A green ban is a form of strike action, usually taken by a trade union or other organised labour group, which is conducted for environmentalist or conservationist purposes.
They were mainly done in Australia in the 1970s, led by the Builders Labourers Federation (BLF) and used to protect parkland, low-income housing and buildings with historical significance.
[1][2] At times, industrial action was used in relation to other issues, such as when a 'pink ban' was placed on Macquarie University due to the expulsion of Jeremy Fisher, a gay man, from student housing.
The first green ban was put in place to protect Kelly's Bush, the last remaining undeveloped bushland in the Sydney suburb of Hunters Hill.
The environmental interests of three million people are at stake and cannot be left to developers and building employers whose main concern is making profit.
[5] Green bans helped to protect historic nineteenth century buildings in The Rocks from being demolished to make way for office towers, and prevented the Royal Botanic Gardens from being turned into a carpark for the Sydney Opera House.
[6] The BLF stopped conducting green bans in 1974 after the federal leadership under Norm Gallagher dismissed the leaders of the New South Wales branch.
"The Green ban movement in Sydney and Melbourne of the early 1970s, led by the Builder Labourers Federation, was the most profound external indication of the need for planning reform.
"[17] In 1977 an editorial from the Australian quoted "bans were an inevitable result of official attitudes which regarded people as irrelevant factors to development".
[20] 'In 1997 the Director of the Urban Research Unit of the Australian National University, stated that the green bans of the New South Wales Builders Labourers' Federation (NSW BLF) had a "subtle influence" in transforming the culture of urban planning in ways that now evince greater sensitivity to environmental concerns, better appreciation of heritage, the need to publicise proposed developments well in advance and to seek approval from the people affected'.
[21] Similar union bans were started in other cities in Australia including Brisbane, Adelaide, Melbourne, Canberra and Hobart however to a lesser level than Sydney.
The green ban movement became a powerful tool of influencing city developments by involving the wider community to sign petitions in order to prevent destruction of a heritage or environmentally significant sites.
[25] The German politician Petra Kelly came to Australia around the middle of the 1970s and witnessed green bans opposing undesirable development in Sydney by the cooperation between the BLF and local citizens.