The ‘just transition’ is a hard fought-for concept that demands a fair and inclusive transition to a low-carbon economy for all. But it has also become a buzzword used liberally by businesses and bureaucrats who, critics say, have often drained it of meaning or co-opted it to their own agendas.

The International Trade Union Confederation’s (ITUC) Just Transition Centre (JTC) has fought for a just transition on Tesla workers’ picket lines and with investors whose broken funding promises leave unions and their members high and dry. Giulia Laganà, the Centre’s director, says it is time to “go back to old school union tactics,” because “even in the US, unions have won battles in the last few years against Amazon and the big auto manufacturers by showing that through action and collective bargaining, you achieve results”.

Laganà spoke with Equal Times shortly after she and her co-director (until the end of 2024) Diana Junquera Curiel were awarded the 2024 WIN WIN Gothenburg Sustainability Award, one of the world’s leading sustainability prizes, in recognition of the JTC work in ensuring that “workers actively participate in shaping the green transition”.

What does the phrase ‘just transition’ mean to you?

The just transition concept goes back to the 1970s. It came out of an alliance between unions in the United States and environmental groups and was codified in the Paris climate agreement in 2015. We envisage a clean energy transition within planetary boundaries that is just and provides good green jobs. We don’t just want to move people into greener industries but to make sure that jobs aren’t lost, and that new positions are safe, decent and secure.

How is the Just Transition Centre working toward that goal?

We get unions all over the world to talk to – and learn from – each other’s strategies and tactics. We help them to form coalitions between the global south and north. We provide material, cross-sectoral support to get people involved in negotiations and discussions. We also collect and share good practices for learning purposes. Unions are often seen as blockers – rather than enablers – of the climate transition, so we’re setting up a ‘good practices’ database to show how you can shut down a dirty industry – or open a new clean one – while placing workers at the centre of your plans.

How do bad faith actors sometimes pay lip service to the just transition?

Fossil fuel multinationals may clean up their image and invest in renewables, touting their green credentials while replicating the same models they used in the dirty industries. Often, they just talk about the number of jobs a new renewable energy plant creates, without going into details about the jobs there or the workers employed. Are they the same ones laid off in the previous polluting industry, or new people?

All the Gulf countries’ state-owned oil conglomerates are now investing in solar and wind energy, and we see very similar patterns of exploitation there. They’re mainly employing, and severely exploiting, migrant workers. In the Maghreb, they’re dispossessing local communities by land theft and land grabbing. The just transition must benefit communities too. A worker may retain their job but if their land is no longer accessible or their water is being depleted by a solar plant, then their communities may still suffer a net loss.

Which industrial sectors and governments are most and least advanced here?

Strong union action forced businesses like the Danish power company Ørsted to negotiate a global framework agreement with unions across their entire supply and value chain, enshrining the rights they’ve granted to Danish workers across the world. Governments like Spain are taking good steps with the EU’s post-Covid recovery funds. Spain came up with Just Transition Territorial Plans for coal mines and thermal plants and convened stakeholder processes with unions, companies, local government and communities. They invested EU funds in new industries or in training and skills development. So far, it has been a success story and has only led to a small number of relocations. When a coal plant is closed and workers are offered jobs elsewhere, it means uprooting families, partners being split up or having to move and Spain mostly avoided that. Italy is the complete opposite, as there is no climate planning at all and massive support for the fossil fuel industry there.

Sometimes, ideological factors are in play. Elon Musk [CEO of Tesla, SpaceX and one of the world’s richest men] has a rabidly anti-union agenda. He talks about destroying unions. In Sweden, workers at Tesla’s service stations have been on strike for over a year. We were on a picket line with them in Gothenburg recently. It was like a 19th century wild west capitalism. Tesla Sweden had brought in strike busters from other countries, as well as completely unqualified people who were working in McDonalds the week before, to service their cars. There was no business reason for doing that. The company was losing tons of money. It was purely to break the unions in Sweden, because if they can do it there – where solidarity strikes are allowed, and you can go on strike indefinitely and receive pay – they can break unions anywhere.

Some US unions perceive green collar jobs as less secure, less unionised, with less rights or pay than legacy jobs. Do you think that has affected US politics?

I think there are bigger factors in the US political debate, like the Inflation Reduction Act, and the speed with which its benefits will become apparent. But it’s true that jobs in the fossil sector tend to be unionised, secure, stable with benefits across the board. Where those industries close down and renewable firms step in, the labour market often fragments, utilities are privatised, substandard working conditions are introduced with precarious contracts, short term or temporary employment, and so on.

