Trade Unions in the Green Economy: Working for the Environment

by Nora Räthzel (editor), David Uzzell (Editor)

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.

288 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2012

About the author

Nora Räthzel is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Umeå (Sweden). Her main research areas are environmental labour studies, transnational corporations and gender and ethnic relations in the everyday. Publications include: Marxist-Feminists Theories and Struggles Today with Khayaat Fakier and Diana Mulinari (eds.); Transnational Corporations from the Standpoint of Workers with Diana Mulinari and Aina Tollefsen; rade Unions in the Green Economy. Working for the Environment (with David Uzzell, eds.).

Reviews

[Miriam Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some articles were great, others less well written. Everything I understood (which wasn't everything) was interesting.

[Rohit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the essays in this book were very interesting and informative; others were dry and boring and vague. Still, overall this is a very useful book if you're looking for academic research and analysis on the intersection of labor organizing and environmentalism around the world, whether you're looking for basic information or more nitty-gritty insights.

The most interesting essays where the ones which got specific about the way trade unions incorporated environmental concerns into their programs and strategies, and the various factors behind this, and the differences between different countries' trade unions, between places like the US, Sweden, Australia, Spain, Brazil, and South Africa.