The role of the environment rep

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The role of the environment rep - a personal view by Ritchy Leitch, PCS rep at Benton Park View, HM Revenue and Customs, Newcastle

Unless governments around the world begin to take global warming seriously, everything else will soon be irrelevant. PCS members, their union and their employers, all have vital roles to play. Benton Park View rep Ritchy Leitch reports.

Anything new can take some getting used to. A new role for union reps, dealing with the environmental agenda, is certainly no exception. What follows are reflections on the experiences of one branch environmental committee (PCS HMRC BPV) over the last 18 months, and their efforts to clarify exactly what the role of an environmental rep is.

A major part of the challenge is coming to terms with the sheer breadth of the environmental agenda. You can all too easily and quickly get swamped by a vast range of issues to address and campaigns to support, from immediate everyday concerns on recycling and local travel arrangements to the global scale of agribusiness and the science of climate change. And since there are as yet no statutory rights available for environmental duties (and related time off) we need to bear in mind the real constraints on our time and energy when deciding 'what is to be done'.

One way to situate yourself is to divide up the environmental agenda into three areas of action - political campaigning, greening the workplace and individual lifestyle. If we look at each of these in turn, examining their own particular concerns and related actions, it may help us decide where the major focus of activity should be.

Let's start with individual lifestyle. There are plenty of organisations and campaigns focusing upon changing the habits and behaviours of individuals at home and in their travel preferences - the major themes being around energy (use and efficiency), food (purchase and cultivation), waste and recycling, water (use and conservation), transport (mode of travelling, car use and purchase and fuel). It is fairly easy to carry out educational / awareness raising activities around this whole agenda: many organisations have free literature, freebies and goodies they will donate for workplace events, and may send their own representatives along too. But is this really the concern for a trade union environmental rep? It is all too easy to get swamped with this kind of literature and activity. We have other issues to deal with that are arguably more significant, and ones where trade unionists are best placed to make a real difference. Having said that, the individual lifestyle option could be retained as a secondary strand of activity. A stall / presentation on 'sustainable lifestyles' or any of its component options, can attract staff and union members in the workplace, and thereby serve as a springboard for discussions around other issues of greening the workplace or on particular political campaigns that reps might want to promote.

What about 'greening the workplace'? Two strands of activity stand out here. One would be putting forward green initiatives to the employer, through existing or additional negotiating channels - projects, new equipment, campaigns etc. These may be consonant with, or additional to, organisational environmental goals and policies; they may also contribute to wider governmental targets. In our workplace we have proposed introducing on-site composting to deal with all the food waste a workforce of 8000 people produces each day. This would contribute to the government's Sustainable Development target of reducing 'waste arisings' by 5% at 2010 across all its estate.

The second strand is one of compliance. There seems a significant opportunity here to develop the green rep role along the lines of health and safety rep duties: monitoring the employer to ensure compliance with any relevant environmental legislation and any organisational policies, in relation to the particular work processes carried out at a given site.

One way forward would be to:-
Map the workplace in terms of the 'input - process - output' model to determine the environmental scope of its activities;

Locate and retrieve relevant environmental legislation that covers these work processes;

Check the employer has effective processes in place to meet legislative requirements, and that these are carried out. To do this we could carry out environmental workplace inspections, along the lines of existing health and safety procedures. If these inspections were brought within the health and safety remit, we would then have statutory rights and time off to carry them out.

Political campaigning may seem a less likely role for a workplace environmental rep but there are strong arguments in favour of engaging in this kind of activity. First of all, many of the environmental challenges we face, both in the workplace and beyond, require remedial action to be taken at national / supranational governmental levels - whether this be in the form of legislation or financial support. Green reps can play a positive role here, in terms of campaigning or lobbying for support in the workplace. Secondly your union may have a number of environmental campaigns it supports at national level, which can be bolstered and popularised at branch level. This could lead green reps to build effective links with local and regional branches of national green organisations (such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth), expanding their role and awareness of environmental issues.

There are numerous green groups and organisations that environmental reps might build links with, supporting campaigns broadly consonant with national union policy. Our branch has been actively supporting the local 'Keep the Metro Public' transport campaign. We also established a loose working relationship with a local community-based group, BAN Waste, who campaign for greater recycling and alternative ways of treating waste in their local authority area. Through this contact we have been able to develop proposals for on-site food waste composting mentioned above, drawing on their scientific - technical expertise and links to other players in local green networks.

There is a clear cross-fertilisation between different elements of the green rep role evident here: the political campaigning at local level led to new green initiatives back in the workplace. A second example of this dynamic at work has been the influence of the 'zero waste' perspective (concerning resource recovery and waste management) on our committee. Through BAN Waste we met local figures of the Zero Waste Alliance, who introduced us to their ideas. From these we were able to develop our own critique of wasteful working practices and propose greener alternatives for our site.

To sum all this up, the role of the environmental rep is challenging, due primarily to the very nature of its agenda. Adopting an approach that mixes political campaigning, workplace bargaining and monitoring, alongside educational work, can however bring significant benefits and real advances.

Edited from an original article featured in the Revenue & Customs group magazine - OR&CLE April 2010 Page 15