Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

From Fridays for Future to a global climate-justice unionism?

Mark Bergfeld 18th September 2019

Since the social and ecological crises are so intertwined, a ‘climate-justice unionism’ is required to address them in a holistic way.

climate-justice unionism
Mark Bergfeld

The continuous mobilisations of the youth-led Fridays For Future movement have inspired the wider public, yet it remains to be seen whether the young climate strikers have been able to spur trade unions into action for the Global Climate Action Week from September 20th. Beyond that, can unions develop a ‘climate-justice unionism’ which responds to the multiple crises of inequality, climate change and union decline?

Today’s notion of climate justice has its roots in the US civil-rights movement and African-Americans’ demand for ‘environmental justice’, as they were disproportionately affected by environmental hazards—which remains the case, as evidenced by the contamination of water in Flint, Michigan. Unlike traditional US environmentalism, which gave primacy to wilderness and its conservation, the environmental-justice movement was born in the heat of the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike for better working conditions and pay, which brought Martin Luther King Jr to investigate an environmental incident in February 1968.

Copenhagen summit

The contemporary climate-justice movement emerged out of the networks of ‘alter-globalisation’ around the COP-15 UN climate summit in Copenhagen in 2009. Whereas mainstream environmentalism was supporting market-based mechanisms—such as emissions trading, geo-engineering and co-operation with multinational corporation—to solve the climate crisis, the climate-justice movement placed the countries of the global south and the most disadvantaged groups in the north at the heart of its agenda.

For all the movement’s good intentions and unions’ first-time involvement, climate-justice activists could not offer a perspective to workers in the global north, for two reasons. They too often viewed such workers as ‘bought off’ or proposed economic models of de-growth at a time of mass lay-offs due to the 2008 financial meltdown. Meanwhile, the continuing decline in union membership, allied to the economic downturn, militated in favour of unions aligning defensively with ‘their’ government’s politics on migration and climate change, hoping to advance their agenda on the national labour market.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

Throughout COP-15 and in its wake, forward-thinking unions and environmental activists woke up to the realisation that the economic and ecological crises were inseparable—indeed, the twin crises offered an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine workers’ participation, trade unionism and the economy. The British trade-union campaign ‘One Million Climate Jobs’, for example, argued that creating jobs in insulating homes and buildings would simultaneously reduce CO2 emissions. Canadian activists contemplated how to offer Albertan oil workers a perspective beyond tar sands.

‘Just transition’

Since then, many unions across the globe have started to engage in projects to construct an alternative economy and lead a ‘just transition’ to it. As Sean Sweeney and John Treat have pointed out, conventionally this concept applied to the impacts on workers of environmental policies. Today, however, ‘just transition’ signifies a much deeper socio-economic transformation.

In countries such as the United States, where trade unions are less integrated into the state, they along with environmental groups and social movements have developed a ‘social power’ approach to just transition. Building on the achievements and insights of the environmental-justice movement, unions and campaigners are teaming up to advance concrete alternatives to a fossil-fuel-based economy, while advocating government and local agencies take action. Examples include the ALIGN coalition campaigning to fix New York City’s public transport system and Cornell Worker Institute’s ‘Reversing Inequality, Combatting Climate Change: A Climate Jobs Program for New York State’, with its recommendations for the energy, transport and building sectors.

Such politics and coalition-building have inspired the likes of the Democrat Congress members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders to propose a Green New Deal, which seeks to empower workers and reimagine US capitalism. Meantime, the country’s largest environmental organisation, the Sierra Club, has employed a labour and coal co-ordinator to address the gap between the environmental and labour movements.

In western and northern Europe, where unions have stronger ties to government and command greater institutional power, the ‘social dialogue’ approach predominates. This involves economic planning and industrial restructuring along bipartite or tripartite lines, with less of a focus on reducing inequality. It continues to tie labour unions to current business and economic development models primarily based on ‘shareholder value’. Thus, it is no surprise that even the investment community has jumped on the ‘just transition’ bandwagon.

Since the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, multinational corporations have been lobbying for non-binding goals, arguing that self-regulation is most effective. This has allowed them to set their own pace when it comes to lowering carbon emissions. While social pressure has forced large institutional shareholders to place greater emphasis on environmental and social governance issues, the world’s largest banks have continued to pour money into the fossil-fuel industry, to the tune of $1.9 trillion since the signing of the Paris climate agreement. In that context, a social-dialogue approach without workers’ pressure from below seems futile.

Fridays for Future

Fridays for Future’s call for an ‘earth strike’ appears to be a lightning rod for trade unions, labour groups and climate activists to converge. Many unions have issued statements in support and are calling on their members to participate in actions throughout the global climate-action week.

