The global take-up of the concept of the just transition is arguably one of the labour movement’s great success stories. The idea that responses to climate change should take account of both the quantity and quality of jobs has moved the debate away from solely technical questions about its effects, or about the process of changing production methods, towards the social consequences of these changes. Clearly this is not to discount the importance of those technical questions, but rather to recognise that decarbonisation will have consequences for workers and communities that cannot simply be treated as a secondary consideration. Irrespective of whether all members of the international community ascribe to the original, more radical concept of just transition, or bring their own definition to the table, the fact that it is now recognised in international agreements and has remained a cornerstone of the debate is to be celebrated.
Together with the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Global Union Federations (GUFs) have played a central role in getting the idea into global climate governance. Climate change is a global collective action problem, even if the institutions through which workers are represented remain largely national. Because the GUFs operate across these scales, they have been able to bring workers’ interests into negotiations in which organised labour might otherwise have been treated as a peripheral stakeholder. This work reflects their role as norms entrepreneurs in global governance, as evidenced by their role at the Conference of the Parties (COP). As one GUF official described it, the aim is to “occupy spaces that we may not have occupied before, not necessarily because we can get quick wins, but because if we don’t occupy those spaces, we allow narratives to be built without our input”.
Representing the diverse membership that GUFs have is trickier, however. Just transition is concerned with what happens to workers whose jobs are lost or transformed by decarbonisation. It raises questions about whether new employment can be created, whether skills can be transferred, and whether workers have a meaningful voice in these changes and their impact on work, place and community. These questions are not easily answerable for trade unions representing workers across different industries and countries, particularly since many of the sectors in which unions are well established (mining, manufacturing and transport, for example) are also sectors that are central to the decarbonisation process.
This does not mean that workers or unions are necessarily opposed to action on climate change. However, we cannot assume that the material interests of members coincide with a particular (international) understanding of what a just transition should look like. It is relatively straightforward to establish a commitment to ‘decent work’ as a common principle across their membership. The idea of a just transition is less simple. The question of what is ‘just’ (as opposed to what is ‘decent’) immediately raises questions about who is included and who decides. The idea of ‘transition’ raises questions about what is being transitioned from and to, and what institutional form it takes. Stated more concisely, the core question is what happens when these ideas come to ground.
This is potentially an even more difficult question for the GUFs. How can the idea of a just transition be activated and adapted by their members in very different workplaces, countries and sectors without losing the institutional or ideational power that made the concept useful in the first place? The experience of the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF) in the Philippines provides an interesting example of this problem.
In 2017, the Philippines government launched the Public Utility Vehicle Modernization Program (PUVMP), which aimed to replace around 179,000 of the jeepneys that constitute the country’s main form of urban public transport with electric or Euro IV-compliant vehicles. Although the programme was framed in terms of the country’s climate commitments, the group of people most affected was the sector’s highly informal workforce. Most drivers rent their vehicle from an operator for a fixed daily sum and keep whatever fares remain. Some 80 per cent of operators own a single jeepney. To qualify for an equity subsidy that covered only a fraction of the cost of a new vehicle, operators had to surrender their jeepneys for scrapping and consolidate themselves into fleets holding at least 15 vehicles.
The ITF’s two affiliates took very different approaches to this common challenge. Pagkakaisa ng mga Samahan ng Tsuper at Opereytor Nationwide (PISTON) – which is affiliated to the radical-left Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) – rejected the PUVMP outright, engaging in repeated transport strikes. Some of its members were arrested and others were subsequently threatened with the cancellation of their franchises. After also initially opposing the PUVMP, the National Confederation of Transportworkers Union (NCTU) – an affiliate of the centre-left Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa (SENTRO) – shifted to a strategy of critical engagement. It reorganised its members into transport cooperatives and worked with the Move As One coalition to press for higher subsidies and a permanent extension of a service contracting scheme first introduced as a form of pandemic relief. These efforts contributed to successive increases in the subsidy and a commitment to a ‘just transition for all’ in the department order establishing the Public Transport Modernization Program in 2023.
The ITF skilfully navigated this divergence, helping the NCTU to establish cooperatives while also publicising PISTON-led strikes. However, its influence on how the concept of a just transition was taken up and used was limited. PISTON had first heard of the concept through the ITF, whereas the NCTU had already encountered the term from SENTRO. However, in both cases, its use was very much limited at the national level and in external engagement, with neither union seeing any utility in socialising it among their grassroots members.
It goes without saying that the question of how just transition is translated into specific national sectoral settings is important for its future effectiveness. As the idea makes its way further from international negotiations and into particular workplaces, its meaning will inevitably be contested by workers who have their own understandings of what needs to change. This contestation also extends to the assumptions about formal employment and social dialogue that are built into the concept.
The difficulty is finding the right balance. If just transition can mean almost anything, its political usefulness is weakened. At the same time, if its meaning is defined too narrowly, it may have little relevance to the lived experiences of workers, especially in institutional contexts that are very different from those in which the concept was first developed. The ITF managed this tension in the Philippines by maintaining a consistent framing while accommodating the divergent strategies adopted by its affiliates. This approach preserved its relationship with both unions but meant supporting the campaigns of an affiliate to resist an environmental transition.
The ITF’s experience in the Philippines points towards a broader question about the GUFs’ role in the climate transition. The success of the just transition at the global level has created an institutional ‘space’ for labour in debates from which it might otherwise have been excluded. The question is what labour can do with this foothold. We think the answer is not necessarily for GUFs to produce more, or even more effective, global policy on climate change, but rather to take advantage of this foothold to help build and activate the collective power necessary for workers to shape the transition on their terms.
Huw Thomas is an Assistant Professor of Employment Relations at the UCD College of Business, where he is part of the Human Resource Management and Employment Relations group. His research focuses broadly on international employment relations and the future of work, with a particular focus on global labour governance.
Professor Michele Ford is based in the Discipline of Asian Studies at the University of Sydney, Australia. Her research focuses on Southeast Asian labour movements, the intersection between national and international trade unions, union responses to temporary labour migration and labour’s engagement in the political sphere.
Michael Gillan is an Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia Business School. His current research interests include the role of Global Union Federations in employment relations in India and Indonesia, employment relations in global production networks, labour movements in India, and employment relations in Myanmar. He is the former President of the South Asian Studies Association of Australia.
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