A ‘greenlash’ can also be manipulated by actors with a vested interest in the status quo. In Nigeria, people who live in the Niger Delta have borne the brunt of the environmental catastrophe wreaked by oil majors for decades. Their rivers and food sources were poisoned, but good jobs have been created (even if mostly for workers from elsewhere in Nigeria). It’s hard to tell a Nigerian worker their industry has to shut down, because nothing else with those conditions is on offer.

Is it valid to say that if you increase workers’ pay and conditions in the green sector you raise business costs and disadvantage it in the race to quit fossil fuels?

I don’t think so. We know fossil fuels have no viable long-term future. It’s a dying industry. A transition is inevitable, and the oil majors know it. But renewable companies are enjoying huge private and governmental investment while cutting labour costs. They have to sit down and talk to unions or face industrial action, and falling productivity, as less qualified workers come into the sector.

Some people argue that job losses among older auto workers will be compensated by green collar jobs downstream so unions should tone down these protests…

Sadly, in some industries, there will be fewer jobs. Many of the jobs created when renewable energy plants open are short term as they just need maintenance afterwards. People are employed for longer on oil rigs. In electric vehicle production, most studies show a decrease in the number of jobs due to automation and fewer components. You need investment in skills training so that people, including older workers, can switch jobs. Most countries in the Global South don’t have that. That’s why climate finance is so important. If workers buy into the green transition, it’s going to happen quicker and more smoothly than if you rush things through over their heads.

Some also say that lithium mining is less dangerous than coal mining …

Any mining is dangerous if the mines aren’t safe. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where lots of transition minerals come from, the conditions are abysmal, including child labour. That’s because we have unregulated territories controlled by militias rather than bona fide actors that respect these environments. Most workers in the Global South are employed informally and have few rights, or bargaining power so they can’t force better rules on companies.

What’s the minimum that workers need when legacy industries are shuttered?

Alternative jobs with the same conditions, benefits and guarantees and/or the right kind of training to move to other jobs. If – as in Spain – people are not ‘employed’ while doing skills training, there should be social protection to ensure they’re not left destitute. Social protection is the key ingredient. Global North countries usually have social welfare systems. Global South countries mostly do not.

One problem in the Global North is that unions are often seen as being part of the establishment, close to particular parties, and so part of the elite. That causes distrust in lots of working-class communities who feel let down. We must listen to them. We also have to be careful that we don’t get co-opted into greenwashing oil majors that just include a non-binding just transition annex in their sustainability plans, while continuing to invest in fossil fuels.

Is that a problem with the transition in Gulf states too?

Absolutely. In the Gulf, they’re converting to 100 per cent renewables for domestic consumption so they can offer their citizens cleaner air and tout their green credentials at the annual UN climate conference [known as the COP]. But they’re also making sure to pump every last drop of oil for export and for plastics and chemicals production (as demonstrated by the breakdown of the plastics treaty negotiations last weekend), to keep revenues flowing, their citizens onside and to maintain their super luxurious lifestyles and high power consumption.

How can the COP process influence the just transition?

We’ve had big successes. We now have just transition work programme as one stream in the COP negotiations. But if they’re just a title and two meetings a year where nothing gets decided, the unions that bought into the process will be disillusioned. It’s clear that the COP process has to return to a format that benefits all, not just a minority. The just transition is not just about degrees centigrade or megawatts of energy. It’s about making sure that Indigenous communities, women, workers and minorities don’t see their rights trampled on and that should be reflected in the way that COPs function. Civil society has to have a voice. In some of the most recent COPs, civil society hasn’t been allowed to shout slogans or make a noise and just walk around holding placards in the cities where the COPs are being hosted. What does that say?

It says: “Shut up!” But don’t COPs have a limited value when they coincide almost every year with new records for emissions, temperatures and fossil fuel lobbying?

Yes, but what’s the alternative? A climate security council with a handful of countries deciding the fate of humanity? That wouldn’t work because there’d be no buy-in from anybody else. The climate crisis is a planetary one, so you have to get everyone on board. Heading towards 2.5-3 degrees Centigrade of warming by 2100 is huge and will massively impact our planet and humanity. But before the Paris agreement, we were heading towards 6 or 7 degrees’ warming. Even in their broken, stumbling, slow way, COPs have helped to cut emissions, and we now know where we need to go. It’s just a question of political will and unions can help to push governments to reacquire that.