‘Not my task’: Role perceptions in a green transition among shop stewards in the Norwegian petroleum industry

Abstract

In the petroleum-dependent Norwegian economy, climate change politics challenge the powerful petroleum industry, and Norwegian shop stewards in that industry find themselves in cross-pressures of representation and responsibility. In this article, we investigate what role trade unionists in the oil sector play and can play, in a green and just transition. We analyse data from six focus group interviews with shop stewards in the petroleum industry. By engaging with theories of roles and role perceptions in light of labour agency, we fill a theoretical gap in the conceptualization of workers’ collective agency. Respondents describe themselves as active part of a green transition in their capacity as workers, but the role of shop stewards neither seem to offer tools nor a mandate for representing environmental concerns: Climate change is not their task. Shop stewards respond to externally ascribed role expectations by insisting that primary agency resides with politicians, companies and consumers–and union leaders. Their reactive and ambiguous role interpretation can prove risky, as the employment outlook in the industry is changing radically and rapidly. Last, we find that there are both a need and potential for re-scripting shop stewards’ role that is active and relevant in the green transition.

Climate change and industrial relations: Reflections on an emerging field

“…In Houeland and Jordhus-Lier's (2022) article, '"Not my task": Role perceptions in a green transition in the Norwegian petroleum industry', the authors unpack the ways in which environmental change brings with it new expectations on trade unionists which do not align with how their roles are experienced or institutionalised. In the context of intense demands to end petroleum extraction, the expectations on unionists to embrace an environmental role from politicians, environmentalists, media actors and academics are often high.…”

“…These include Poland, where strongly unionised fossil fuel workforces and national government collectively resist decarbonisation initiatives driven by the EU (Galgóczi, 2021: 551) and Ethiopia, where the nomenclature of ‘just transition’ has not been adopted, but elements of the idea have been integrated into a ‘green growth’ strategy in practice (Saget et al, 2021). Proponents of just transition have juxtaposed ‘weak’ and ‘successful’ cases to underscore the importance of industrial relations ‘choices’, such as social dialogue, to the success of just transition (Sheldon et al, 2018). Analyses of ostensibly successful cases, such as in Germany, underscore how industrial relations traditions such as social dialogue may be used to exclude environmental voices and narrow the speed and scope of transition (Kalt, 2021; Reitzenstein et al, 2020).…”

Towards a relational environmental labour studies

“…One may retort, as I do, that we need to pay close attention to the emergence of unions as well as how worker agency and contestation have shaped the labour movement. But his argument is valuable in alerting us to the significance of industrial relations as institutions that shape labour by giving voice to some unions and kinds of workers and depriving it from others (see Houeland and Jordhus-Lier (2022) in this issue). In fact, the unions most supportive of fossil fuels in the United States are those participating in formalized bipartite institutional arrangements with capital.…”

“…I am doing so by organizing the articles along the level of analysis they emphasizeworkers and unions, industrial relations, political economyfully recognizing that there can be differences regarding this order (Stevis, 2014). Houeland and Jordhus-Lier (2022) focus on the micro level of shop stewards in Norway's oil industry. However, this microanalysis reveals itself to be grounded in the meso-level institutional arrangements of the country's industrial relations and in the role of oil in shaping modern Norway.…”

“…While these ontological debates have been around for decades, they have become increasingly more central to the discipline (e.g. Kurki, 2019; Trownsell et al, 2019).…”