Just Transitions for the Miners: Labor Environmentalism in the Ruhr and Appalachian Coalfields

Abstract

As environmental legislation threatens energy-related jobs, unions may seek to assure just transitions for their workers. Just transitions are programs to guarantee decent, well-paying new jobs or early retirement for workers displaced by environmental regulations. Militant unions with a tradition of neo-corporatism will be best positioned to demand just transitions for their members. This article provides two comparative case studies of coal miners’ unions in areas where environmental reform threatens coal workers’ livelihoods. Workers in Germany’s IG Bergbau, Chemie, Energie/Industrial Guild Mining, Chemical, Energy (IG BCE) have applied sustained militancy to force the German government and employers to accept increasingly comprehensive and democratic worker input into the energy sector’s policy-making. Possessing a good deal of control over their industry, IG BCE was prepared to demand a just transition for their miners by the time the German government began phasing out underground mining. The UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) miners have a long tradition of militancy and have, at various junctures in their history, forced their employers and union bureaucrats to accept some degree of industrial democracy. However, the UMWA’s corporatism was a limited corporatism that was never as democratic as German neo-corporatism. The UMWA’s commitment to environmentalism increased as they won an expanded level of input into the coal industry’s decision-making. Nevertheless, since the late 1970s the UMWA’s militancy has waned and they have come to reject just transitions and other environmentalist policies.