The British Trades Union Congress is calling on workers to engage in 30-minute work stoppages. In Austria, union and climate activists will hold a round-table discussion on what can be done at the workplace to stem climate change. In Belgium, a works council of an insurance company is calling on its employer to reduce emissions by half by 2030. In Germany, where the divisions between environmental movements and trade unions are particularly stark, several unions are nevertheless calling on their members to join the Fridays for Future protests.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

For many environmentalists, unions’ symbolic statements and calls for action are too little, too late. One reason why youthful climate strikers and unions haven’t converged more is that the two groups speak different languages: for trade unionists, a strike is the withdrawal of one’s labour from the employer to win a demand, whereas for the Fridays for Future movement, the political strike appears to be an end in itself. Yet, while some might regard  this as naïve, such strikes have become a commonly used tactic within the global feminist movement. In any event, the climate strike won’t be enough on its own to avert what Naomi Klein has labelled ‘climate barbarism’.

Climate-justice unionism

There are only a few examples of unions bringing environmental and workplace issues together in their organising. Yet changing our broken model of economics depends on a climate-justice unionism which challenges runaway climate change, rising inequality and low union density. This would develop actions workers can take at their workplace or in collective negotiations at the sectoral level.

A climate-justice unionism is not anything new. It was born in east London in 1888, when young women workers took industrial action against hazardous working conditions, including exposure to white phosphorus which disfigured their faces. The matchgirls’ strike initiated a ‘new unionism’  in Britain, giving confidence to different groups of workers, beyond skilled men, to campaign for a reduction in working hours—a policy which remains central to reducing CO2 emissions.

Members of today’s low-wage workforce, including care workers, cleaners and security guards, face significant health-and-safety risks: cleaning polluted industrial sites, guarding nuclear-power stations, caring for older people in high-temperature environments and so on. Outsourcing such work has not only left these groups without sick pay or pension rights but also at the sharp end of the climate crisis. Not only are these some of the fastest growing occupational groups but they are also those with the lowest rates of unionisation.

Unions can use their organisational and institutional leverage to facilitate workers organising themselves. Collectively workers know how to improve work processes for the benefit of everyone. Climate-justice unionism would rebuild workers’ power at the workplace and at company level, with the goal of regulating multinational corporations from below. The ‘Climate proof our work’ campaign by the International Trades Union Congress is one way to start this process of rebuilding worker power and is the perfect antidote to company environmental campaigns which too often amount only to ‘greenwashing’.

At the sectoral level, unions could facilitate workers to engage in industry-wide bargaining with employers. Democratising the bargaining process would not only engender a democratic spirit among workers but also force companies to act collectively in the interest of their industry and its stakeholders. A climate-justice unionism would use education and health-and-safety provisions within collective agreements to upskill workers and refit companies, with the goal of reducing carbon emissions and enhancing labour standards.

As the social-power approach to ‘just transition’ involves creating labour-community coalitions, so would a climate-justice unionism involve organising ‘the whole worker’. Workers’ issues are after all not only rooted in their workplaces but also in their communities. For example, low-wage workers are also more likely to live in polluted areas. Moreover, politicians are moving to introducing taxes on CO2 emissions which disproportionately affect low-wage workers. Climate change will require unions to rebuild worker power—economically, socially and politically—if they are serious about working people not paying the price for the mitigation of climate change and a transition to a carbon-neutral economy.

Mark Bergfeld
Mark Bergfeld

Mark Bergfeld is the director of property services and UNICARE at UNI Global Union—Europa, representing cleaners, security workers and private care. He holds a PhD from Queen Mary University of London.

You are here: Home / Politics / From Fridays for Future to a global climate-justice unionism?

Most Popular Posts

European civil war,iron curtain,NATO,Ukraine,Gorbachev The new European civil warGuido Montani
Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse

Most Recent Posts

HMPs,CMR,hazardous medicinal products,carcinogenic, mutagenic and reprotoxic,health workers Protecting health workers from hazardous productsIan Lindsley, Tony Musu and Adam Rogalewski
geopolitical,Europe Options for Europe’s ‘geopolitical’ futureJon Bloomfield
democracy,democratic Reviving democracy in a fragmented EuropeSusanne Wixforth and Kaoutar Haddouti
EU social agenda,social investment,social protection EU social agenda beyond 2024—no time to wasteFrank Vandenbroucke
pension reform,Germany,Lindner Pension reform in Germany—a market solution?Fabian Mushövel and Nicholas Barr

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube