An alternative socio-ecological strategy? International trade unions’ engagement with climate change

ABSTRACT

In the context of a global ecological crisis, it is an important move when trade unions turn to environmentalism. Yet, the form that this environmentalism takes is often overlooked. This is especially the case with international trade unions. Based on an empirical study of international trade unions’ engagement with the climate change issue, this article argues that international trade unions follow three different (and partially conflicting) strategies. I label these strategies as ‘deliberative’, ‘collaborative growth’ and ‘socialist’, and I examine each in turn. I argue that such analysis is important if we want to identify the potential for transforming the social relations of production that are at the root of the current climate crisis, and for identifying an alternative socio-ecological strategy.

KEYWORDS:

• Climate change
• trade unions
• international political economy
• strategy
• international labour studies
• environmental politics

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The research for this paper has been made possible through a young researcher grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (PBLAP1-134448), and from the Fondation du 450ème anniversaire de l'Université de Lausanne, which are gratefully acknowledged. I would like to thank Noel Castree, Dan Gallin, Cynthia Kraus, Jerónimo Montero Bressán, Nafi Niang, Raphaël Ramuz, and Dave Spooner, as well as the anonymous reviewers, for their help and comments in the preparation of this article. I have been accredited by the ITUC to gain access to the UNFCCC's precinct in Durban. My warmest thanks go to Anabella Rosemberg and Lora Verheecke of the ITUC, to have organised this. My thanks also go to Alana Dave and to Marion Hellmann for securing my access to the ITF and BWI conferences respectively.

Notes

¹The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) is the confederation of national trade union confederations. It resulted from the merger, in 2006, of two previous international confederations: the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), which had a broadly socialist and social-democratic orientation, and the World Confederation of Labour (WCL), which was essentially a confederation of Christian trade unions (Gallin, 2006). The so-called ‘Global Unions’ (formerly known as ‘International Trade Secretariats’) organise workers’ organisations along broad economic sectors, such as, for instance, the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF), the International Federation of Chemical, Energy, Mine and General Workers’ Unions (ICEM) and the Building and Wood Workers’ International (BWI). For useful background information on the international trade union movement, see Waterman (2001), Harrod and O’Brien (2003), Hodkinson (2005) and Stevis and Boswell (2008). A detailed analysis of Global Union Federations (GUFs) is given in Croucher and Cotton (2009). In this paper, I use the concept of ‘international trade unions’ (ITUs) to refer to ITUC, the GUFs and associated organisations such as the Trade Union Advisory Committee to the OECD (TUAC). Let us also note that since early 2012, ICEM, as well as two other GUFs, have merged into a new GUF called ‘IndustriALL’.

²Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for asking me to clarify this point.

³That is, how trade unions in industrialised countries can increase their membership (e.g., Dörre et al., 2009).

⁴To give just one example, an expert working for the international trade union movement told me that he formerly supported the views expressed in the ‘green jobs’ report (UNEP, 2008; more on that below) – what I call the ‘deliberative’ strategy. However, the global economic crisis and the ensuing realignment of power relations have convinced him that organising an alliance with the progressive ‘green’ segment of the bourgeoisie will prove to be infructuous, so he now supports a more confrontational perspective (what I call the ‘socialist’ strategy).

⁵SustainLabour is the International Labour Foundation for Sustainable Development, which has its headquarters in Spain. It was set up by some trade union members of ITUC with funding from the Spanish government. It is partly funded by the ILO and UNEP. Its current president is the secretary general of ITUC. SustainLabour acts as a ‘think-tank’ and an expert pool for ITUC and affiliated members on sustainability and climate change in particular.

⁶Of course, there are two explanations for the hegemonic acceptance by national trade unions of the importance of ITUs tackling the issue of climate change in a progressive environmental perspective. This can be seen either as a sign that the national trade unions are themselves convinced of the importance of this topic (and that, therefore, ITUs do reflect their concerns and priorities correctly) or as a consequence of the rather weak position of ITUs versus national trade unions and their relative unimportance (thereby allowing them to develop specific policies that may or may not be implemented by their affiliates). These two explanations are not mutually exclusive. Yet, it is remarkable that no national trade union affiliate has publicly and actively opposed the ITUs’ course of action on climate change.

⁷Ecological modernisation is defined as ‘the discourse that recognizes the structural character of the environmental problematique but none the less assumes that existing political, economic, and social institutions can internalize the care for the environment’ (Hajer, 1995: 25; see also Warner, 2010).

⁸The ‘council of global unions’ was created in 2007 to unite ITUC with the global union federations. It exists mainly as a website. However, one of its first interventions was to edit a pamphlet detailing the notions of ‘green growth’, ‘just transition’ and ‘green jobs’ (CGU, 2009). This pamphlet is very much in line with the ‘deliberative’ model analysed below.

⁹‘Deliberative’ is not used here in the sense of the political theories of deliberative democracy, but rather as an indication of the non-conflictual method of resolving differences favoured by this strategy. These notions are of course not exclusive to the ‘deliberative’ strategy, but also part of the socialist one, but, whereas the latter conceives them as goals to be attained through a struggle against a political enemy and ultimately through a transformation of social relations, the former believes in their completion through dialogue, mutual understanding and enlightened education. In other words, the former sees only a disagreement, whereas the latter sees a contradiction.

¹⁰Let us also note, as the literature on labour's environmentalism has shown, that in industrialised countries, alliances between environmentalists and trade unions have often been one-sided, with environmental activists less keen on reciprocating labour's support (Gould et al., 2004: 104–7).

¹¹The question of international labour solidarity, world trade and relations with NGOs is actually quite complex and varies enormously across time and space. For detailed analyses, see O’Brien (2000), Hensman (2001) and Bieler (2013).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Romain Felli

Romain Felli (PhD in Political Science, University of Lausanne, Switzerland) is Researcher at the University of Basel and part-time Lecturer at the University of Lausanne. He is a former Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester (UK). His scientific interests are in environmental governance, international political economy, and political theory. His current research project is on international trade unions and climate change, and he has recently published (in 2012) ‘Managing Climate Insecurity by Ensuring Continuous Capital Accumulation: “Climate Refugees” and “Climate Migrants”‘ in New Political Economy.