Labor + Community + Environment = Australia’s Green Bans

Earlier this year I was able to attend the AIRAANZ conference in Melbourne, Australia. At the end of one of the conference days, there was an optional Green Ban Walking Tour. I had no idea what the “green ban” part was, but walking around Melbourne after being at a conference all day sounded like a great idea. It turns out that green bans in Australia were an interesting way in which labor unions were fighting for broader community concerns in the 1970s. Not only is this interesting in own right, but a greater community orientation is something that today’s worker centers have embraced, and it’s a mindset that some advocate as a way to revitalize the labor movement in the United States.

A green ban is a protest against property development that is perceived as harming the local community. Most of the history I can find online gives first credit to the New South Wales Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) who responded to a plea from a local group of women about blocking development on a local green space in a Sydney suburb in 1971. After seeing widespread community support, the BLF refused to work on the development, and when the developer threatened to use nonunion workers, the BLF refused to work on that developer’s other projects. In other words, it issued a ban to its members from working on these projects—which was successful, and Kelly’s Bush remains green space today. In Melbourne, however, they say that the first ban of this kind was issued by the Victoria branch of the BLF to stop the development of the Hardy Gallagher Reserve in Melbourne in 1970. Far be it from me to get in the middle of yet another Sydney-Melbourne rivalry!

At the time, strike orders were called “black bans” and even the Melbourne history seems to admit that the label “green ban”—because it was in defense of green space rather than to improve wages and working conditions—was first applied in Sydney. Another green ban in the early 1970s prevented the Royal Botanic Gardens from being turned into a parking lot for the Sydney Opera House.

And then I never would have learned that 19 species of ferns have been named after Lady Gaga!

But I digress.

Green bans expanded to cover redevelopment of existing buildings in addition to the protection of  undeveloped green spaces based on the protection of affordable housing and other facilities that served the existing (often working class) community as well as the protection of historic buildings. Again, this was a tight-knit partnership between labor and community groups, with labor sometimes advocating against its own narrow self-interest by blocking development that would have provided construction jobs. According to a pamphlet I received, these unions asked their rank and file:

Will you stand in solidarity with your fellow workers not just over wages and conditions, but in the streets where they live will you take control out of the hands of employers and make decisions that are in the interests of communities, against the interests of building companies and other employers, when that solidarity is called upon?

The Green Ban Walking Tour in Melbourne, offered by the Earth Worker Cooperative, highlighted a number buildings that were saved. Perhaps ironically, some of the historic buildings that were saved were banks, theaters, and fancy hotels that served the elite, not the working class. But other saved properties have tighter connections to the working class, such as the city baths:

Another Melbourne landmark saved by a green ban that served the working class was Queen Victoria Market:

Though development is again threatening the market:

As concerns with the environment, communities, and redevelopment are again prominent in many areas of the United States, Australia, and elsewhere, and as the future of the labor movement in many countries is also debated, this was a fascinating historical walk with a lot of relevance for today. With respect to labor, what is its role in the community? Can it be more than a voice on the job? The green bans movement is example where it certainly was.