Sir, - The call for a boycott of Shell products has sent up a cry, "what about the jobs?" The conflicts of jobs versus civil rights, jobs versus human rights, jobs versus environmental rights are becoming more frequent.
For all our international trade, our spectacular growth economy, our rising standard of living, we have nothing if it destroys the basic rights of someone else. The manufacture of missiles and armaments may give employment, but the profits and the jobs from these industries can never be justified. There can be no equation, that puts lives on one side and jobs on the other. How many jobs. equate to one life?
The Shell boycott is no different. Companies like Shell are coming under much more scrutiny than in the past. The management of such companies will readily use the jobs argument. However, the moral questions arising from their operations leave the management responsible for the future of their employees. Responsible management would never allow their employees to be exposed to a boycott. Clearly, responsibility for the employees rests with the employer. Where are the shareholders of Shell now? The invisible fund managers from the financial institutions have a duty to ensure that profits are not at some one elses losses.
Fortunately we do not have an armaments industry in Ireland, and we should take care not to. We should not create a dependency that can not be justified.
Industry and the jobs therein should come from necessity; work can not be invented through job creation".
The BSE crisis is an abject lesson in the dependency of the present approach. The feeding of offal to a herbivore is barbaric.
The jobs in bone meal production can not be saved. At the heart of the unemployment problem lies the unfair distribution of wealth and the unfair distribution of effort needed to create wealth. The key to solving unemployment lies in addressing these maldistributions and not in the creation of jobs which are socially and ecologically destructive.
There is no argument "jobs versus the environment". It does not arise. Our work is either sustainable or it's not. This must be the premise to move forward from. In a debate on the Shell boycott, the comments of some TDs in Dail Eireann fell well short of this premise.
The conflicts arise when we create systems that propel us to step over the threshold of what can be sustained indefinitely. This is a modern affliction arising from the myth of infinite economic growth in a finite system. When technology was of a much lower impact mankind had a higher regard for his surroundings. The red Indians of North America would only make a decision after consideration for the consequences seven generations later. In their words, we do not inherit the earth from our parents, we borrow it from our children. - Yours, etc
Green Party Spokesperson for Trade and Tourism, Presentation Road,
Galway.