PRINCIPLES  (Last modifed September 12, 2005)

1. Workers, community residents, and Indigenous Peoples around the world have a fundamental human right to clean air, water, land, and food in their workplaces, homes and environment.

This principle calls for a reaffirmation of policies such as the best version of: workplace health and safety regulations; laws such as Clean Air and Clean Water Acts; soil contamination clean-up; food safety and self-sufficiency; the need for harmonization and safe use of chemicals relying on the precautionary principle/approach; the right of workers’ participation to make workplace assessments, indicators, and partnerships part of transition to sustainable development, and the need to integrate the ILP core labor standards; etc..

2. There is no contradiction among simultaneously creating sustainable development, having a healthy economy and maintaining a clean and safe environment.

This principle calls for complete just transitions, such as clean production technologies that improve the health and safety of workers inside a facility while at the same time improving the air, water, soil and disposal technologies in surrounding poor and people of color and Indigenous communities. Sustainable development means decent employment, job creation, and job security for workers and communities, including benefits and pensions and living standards, and the absence of child labor and employment discrimination.

3. Liberalization of environmental, health and labor laws and corporate globalization – including the privatization of vital areas of the public sector, the proliferation of sweatshops, and export processing zones, as deregulation or weak regulatory institutions-- know no borders. Therefore, solutions call for local, regional, national, and global solidarity.

This principle calls for solutions that refuse to sacrifice any group of people in any region or country in the pursuit of environmental and economic improvements in and among “our own.”

4. The development of fair economic, trade, health and safety and environmental policies must include both the frontline workers and fenceline communities most affected by pollution, ecological damage and economic restructuring

This principle calls for democratic, transparent policy-making processes in the public and private sectors. We must encourage a strong public sector and regulatory regimes to ensure worker rights at the workplace and a priority on democratic decision-making. This includes community-right-to-know laws to be maintained and implemented globally, as well as mechanisms for corporate accountability.

5. The costs of achieving sustainable development, a healthy economy and clean environment should not be borne by current or future victims of environmental and economic injustices and unfair free trade policies.

Getting from here to there should not incur more damage to humans and the environment. In addition, victims of environmental and economic injustices have a right to full compensation and reparations for damages, including quality health care and re-education and training.

6. Workers and community residents have the right to challenge any entity that commits economic and/or environmental injustices. These entities include governments, the military, corporations, international bodies, and mechanisms for securing corporate accountability.

This principle supports the rights of workers to organize, the rights of community residents to petition their governments, the sovereign rights of Indigenous Peoples to petition non-Native entities, and the denial of immunity to any polluter.