Working-Class Environmentalism in the UK: Organising for Sustainability Beyond the Workplace

Bell, Karen

doi:10.1007/978-3-030-71909-8_19

Cited by 6 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 56 publications

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“…This current therefore connects workplace issues to wider social and political struggles (Huber, 2022;Silverman, 2004;Stevis et al, 2018). It also contributes to class theory by emphasizing the experience of environmental pollution and destruction as a central commonality of the global working class (Barca, 2012;Bell, 2020).…”

Section: Political Agency and The Environment In Irmentioning

confidence: 93%

Metabolic politics: Industrial relations as if nature mattered

Schaupp¹

2023

Preprint

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Work is at the center of the social metabolism with nature. This means that industrial relations (IR) are always also environmental politics. This article reviews core contributions to IR literature, showing that they do not systematically address this role of nature and separate the politics of work from their ecological basis. Against this backdrop, the article develops an interdisciplinary approach, combining IR studies with geographical as well as historical perspectives. Drawing on these fields, it presents the concept of metabolic politics in which nature is an autonomous party of IR. This approach allows analysis to take into account systematically the effects of IR on nonhuman nature as well as nature's own shaping of IR. Such an interdisciplinary approach is necessary to understand the entanglement of IR with climate change and the broader ecological crisis.

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Section: Political Agency and The Environment In Irmentioning

confidence: 93%

Metabolic politics: Industrial relations as if nature mattered

Schaupp¹

2023

Preprint

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“…However, most of this work was initially based on a somewhat narrow conception of 'labour' as constituted by waged workers acting through workplacecentred organisations, mainly trade unions. Such a 'trade union environmentalism' frame has recently been complemented by the 'working-class environmentalism' proposal (Barca, 2012;Barca & Leonardi, 2018;Bell, 2019Bell, , 2021 and its incorporation in environmental labour studies (Stevis et al, 2018). Working-class environmentalism builds on ecofeminism (Federici, 2018;Mies, 1986Mies, /2014 to reach an expanded understanding of who the workers are and how they organise.…”

Section: Cracked Lives: Environmental Labour Studies and The Abode Of...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Situating class in workplace and community environmentalism: Working-class environmentalism and deindustrialisation in Porto Marghera, Venice

Feltrin

2022

The Sociological Review

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This article explores the challenges faced by working-class environmentalism through the case study of the industrial decline of Porto Marghera’s petrochemical complex, in Venice, Italy. It argues that there is a class dimension in environmentalist struggles in both workplaces and communities. Workplace-centred struggles are conflicts over the conditions under which workers produce commodities or reproduce labour-power, while community-centred struggles are conflicts over the conditions of workers’ own reproduction. The distinction between workplace-centred and community-centred struggles is based on three theoretical expansions: (1) a conception of working-class based on dispossession rather than exploitation; (2) a conception of work including both production and reproduction; (3) a conception of working-class interests encompassing both the workplace and the community. The article thus contributes to environmental labour studies with an original analysis of the interplay between workplace-centred and community-centred working-class environmentalist struggles. In Porto Marghera, in the 1990s and 2000s, the community-centred and workplace-centred working-class environmentalist camps diverged over chlorine-based production, with the former demanding a just transition away from chlorine and the latter a just transition within it. While the rival mobilisations limited damage to health and the environment on the one hand, and to chlorine workers’ livelihoods on the other hand, chlorine-based production was closed without full environmental remediation and without the relocation of all its workers to comparable jobs. The article concludes that the convergence between workplace and community organising is a critical step in the construction of alternatives to the jobs versus environment dilemma.

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“…The baseline expectation reflected in the first hypothesis is for the positive membership effect to be observable across world systems positions. A key mechanism underpinning this hypothesis pertains to the prevalence of environmental threats beyond core states, often manifested at the point of production and hence arguably constituting a core union concern (Barca, 2012;Bell, 2020). However, a second hypothesis is also offered which proposes that beyond core states, higher levels of environmental degradation and stronger public support for environmental spending among members and non-members alike might imply less of a distinction between members and non-members.…”

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confidence: 99%

A world systems analysis of union membership and support for government spending on environmental protection

Ringqvist

2024

Journal of Industrial Relations

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This article contributes to debates about trade unions and the environment by studying international variation in the association between union membership and support for government spending on environmental protection. Building on research which demonstrates a positive membership effect on support for environmental protection, the article extends the geographical scope beyond the more economically developed contexts studied previously. Using World Systems Theory as a comparative framework, distinguishing between core, semi-periphery, and periphery states, the article explores whether the positive membership effect extends beyond more affluent core states and reveals an intriguing empirical puzzle: while public support for environmental spending is substantially weaker in core states relative to non-core states, the latter being subject to more extensive environmental threats, the reverse holds for the membership effect on environmental spending support which instead tends to be more positive in core states. Union membership thus tends to have the largest positive impact on environmental spending support in countries where public support for such spending tends to be lower. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings for the global effort to address an ongoing environmental crisis are discussed by considering the notion of a solidarity effect.

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Working-Class Environmentalism in the UK: Organising for Sustainability Beyond the Workplace

Cited by 6 publications

References 56 publications

Metabolic politics: Industrial relations as if nature mattered

Metabolic politics: Industrial relations as if nature mattered

Situating class in workplace and community environmentalism: Working-class environmentalism and deindustrialisation in Porto Marghera, Venice

A world systems analysis of union membership and support for government spending on environmental protection

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