Just Transition for All? Labor Organizing in the Energy Sector Beyond the Loss of “Jobs Property”

Abstract

In this article, I investigate the origin, limits, and possibilities of just transition as a policy framework to support labor organizing in the energy sector. Just transition first emerged within the labor movement to describe measures to “make whole” workers laid off as the result of necessary environmental policy. Following Gidwani (2015), I analyze claims for income replacement or continued employment as an assertion of “jobs property” based on the collectively bargained standards that unions have negotiated for dangerous jobs in fossil fuel sectors. Although the uses of just transition have grown to encompass broader demands for a democratic and equitable shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy including energy, environmental, and climate justice, I observe that the objectives of labor-centered climate policy often remain focused on the defense of jobs property for dislocated workers. I argue compensation for the loss of jobs property is insufficient to address historical exclusions of people of color and women from energy industry employment or secure the livelihoods of dislocated workers given increasing precarity. Drawing from more than eighty interviews and field work with energy justice campaigns in Atlanta, I consider the case of energy-sector workers in the U.S. South to center a just transition framework that reconstitutes a social wage to address the uneven spatial development of the U.S. labor market.