Ian Ritchie
Private Bag 11 042
PALMERSTON NORTH

Report for the Jobs Research Trust for the Local Employment Co-ordination Unit
18 August 1998

1. What is Sustainable Economic Development?
2. Is Sustainable Economic Development Attainable?
3. Developing an infrastructure for Sustainable Economic Development - Sustainable America
4. Establishing where we are and monitoring progress towards where we want to be - The Use of Indicators
5. Potential keynote speakers for New Zealand Employment Conferences
6. Conclusion
7. Attachments:

The Assembly Programme
Summaries from the Assembly Reader
Excerpts from the Sustainable America Organiser Kit on Welfare
Reform & Job Creation
Material from the Sustainable Milwaukee presentation
Summary from the 1998 Sustainable Seattle Report


8. Additional Material

Sustainable economic development supports the economic needs of families and communities now and in the future in ways that are equitable to all segments of society; within the limits of ecological systems; and accountable to democratic processes.

"Proponents of sustainable economic development recognise the interconnections between the environment, the economy, democratic control issues and moral issues like equity." Elaine Gross. Executive Director, Sustainable America

Many individuals and groups throughout the United States (and around the world) are working to achieve sustainable economic development. For example:

Dan Swinney, Midwest Centre for Labour Research: Dan is the Executive Director for MCLR, the Chicago-based research, technical assistance, and community organising institute that has been a leader in national movements around plant-closings, community dislocation, and the development of popular economic development alternatives. Founded in 1982, MCLR was one of the earliest popularisers of worker-buyouts, "early warning" systems, and other now-standard tools of community-led development that educate, organise and network people to engage in proactive strategies to retain jobs rather than react to plant closures.

Joel Rogers, Centre on Wisconsin Strategy: Working on a living wage campaign in Milwaukee, as well as a comprehensive community-led economic development effort called Sustainable Milwaukee.

Laura Dresser, Research Director, Centre on Wisconsin Strategy. The Centre is a policy research institute, technical assistance provider, and development intermediary for regional economic upgrading and sustainable development. Trained as a labour economist, her principle research areas include service sector productivity, labour market dynamics, and occupational gender segregation. She was lead author of "The State of Working Wisconsin", a comprehensive analysis of wage and income trends in Wisconsin.

Bruce Colburn, Deputy Director, Midwest Regional AFL-CIO. Bruce is a former Secretary Treasurer of the Milwaukee Central Labour Council and past president of Amalgamated Transit Workers Union Local 998. Bruce is currently president of Wisconsin Citizen Action and co-chair of Sustainable Milwaukee.

David Sprintzen, Long Island Progressive Coalition: Moved from fights to stop various kinds of environmental disasters (such as the Shoreham nuclear power plant) to developing a plan for suburban communities on Long Island that would foster a viable economy and ecological sustainability.

Melbah Smith, Federation of Southern Cooperatives: We are helping people create opportunities, and own and operate their own business so that they do not have to leave. For instance, co-operatives can serve as a stop-gap for the out-migration of youth who would otherwise leave their home. The Federation of Southern Co-operatives has a youth programme for its membership. In a small Mississippi community, 24 youth in our programme grew and acre of peas and an acre of okra. They are learning the whole process - how to grow, harvest, market and keep up with and distribute the returns of their production. Not all of them will go into agriculture, but they get a sense of what it is that exists in their community and see whey it should be sustained and supported. They learn about owning and developing their resources.

Alisa Gravitz, Executive Director, CO-OP America. For 15 years Alisa has helped shape and lead the national agenda to create a socially and environmentally responsible economy. She co-authored Co-op America's acclaimed guide to social investing, which has helped more than 350,000 people invest their money according to their values. At Co-op America, she has helped hundreds of responsible businesses emerge and thrive. Alisa serves on the boards of the Social Investment Forum, Friends of the Earth, the Anacostia Watershed Society and the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies (CERES) and helped start Business for Social Responsibility and served on its founding board. In 1995, she earned the coveted Socially Responsible Investing Service Award. Alisa spoke about the major demographic and consumer shifts currently under way in America. Nearly one in four Americans live by a new set of values which embrace environmentalism, feminism, global issues and spiritual searching. Participants in this new paradigm, "cultural creatives", are the main force behind the rise of stakeholder oriented business, socially responsible investing and sustainable consumption.

