Better safe than sorry? Toxic waste management after union elections

Eline Schoonjans

No 03/2025, ZEW policy briefs from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: U.S. manufacturing facilities generate approximately 30 billion pounds of hazardous waste annually, 10% of which is released into the environment. The negative economic and health impacts of such toxic chemicals are significant (Currie et al., 2015; Aguilar-Gomez et al., 2022). It is therefore crucial to understand the factors which influence the production, release, and treatment of toxic waste and its resulting pollution. Unions are designed to advocate for workers' health and safety, but their impact on toxic waste management remains unclear. This study investigates how union elections affect the balance between workplace safety and environmental sustainability. Union election wins lead to a significant increase in air pollution and the release of toxic waste and to a significant decrease in waste treatment (e.g. recycling and energy recovery) at facility sites. Even though unionised facilities engage more often in innovative pollution prevention activities, these efforts are insufficient to offset the increased release of toxic waste. Unionised facilities prioritise worker safety by limiting the handling of hazardous waste, but this occurs at the expense of environmental sustainability.

Date: 2025
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-env and nep-hea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/329908/1/193605096X.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewpbs:329908

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW policy briefs from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().