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Labour vs pollution

  • 14/10/1999

Labour vs pollution Roy: I would say there are three major issues on which people should focus the discussion. Firstly, is that it is easier to take decisions regarding labour than capital. Is it something that can be changed. Secondly, can the environmentalist and the labour movements work together? If they want to work together then the question is how can we move towards that situation. Thirdly, do we want to learn from history? If we do not learn from our own misdoings and from history, then we have a major problem on our hands. The solution, as pointed out earlier, may also lie in our understanding of how the environment and labour movements can work together and how policy decisions can be made in favour of labour, rather than capital.

Dasgupta: I was thinking about how the Indian environmental and labour movement can be linked to what is happening at the global level. At the global level, several agencies have been discussing this. They are the ilo from the labour side and unep from the environment side. What has to be recognised is that capital is mobile while labour is not. We also have treatise like the wto etc, which are being backed by the un agencies. Trade unionists believe that such pacts are anti-labour. From the environment point of view, we should talk about two kinds of limits

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