Trade unions and climate politics: prisoners of neoliberalism or swords of climate justice?

Abstract

Contemporary climate change politics, dominated by neoliberal and ecological modernization framings, has reached an impasse. This article utilizes literature on the environment and employment relations to interrogate the largely neglected field of trade union activities on climate change. The main findings are that some trade union climate representatives ('green representatives') in some sectors have made an independent contribution to climate mitigation and adaptation strategies in the workplace. There is evidence of trade unions instigating transformation change and expanding climate awareness in the workplace. The principal conclusions are that workers have the interest and collective capacity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, to address the differential impacts of climate and climate policy, and to coalesce workers to tackle climate change. The recent experience of UK trade unions suggests they have a vital role to play as climate actors and, suitably reconfigured, the capability to renew their role in the twenty-first century.

Environmental bargaining in Australia

“…Other recent commentators are often more pessimistic, arguing that trade union leaders have been ‘captured’ by neoliberalism to become its reluctant or enthusiastic ‘prisoners and pensioners’ (McIlroy, 2009: 195). Broadly speaking, unions as climate actors can primarily represent ‘vested interests’–protecting members’ jobs and working conditions, or ‘swords of justice’–recognising a role as agents for radical social change that addresses exploitation of the environment and workers; in other words, they may accommodate within capitalism, or act as class agents of workers (Hampton, 2018).…”

Unthinking knowledge production: from post-Covid to post-carbon futures

“…This 'selective ignorance' of the material and infrastructural affordances of knowledge production creates not only a lack of resilienceincluding in situations like disruptions of food supply chains, likely to become more frequent in the futurebut also enables the continuation of exploitative labour relations that underpin modes of capitalist production. This demonstrates that environmental justice and labour justice cannot be separated (Hampton, 2018), despite organized labour's somewhat ambiguous relationship to the climate crisis (see Stevis et al, 2018).…”

Construction Workers in a Climate Precarious World

“…No hard conclusions can be drawn from such limited data, but given this is an important issue for trade unions and other social movement groupings – hoping to organise workers around climate issues and increase climate consensus – it is worthy of further research. As Hampton (2018: 484) has argued of the UK experience as well, ‘research is needed on workers’ perceptions of climate change, how they frame it and what they are prepared to do about it’. That said, setting aside the question of how to frame action on the issue of heat stress, the desire of surveyed workers to take greater action was clear.…”