Documents Kalt, Tobias 2 results

"Climate and labor movements clash over the need to keep fossil fuels in the ground versus protecting industrial jobs. In examining movement-countermovement dynamics in the coal transition in Germany, I analyze how labor and climate movements engage in discursive struggles about the meaning of justice in the just transition. In combining Gramscian theory with a narrative approach, my focus is on how labor and climate movements construct narratives around justice claims in the struggle over the hegemony of coal. In the case examined, claims about distributional, restorative, procedural and recognition justice are pitted against each other in jobs versus climate narratives. The results show that the inability to resolve the justice dilemma ultimately weakened counterhegemonic challenges and delayed the coal transition. This points to the need for transformative just transitions that bridge jobs versus climate divides and for a closer look at conflicts, contradictions and tensions in just transitions."

"Green transitions create major challenges to union power in carbon-intensive economies as well as opportunities for the renewal of union power. This research asks why sometimes unions oppose or delay green transitions while other times unions are more open to green transitions and may even become strong transition supporters. In drawing on the Power Resource Approach, I argue that unions are neither natural opponents nor supporters of green transitions but instead engage strategically with green transitions. Unions' strategic choices to pursue oppositional, reactive, affirmative or transformative transition strategies is guided by an imperative to maintain or expand their power resources. The strategic choices unions make are influenced by several contextual conditions. In a comparative case study on coal transitions in South Africa and Germany, I identify the following contextual conditions: sectoral interests, organisational identity, internal structure, coalitions, political- and socio-economic environment, governance context and public discourse. Regarding each of these, I show how unions make strategic choices to protect or expand different power resources and become agents of transition or defenders of the status quo. This paper contributes to empirical research on drivers behind union transition strategies and offers an analytical framework to explain unions' strategic choices in green transitions."