Abstract
Within the context of an accelerating climate emergency, the introduction frames the strategies and actions adopted by labour and unions to reduce carbon emissions that are presented in the articles contributing to this special issue. Industrial relations scholarship, which has been slow to address the climate emergency, has focussed on the jobs versus environment dilemma, the role of unions, technical innovation versus social unionism, and just transition approaches. While labour and union approaches in different sectors across Europe are largely confined to variants of ecological modernization, a more proactive transformative strategy opening up an alternative eco-socialist vision for the future is emerging. The issue highlights the contradictions in union strategies, the drivers of change and the way forward in pursuance of a green economy through a focus on the roles of government and the public sector, the organization of labour and the labour process, and education and training.
Highlights
This special issue presents different strategies adopted by workers and their unions across Europe to combat climate change and to address the challenges of a just transition to a zero-carbon economy
Over and above the approaches currently pursued and returning to the ‘movers’ of the earlier transition debate, it is evident from this special issue that the transformation of the production and labour processes required hinges predominantly on the active involvement of labour and the unions and on state intervention, not on technological innovations, trade or the market
As opposed to a focus only on the quantity of jobs created or phased out, qualitative social aspects need to be at the forefront of the green transition, including the relations of production, the labour process, vocational education and training (VET) and qualifications
Summary
Antonioli and Mazzanti’s (2017) research, for example, in which the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) was involved, shows that, whilst unionised firms are not necessarily associated with the adoption of environmental innovation, there is a positive relation between union involvement and the propensity to introduce environmental innovation, either through bargaining or disseminating information On this question of innovation, a social response is required, as pleaded for by Snell (2011) in relation to phasing out coal power generation in Australia and unions focus rather on a technological fix through carbon capture storage innovations and other ‘clean’ coal uses. Felli (2014) identifies three union strategies - deliberative, collaborative growth, and socialist – and argues, with the example of the International Transport Federation (ITF), for an alternative socio-ecological strategy addressing the social relations of production at the heart of the climate crisis and overcoming ‘business unionism’, green capitalism and the concern of ecological modernisation only with value redistribution
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