School Custodians and Green Cleaners

Abstract

Coalitions between labor unions and environmental organizations often dissolve in class tensions that appear to force unions to choose between job security and occupational or environmental health. This article examines a successful blue-green coalition that worked to substitute cleaning products used in Boston public schools with safer alternatives. The coalition succeeded in part through the role of bridge builders, who unified a diverse group of stakeholders, including community and environmental health advocates, labor activists and labor unionists, and school administrators, to discuss their individual and common interests in eliminating toxic chemicals from the school environment. This article also explores the framing strategies used by the coalition partners, especially the logic of the precautionary principle in bridging the concerns of the environmental activists with the safety and health concerns of the union. This case raises questions of how coalition strategies and tactics may bear on the success of blue-green coalitions.

Transitioning from Traditional to Green Cleaners: An Analysis of Custodian and Manager Focus Groups

“…Custodians noted the importance of a strong feedback mechanism among end users (custodians), purchasers, and other stakeholders within the institutional community. This was consistent with another green cleaning study reporting worker perceptions of not being part of the selection process and concerns about equipment and training [34]. Quinn (2006) explains that the successful introduction of an alternative involves a social process in addition to a technical one, and that interventions are more successful when all parties impacted feel they were represented in the change.…”

“…Senier found that personal experience mediates acceptance: "if custodians were confused or unclear about the importance of health in making the shift to green, it may have reduced their subjective assessment of the new EPP, as their application often significantly differs from traditional products and requires more physical labor" [34]; this may have been true for our study.…”

Frame Decoupling for Organizational Change

“…Our results provide insight on organizational interactive strategies that affect the success of environmental initiatives (Shwom, 2009;Vasi, 2006). In this case, we saw that leadership was able to motivate pro-environmental behavior from people with a variety of values-even from staunch anti-environmentalists-which adds to previous research on environmental initiatives that successfully negotiate political divides (Daub, 2010;Senier, Mayer, Brown, & Morello-Frosch, 2007). In the past decade, for instance, as green building benefits and climate change effects have become more scientifically evident, public belief in anthropogenic climate change has declined (Dunlap & McCright, 2008), and scholars question as to whether this debate has become too divisive for collaboration (Hoffman, 2011).…”

Firefighters and Flame Retardant Activism

“…For the firefighting community, this is obviously a trade-off that is carefully considered: when it comes to personal and professional safety, anything that decreases fire safety is seen as harmful. This is similar to another blue-green coalition between environmentalists and janitors, in that janitors do not want to sacrifice product efficacy for product safety [54].…”

“…A New Jersey coalition supported the movement of a right-to-know bill through the state legislature [51]. In Boston, occupational health activists, school janitors, and teachers collaborated to test environmentally safe cleaning products in public schools [54]. Moving forward, the "green economy" focused on renewable energy and sustainability is seen as a promising avenue for blue-green coalitions [55], and this area has been identified as an emerging area of social science inquiry [56].…”