Running head: MINICASE 1
Mini Case Four
Liberty University
BUS1 605
June 9, 2019
Dr. Frank Romanoski
MINICASE 2
Mini Case Four
Is the BluGreen Alliance a partnership of convenience, or does it have the potential to build
a new way of approaching sustainability, with limits, interdependence, and equity?
The BlueGreen Alliance is an organization comprised of labor unions and environmental
organizations aimed at resolving the looming ecological crisis and challenges. It incorporates
these parties as a way of creating solutions that set up and maintain quality jobs, building a
stronger and fairer economy, while at the same time, ensuring that the environment is protected
(BlueGreen Alliance, 2016). The BlueGreen Alliance cannot be termed as a partnership of
convenience seeing as climate change, environmental degradation, and unemployment hold a lot
of weight in the daily operations and regulation of human activities (BlueGreen Alliance, 2016).
It is the responsibility of all individuals in the world to partner and salvage the deteriorating state
of the environment.
The alliance fosters sustainability, with limits, interdependence, and equity from its core
foundation and objectives. First and foremost, the Alliance is dedicated to providing clean jobs
for all the employees in the country and eventually the globe on a large scale. Clean or green jobs
offer quality and are environmentally sensitive, while at the same time mindful of the workers’
and the environment’s health. Hence, the partnership is a way to motivate people to invest in
clean energy sources which will in turn create the jobs, reduce global warming , and offer a safe
working and living atmosphere for all (Jossi, 2013). Moreover, the Alliance employs innovative
means and collaboration with partners from across different sectors represented by the labor
unions to forge a sustainable path that creates the ideal environment by averting an existential
employment crisis.
MINICASE 3
Moreover, sustainability, interdependence, limits, and equity are achieved by the efforts
invested by the Alliance and other players at repairing the American infrastructure holistically.
The coalition ensures that the infrastructure repair and construction in the United States is in line
with its objectives of reducing carbon and methane emissions and enhancing the use of clean
energy and machines in industries and at home (Rathzel & Uzzell, 2012). The factors create
sustainability through the conception of businesses that thrive in a fair and clean economy with
universal standards raised above the current ones. Therefore, the BlueGreen Alliance not only
advocates for clean energy and jobs but strives to ensure that workers and consumers exist in a
healthy and safe environment.
Unions may prefer protectionist measure to preserve jobs. Do you think this policy can fit a
sustainable approach? Why or why not?
Protectionism is an economic policy that involves restraining trade between states through a
variety of government regulations to protect, producers, workers, and consumers from malicious
foreign investors (Fletcher & Luttwak, 2011). Right trade policies have been applied by the
government to protect domestic interests, and in most cases, they are termed as protectionist as
they are in a bid to employ some sense of control (Lombardozzi, 2011). Moreover, trade policies
tend to be geared at creating sustainable job opportunities for residents and guaranteeing that the
employees are protected in accordance with the set guidelines. Protectionist trade policies are
likely to fit in with the sustainability approach for they set the threshold that all companies ought
to meet in their daily activities. It will ensure that all businesses and industry trying to establish
themselves have to adhere to the set clean energy and jobs standards universally acceptable in
any country. Consequently, it will create an unbreakable chain of environmentally adherent
businesses that create quality jobs that operate within the stipulated health and trade standards for
MINICASE 4
all parties involved (European Commission, 2006). While protectionist trade policies may seem
unattainable and unreasonable, they are effective in creating long term and sustainable patterns
that craft a culture of environmentally conscious and sensitive business climates in any setting.
MINICASE 5
References
BlueGreen Alliance. (2016). About us: Creating good jobs, a clean environment, and a fair and
thriving economy. Retrieved from: https://www.bluegreenalliance.org/about/
European Commission. (2006). Sustainable trade: observations on trade and
protectionism. Retrieved from:
http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/march/tradoc_127903.pdf
Fletcher, I., & Luttwak, E. (2011). Free trade doesn’t work: What should replace it and why. San
Francisco: CPA.
Jossi, F. (2013, August 5). Sustainable: BlueGreen Alliance trains a green workforce. Retrieved
from: http://finance-commerce.com/2013/08/sustainable-bluegreen-alliance-trains-a-green-
Lombardozzi, B. (2011, August). Buy America: one element of the solution to our job crisis.
Retrieved from:
http://www.bluegreenalliance.org/blog/buyamericaoneelementofthesolutiontoourjobcrisis
Rathzel, N., & Uzzell, D. (2012). Trade unions in the green economy: Working for the
environment. New York, NY: Routledge.
