we all know how frightened people have become due to the global economic crisis.

Still, it remains that the union’s use of tactics was ugly, unnecessary and unconnected to their demands. It used the environment as hostage. This sort of manipulation comes from the same tired place of treating everything as a conflict, rather than searching for common ground. The owners of Serta are losing their business, too, after all. Setting everything up as an adversarial relationship—where someone must always lose (and unfortunately in this case, it would have been the river and all the species of fish and plants within it)—just doesn’t seem workable anymore. (Was it ever?)

We are all connected to each other. We are all connected to our environment. The sooner we learn these lessons, the less likely we’ll have to face further dramas of this kind.

One interesting, and—as contradictory as it sounds—positive spin on this story is to see how the environment has actually taken on more value. Would such a threat—polluting a river—have had such a big impact if the river were not viewed as an important resource in and of itself? There would have been no uproar if the public didn’t have a conscience about the environment’s inherent value.

It may seem a twisted victory, but it is not hard to imagine a time not so long ago when an environmental threat such as this would not have worked as a pressure tactic. (Aren’t a lot of companies in the business of polluting the environment anyway? What difference does it make if some unhappy workers add a few more toxins to the mix?) The silver lining is that threatening to pollute the river shocked enough people because we cared about how horrific the very idea was.

The Seine River is not the cleanest of sources, but in recent years the water quality has improved dramatically. Atlantic salmon—and some 30 other species of fish—have now returned after decades of absence. France’s leading research institute, INRA (National Institute for Agricultural Research), in collaboration with CEMAGREF, has been following the Seine’s fish this summer, in order to study the re-colonization of the river. Thankfully the river did not see its waters polluted in protest and can continue to welcome back these fish.

My advice for dealing with both the social- and environmental-justice angles of this drama: fight for your rights, vive la revolution, but don’t kill the fish. Really. Let’s get back on target, focus on the real issue. People are hurting. Systems need fixing. We should talk on that basis and see what solutions we can actually find. For example, let's get the drivers some job training, preferably in a green-collar job, giving them new skills that will contribute to a cleaner planet (unlike their current profession).

And, as begrudgingly as I want to lend any credence to the truckers’ ploy, they at least got us talking about our environment and how precious it is to us.

Additional resources:
Striking French Workers Threaten to Poison River Seine
Social Terrorism Breaks Out in Closure Disputes
Salmon Return to Paris – They Must Be in Seine
French National Institute on Agricultural Research

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