Räthzel, Nora and David Uzzell (eds) (2012) Trade Unions in the Green Economy: Working for the environment. London: Earthscan/Routledge.
Combating climate change will increasingly
impact on production industries and the workers they employ as
production changes and consumption is targeted. Yet research has largely
ignored labour and its responses. This book brings together
sociologists, psychologists, political scientists, historians,
economists, and representatives from international and local unions
based in Australia, Brazil, South Africa, Taiwan, Spain, Sweden, the UK
and the USA. Together they open up a new area of research: Environmental
Labour Studies.
The authors ask what kind of environmental policies are unions in
different countries and sectors developing. How do they aim to reconcile
the protection of jobs with the protection of the environment? What are
the forms of cooperation developing between trade unions and
environmental movements, especially the so-called Red-Green alliances?
Under what conditions are unions striving to create climate change
policies that transcend the economic system? Where are they trying to
find solutions that they see as possible within the present
socio-economic conditions? What are the theoretical and practical
implications of trade unions’ "Just Transition", and the problems and
perspectives of "Green Jobs"? The authors also explore how food workers’
rights would contribute to low carbon agriculture, the role workers’
identities play in union climate change policies, and the difficulties
of creating solidarity between unions across the global North and South.
Trade Unions in the Green Economy opens the climate change
debate to academics and trade unionists from a range of disciplines in
the fields of labour studies, environmental politics, environmental
management, and climate change policy. It will also be useful for
environmental organisations, trade unions, business, and politicians.
Table
of Contents
1. David Uzzell and Nora
Räthzel: Mending the breach between labour and nature:
A case for environmental
labour studies
Trade
Union Perspectives
2.
Anabella
Rosemberg: Developing global environmental union policies through the
ITUC
3. Laura
Martín Murillo: Making the environment a trade union issue
4. Lene Olsen, Dorit Kemter: International Labour Organization
and the Environment:
the way to a socially just transition for workers
5. Peter
Rossman: Food workers’ rights as a path to a low-carbon agriculture.
6. Begoña
Maria-Tome Gil: Moving towards eco-unionism: reflecting the Spanish
experience
7. Lars
Henriksson: Cars, crisis, climate change
and class struggle
Analyses
of Trade Union Environmental Policies across the Globe
8. Jacklyn
Cock and Rob Lambert: The neo-liberal global
economy and nature: redefining the trade union role
9.
Andrew
Bennie: Questions for Trade Unions on land, livelihoods and jobs
10. João Paulo Candia Veiga, Scott B. Martin: Climate Change, Trade Unions and rural workers in
labour-environmental alliances in the Amazon Rainforest
11. Verity
Burgmann: From ‘jobs versus
environment’ to ‘green-collar jobs’: Australian trade unions and the climate
change debate
12.
Darryn
Snell and Peter Fairbrother: Just Transition and labour
environmentalism in Australia
13. Hwa-Jen
Liu: Will they tie the knot? Labour and environmental
trajectories in Taiwan and South Korea
14. Dimitris
Stevis: Green Jobs? Good Jobs? Just Jobs? USA Labour Unions confront climate change
15. Sean
Sweeney: U.S. Trade Unions and the challenge of “extreme energy” The case of
the TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline
16. Meg
Gingrich: From
Blue to Green: a comparative study of blue-collar unions’ reactions to the
climate change threat in the United States and Sweden
17. John
Barry: Trade Unions and
the transition away from ‘actually existing unsustainability’: from economic
crisis to a new political economy beyond growth
18.
David
Uzzell and Nora Räthzel: Local place and global space:
solidarity across borders and the question of the environment