David Lujan, Tonantzin Land Institute

Elements of Power:

* Resources will be unique for each group and depend on the organisation

Craig Freshley: The Maine Economic Growth Council learned that it was helpful to create a coalition that has clout and because of this is able to have an effect, eg the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council formally adopted a policy to encourage living wage jobs and last year state legislation was passed offering a tax break for companies paying a living wage.

See also - "Sustainable Maine - A Primer: Integrating Economy, Environment, and Community."

Steve Kest, Executive Director of ACORN: Minimum wage campaigns can cover all city or state workers, those companies that receive contracts from the city or municipality.

In some campaigns, health and other benefits are made part of the living wage. And in some places, organisers have added community hiring preferences or requirements.

Over the last two years, these campaigns have been very successful. So far, studies have shown that living wage measures have not adversely affected cities. In Baltimore, for example, there was no increase in contract price or disinvestment in the city, according to a study done by the Preamble Collaborative. Unions and community organisations provide the most effective enforcement of these measures, but in some cases fines have been levied on companies that do not pay the living or minimum wage. The large number of campaigns and successes, along with the federal increase in the minimum wage in 1996, are proof that this movement is growing and has potential.

Brad Lander, Executive Director, Fifth Avenue Committee. Brad has served as the Executive Director of the Fifth Avenue Committee Inc (FAC) since 1993. FAC is a not-for-profit community based organisation committed to affordable housing, tenants' and welfare rights, economic justice, and community development in South Brooklyn. FAC recently launched "Ecomat" (an environmentally friendly clothes cleaner) its first community-based business, a construction training/job creation programme, and is developing other initiatives to provide living wage employment and training to area residents. FAC sponsors "WEP Workers Together!", an association of workfare workers organising for real jobs and for rights as workers. Brad is president of the Association for Neighbourhood and Housing Development (NYC), the Co-Chair of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, and is on the board of directors of Grassroots Leadership (Charlotte, NC). Prior to working at FAC Brad worked as a community organiser in London at Europe's largest urban redevelopment project (SE London's Docklands). Brad discussed Progressive CDCs and what it takes for a "community development corporation" (CDC) to stay focused on the struggle for economic justice and social change. CDCs can engage in organising and development work that democratises and localises capital and decision-making, builds a strong constituency that engages in direct action organising for social justice, and combines the struggle for local victories with a broader focus on pluralism and redistribution.

Bruce Herman, NY Garment Industry Development Corporation: Our purpose is to preserve, improve and create union jobs.

• We have a sectoral and regional approach that builds upon an existing industrial cluster. For over 100 years, the garment industry has been one of the largest manufacturing districts in New York City. This has allowed us to gain some clout in the local, regional, and state political scene - we are an industry that is hard to ignore locally, but easy to write off nationally. NAFTA was clearly directed at further eroding our industry and domestic production base and moving jobs to other areas. We have a long and negative experience with these trade agreements.
• We also attempt to build on our economic base using renewal and retention, improving and adding.
• We are a tripartite organisation - UNITE ( three worker associations), major employer associations and the public sector.

One of our aims was to get ahead of downsizing and restructuring, to be a force in the market - in the labour market, the market for our products, the market for our ideas - rather than be left to react to market forces. We want to become pro-active.

"Sectoral strategies can offer a more sustainable model for economic development by incorporating local long-term economic goals, worker rights, education, training and environmental standards into industry improvement efforts that increase productivity and profit for the sector."

Thomas Croft, Executive Director, Steel Valley Authority and President, Industrial Valleys Investment Corporation: The Steel Valley Authority (SVA) was formed as a regional, inter-municipal economic development authority, affiliated with the United Steel Workers District 10, in Pittsburgh PA and the Monogahela Valley - which have the nation's worst job dislocation record. SVA has worked for 10 years to fight plant closures, oppose anti-union development policies, re-develop abandoned millsites, and promote new work systems to address workplace change.

"In an era of diminished public authority and powerful financial markets, union, religious, pubic sector and education institutions must work to build a "high road" investment paradigm capable of combining higher living standards and mutual obligations."

The Industrial Heartland Labour Investment Working Group came together to discuss the types of pension fund investment practices that might be fueling downsizing, massive job loss, the decline of union membership and industrial jobs, and deteriorating communities - and to seek solutions. The working group felt the time had come for unions and communities to create and sponsor their own investment funds to support industrial jobs.

In Canada, $3.2 billion of labour investment funds are managed by the labour movement, providing one-third of all institutional venture capital in the country and resulting in tens of thousands of jobs retained or created in five provinces.

One step forward is to identify capital resources, including where workers, union, churches and communities have assets and consider how to encourage more pro-worker investment strategies of those assets.

Clark Arrington, Equal Exchange. Clark is a native Philadelphian who practised law in the deep South and is now a New Englander serving as the General Counsel and Capital Co-ordinator for Equal Exchange Inc., an employee-owned fair trade gourmet coffee company based in Canton, MA. As an attorney, Clark specialised in helping finance and organise employee owned businesses and co-operatives. Clark has worked for the US Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federation of Southern Co-operatives. During the autumn he teaches a course titled "Law and Community Economics". Clark discussed fair trade and a sustainable model of doing business where each transaction in the economic chain is based on sustainability and ethical values.

Malini Mehra, FoEI, Amsterdam Communities around the globe have embraced the opportunity offered by Local Agenda 21 (from Agenda 21: Earth's Action Plan created at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit), in particular, to redefine fundamental notions of our economic development model: growth, welfare, well-being, and the notion of progress itself.

Richard Douthwaite was born in England in 1942, and studied economics at the University of Essex and the University of the West Indies, Kingston, Jamaica. He has worked as a journalist, and as the Director of the Central Planning Unit of the Jamaican Ministry of Finance, has run a boatyard for the Jamaica Co-operative Union and was appointed Government Economist in the British West Indies colony of Montserrat. In 1974, he and his family moved to Ireland where he has lived ever since. Currently they operate a fruit farm and apiary. In 1992, Richard published The Growth Illusion: How Economic Growth has enriched the Few, Impoverished the Many and Endangered the Planet. In 1994, he stood as the Green Party candidate in elections to the European Parliament. His second book, Short Circuit, came out in 1996. He is now working with two Irish Colleges to set up a Foundation for the Economics of Sustainability and is helping set up local currencies in Counties Mayo and Roscommon, which in conjunction with communities in Amsterdam, Madrid and Scotland, is receiving support from the European Union.

Where Sustainable America comes in: "We feel that there should be a national framework and structure that combines our individual work into a movement and, with other efforts, creates a much more powerful force working toward sustainable economic development." Mark Ritchie, President, Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, Chairman, Sustainable America

Elaine Gross - "Communities across the country and around the world are experiencing the diminishing availability of sustainable livelihoods for people because full employment and sustainability are not goals of the current economic system."

"The current system promotes economic growth whether or not there is related job growth; without concern for properly sharing, using and conserving natural resources; without concern for the quality and the wage levels of jobs; and regardless of harmful effects on people and the environment."

"It focuses on business attraction rather than retaining and renewing existing enterprises or supporting community-based and development strategies tied to the inherent assets of a given region."

"It is neutral concerning the outcomes of economic development. It considers development, whether for unnecessary military weapons or consumer goods, to be of equal value to community infrastructure development or environmental clean-up. It maximises profits for owners by externalising costs which then become a public expense."

"It strives to maximise the mobility of capital, disregarding place, seeking "free" trade unencumbered by accountability to nation-states, and undermining democratic institutions."

"Sustainable economic development":

• Values getting better over getting bigger.
• Strives for productivity of natural resources, ie: using renewable, rather than non-renewable, resources and supporting reuse and recycling.
• Supports the goal of full employment for the willing and able at living wages that support families
• Targets public and private capital for its highest use - positive community investment - rather than activities that do not benefit the public
• Measures progress toward economic goals accurately through full-accounting systems that consider environmental impacts as well as effects on justice, community and democratic goals.
• Utilises appropriate technology
• Appreciates the importance of place, of communities and of bio-regions
• Protects the long-term common good, especially when it is in direct conflict with short-term benefits to individuals or communities.

To support these values, Sustainable America currently has four priority programme areas:

1. Community Capacity Building: Providing tools to understand local economies and environments better and to create a new economic vision; strengthening local organisations; educating local citizens; and building, broad-based coalitions.
2. Democratic Control (Institutional Accountability and Worker organising): Creating the framework, structures and enforcement mechanisms to ensure that communities and workers control our economic institutions from business to government.
3. Business/Economic Development: Getting community/labour coalitions more directly involved in job creation and retention - from the service sector to manufacturing.
4. Capital Use and Control: Capturing money and directing public funds towards real jobs creation and using capital resources, eg: natural resources, more wisely.

Principles of sustainability, equity, democracy and justice - the most essential element in the transformation of the economy is political, not technological. As is true for all systemic social change, organising people and their institutions is the only way to create the grassroots demand necessary to hold business and government accountable to the people; to implement full-accounting methods that counter the practice of "externalising costs" and ignoring the consequences of short-sighted actions on the common good; and to prioritise the creation of real jobs for real people rather than growth that just benefits a small minority.

Sustainable America is a unique coalition of coalitions.

"An indicator or performance measure, is a number value used to represent the progress being made in an area or an issue over time." Craig Freshley.

There are many different systems in use. One of the most well known is that used by Sustainable Seattle which has been used as the basis of indicator systems in many other regions.

June Holley, President, Appalachian Centre for Economic Networks: June Holley is President and founder of the Appalachian Centre for Economic Networks (ACEnet), a community economic development organisation in southeastern Ohio committed to building a healthy and sustainable regional economy based on economic justice, self-determination, and respect for Diversity. With the ACEnet staff, she has pioneered the implementation of flexible business networks, sectoral incubators, a community online network, and a youth entrepreneurship programme. In 1991 she was selected by Governor Voinovich to be inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame. In 1996 she attended the UN Conferenceon Women held in Beijing, China. She has also co-authored over 30 papers on various aspects of community and sustainable development. Holley will discuss her work with ACEnet and community economics.

Mike Locker, Locker Associates: Mr Locker is founder and president of Locker Associates, Inc, a New York economic consulting firm that specialises in corporate restructuring, buyouts, feasibility studies, developing business plans and performing due diligence. Mr Locker is a recognised authority on reorganising troubled companies through employee stock ownership plans (ESOP), often representing employees in such transactions. Clients have included the United Steelworkers of America, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers, United Auto Workers, Bank of Boston, Lazard Freres, law firms and government agencies.

Mr Locker spoke on how to get unions involved in the local economic development process. He spoke from his experience in getting unions involved in employee buyouts, community investment, job training, environmental standards and building coalitions.

Bill Dempsey, Director, Campaign for a Sustainable Milwaukee: Bill Dempsey directs the Campaign for a Sustainable Milwaukee, a grass-roots organising project of over 200 labour, religious, neighbourhood and environmental organisations working for family-supporting jobs and a community-labour voice in the economic decisions. Prior to working on the Campaign, Bill worked as a Community Organiser at the Calumet Project in Gary, Indiana, and an industrial retention and economic justice advocacy organisation.

In the words of Ron Doering "Sustainability must be community-led and consensus-based because the central issue is [political] will, not expertise; only a community-based process can overcome the political, bureaucratic and psychological barriers to change."

Additional Material is available on request, including the full papers of which summaries have been attached and a wide range of papers collected at the Assembly. Please request material by subject area or by title if known.

Ian Ritchie
Private Bag 11 042, Palmerston North
(06) 350 6302 ph, (06) 350 6319 fax
ubinz@geocities.com

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