Documents Uzzell, David 10 results

"A comprehensive handbook that addresses the relationship between nature and labour from the point of view of workers as social actors against globalising environmental degradation
Provides a wide-ranging account that connects the policies and struggles of workers, peasants, and indigenous populations for a socially and environmentally sustainable form of production and livelihoods across the world
Takes a truly global perspective, incorporating perspectives from the Global North and Global South where critiques of and strategies against environmental degradation are often very different
An interdisciplinary approach to the subject allowing researchers and practitioners to engage and advance the creation of theory about the relationship"

"This paper aims to advance knowledge about corporate environmentalism by using new concepts and methods. We broaden the concept of the firm as “differentiated composite actor” by including not only managers but workers and unionists as actors. We descend into the “hidden abode of production” using Lefebvre's concept of “everyday life” to explore the barriers environmental policies experience in this sphere. We base our explorations on life-history interviews to understand how the imaginaries of production are embedded in people's self-conceptions. We identify seven barriers to the implementation of environmental practices: deficient regulations, collusion between controller and controlled, de-prioritisation, hierarchism, compartmentalisation, specialisation, and social unsustainability. A “necessity discourse,” legitimating the priority of efficiency and product quality over environmental sustainability, subjugates alternative sustainable practices. The paper concludes with a discussion of the results in the light of previous investigations, suggesting that the concept of the everyday could enrich future research."

"Trade unions are actively engaging with the climate change agenda and formulating climate change policies. Although governments are placing considerable effort on changing consumer behaviour, arguably the most significant impacts on climate change will be through changes in production. Even changes in consumption will have consequences for production. Changes in production will affect workers through the loss of jobs, the changing of jobs, and the creation of new jobs. The jobs versus environment dilemma is a significant issue affecting workers worldwide. In this paper we focus on the ways in which international trade unions are conceptualising the relationship between jobs and the environment, which provide the point of departure from which climate change policies can be formulated. Extended interviews were conducted with senior policy makers in national and international trade unions. On the basis of their responses, four discourses of trade union engagement with climate change are discussed: ‘technological fix', ‘social transformation', ‘mutual interests' and ‘social movement', which are theorised in the context of the different international histories and models of trade unionism. All discourses imply a re-invention of unions as social movements but do not see nature as a partner in human development."

"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."

"This article begins with examples of successful union policies and actions in the workplace, paying particular attention to Comisiones Obreras (Spain), TUC (United Kingdom) and NUMSA (South Africa). It argues that some of the ways in which the concept of just transition has been translated into international trade union policies fail to recognize the inseparable relationship between labour and nature. Showing that natural resources do not allow a green growth, it suggests five steps for an alternative path to a just transition."

"We present the life histories of two environmentally engaged unionists in South Africa, who were decisive for formulating the environmental programmes of their respective trade unions. Their experiences of participating in the resistance against apartheid in universities and factories taught them the necessity to connect different struggles and equipped them with the knowledge and ability to connect the fight for workers' rights with the fight against environmental degradation. Both activists experienced the difficulty of integrating ‘the environment' politically and practically into a trade union agenda. The labour movement has traditionally experienced nature as a place outside of work to be enjoyed for recreation. While nature constitutes an indispensable condition for labour, it has been privately appropriated by Capital. For environmental policies to form an integral part of union agendas, nature needs to be wrestled away from its appropriation by Capital and understood as an inseparable ally of labour."

"The globalisation of work division and global Climate Change are closely linked through the process of economically driven globalisation. In principle, trade unions are best equipped to challenge the destructive results of these globalising processes: they organise workers across national divides and within national borders, being simultaneously local and global. However, a closer look at labour policies in countries of the global North and the global South reveals that historical power relations reproduce themselves in the relationships between unions of the global North and the global South. These power relations influence the ways in which unions in the North and South perceive climate change and climate change measures. The authors show that there are nevertheless ways in which unions of the North and the South are learning from each other and from environmental movements exploring alternative models of development."

"This article compares how visions for integrating environmental issues into the union agenda are articulated from two different positions in the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO). The article is based on an analysis of ‘life history interviews' and directs attention to the biographical circumstances under which individuals are able to work with environmental issues in unions. The analysis shows that the conditions for integrating environmental issues are weakened by the hierarchical culture of the organisation and by high levels of institutionalisation. LO furthermore lacks routines for mobilising the interests of environmental enthusiasts, and being positioned at headquarters hampers the abilities of union officials to mobilise environmental interests among members. Comparing the experiences from Sweden with the case of Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) in Spain shows that success depends on a relationship between individual engagement and political. Union transformation is contingent on developing issues that connect the immediate interests of workers with their long-term interests as citizens, such that a new workers' identity can develop and lead to practices that overcome the ‘metabolic rift'."

"This study examines the intersection of individual life-histories, organisational histories and societal histories and reveals how religion, in several different expressions, serves to provide a connection between justice for workers and justice for the environment in the work of trade unionists. The trade union movement is generally seen as secular, and thus in our life history interviews religion as a backdrop to labour activists' formation was unexpected. Religion becomes manifest in various ways, partly through experiences in the present or at formative periods in unionists' lives, but also through its cultural embeddedness in language and collective memory. In this way it serves to provide subtle influences on beliefs, concepts of social justice and daily action."

"We investigate whether and how workers in a transnational oil corporation carry practices, meanings, and identities between the places of work and home, focusing on environmental and health and safety practices, in order to understand the larger question, how can environmentally relevant practices be generalized in society at large? Our theoretical starting point is that societal institutions function according to different logics (Thornton et al., 2012) and the borders (Clark, 2000) between these institutions create affordances and constraints on the transfer of practices between these places. By connecting their theoretical ideas, we suggest that these provide an alternative critique and explanatory account of the transfer of environmental practices between home and work than a “spillover” approach. We employ life history interviews to explore the development and complexity of the causes, justifications, and legitimations of people's actions, social relationships, and the structural constraints which govern relationships between these spaces. While Clark's concepts of permeable, strong, or blended borders are useful heuristic tools, people may simultaneously strengthen, transgress, or blend the borders between work and home in terms of practices, meanings, identities, or institutional logics. Individuals have to be understood as creators of the border crossing process, which is why their life histories and the ways in which their identities and their attachments to places (i.e., institutions) are shaped by the logics of these places are important. For environmental practices to travel from work to home, they need to become embedded in a company culture that allows their integration into workers' identities."