When a workplace closes, the promise of a new job elsewhere offers little reassurance to someone who cannot relocate, afford to retrain or manage a prolonged loss of income. Even where decarbonisation benefits the economy as a whole, its costs can fall heavily on workers and communities whose livelihoods depend on the activities being phased out.
How those costs are shared depends partly on workers’ bargaining power. Through unions, workers can influence investment decisions and negotiate the terms on which change takes place. Enforceable rights would give that bargaining a stronger foundation by establishing obligations that employers cannot withdraw when negotiations become difficult. The European Parliament’s January 2026 resolution on a just transition directive provides an opportunity to develop such a framework.
Who carries the costs?
In our article, ‘Defining just transition’, we propose assessing policies by the burden they place on the most affected group, measured in relation to its resources. Among feasible policies that achieve the same environmental goal, the preferred option is the one that makes the greatest relative burden as small as possible, accounting for benefits and people’s capacity to absorb losses during and after the transition.
Two workers facing the same loss of earnings may therefore need quite different support. Someone with savings and transferable skills living in an area with several employers has options unavailable to a worker in a specialised occupation in a town dependent on one industry. An identical redundancy payment or training offer will not give them comparable prospects, particularly if taking another job means leaving behind affordable housing or family support.
This gives unions a basis for assessing transition plans and setting bargaining priorities. Negotiations should consider whether changing investment schedules, protecting incomes during retraining or creating employment where jobs are disappearing would reduce the burden on those most affected. These choices concern who pays for decarbonisation and how its benefits are shared, so workers need sufficient influence to challenge the arrangements employers initially propose.
The limits of voluntary commitments
The gas-sector negotiations in 2024 show how much can depend on employers’ willingness to conclude an agreement. According to EPSU and industriAll Europe, nine months of negotiations produced an agreement between employer and union delegations that Eurogas, the employers’ organisation, subsequently failed to adopt. It envisaged company transition plans, training and support for workers moving between jobs, with workers and unions involved in the process.
The value of such commitments depends on how likely they are to be honoured. If two schemes promise the same reduction in the heaviest relative burdens, but one is less likely to deliver, workers can expect less relief from it. Leaving support optional therefore weakens protection even before a particular promise is broken. Binding rights, backed by effective enforcement, would give unions a minimum level of protection to build upon when negotiating more favourable arrangements.
Bargaining over transition plans
EU law already provides information and consultation rights, including protections relating to collective redundancies and business transfers. A just transition framework should build on these foundations by requiring employers to negotiate transition plans with unions before investment locations and closure dates are effectively settled. To participate effectively, union representatives need timely access to relevant information, paid time to prepare and access to independent expertise.
Such negotiations should address how support will work for the people expected to use it. Training places offer limited help if workers cannot attend while meeting caring responsibilities or maintaining their earnings. Union representatives can bring these constraints into negotiations over paid retraining, redeployment and working time, helping to ensure that measures, which may look adequate on paper, can actually protect livelihoods.
The scope of bargaining also matters, because a plan covering directly employed staff may leave subcontracted workers facing the same closure with fewer resources. Unions need ways to coordinate bargaining across firms and supply chains, while sectoral agreements with broad coverage can establish common standards. Organising workers in insecure employment and representing their interests in these negotiations is therefore central to reducing the greatest relative burdens.
Unions should also be involved in shaping employment in the industries receiving new investment. Public support for low-carbon production should be tied to decent pay and security, together with workers’ freedom to organise and bargain collectively. Otherwise, moving into a growing sector may still mean losing protections previously secured through collective agreements. These conditions would give unions a role in shaping the jobs being created, as well as negotiating the consequences of closures.
Rights that strengthen collective bargaining
A European framework should provide a common foundation for these negotiations, with enforceable entitlements to paid training linked to credible employment opportunities, income protection during adjustment and help to secure suitable work near home. These entitlements should also cover workers in workplaces where unions are weak or absent. The quality of replacement jobs must matter, since re-employment can still leave someone facing a lasting deterioration in pay, security or working conditions.
Employers and public authorities should be required to assess who faces the greatest burdens and explain how their plans will reduce them. Unions need effective routes to challenge inadequate provision and breaches of agreed commitments, alongside labour inspectorates with the resources to investigate and enforce obligations. Where public subsidies are involved, the conditions attached to employment and training should be enforceable, with consequences for firms that fail to meet them.
Common rights would leave room for unions and employers to negotiate arrangements suited to their industry, while making it harder to shift the costs of restructuring onto workers and public budgets. Their effectiveness would depend on investment and industrial policy, as well as unions’ capacity to organise and hold employers to their commitments.
A just transition should ultimately be judged by whether workers carrying the greatest burdens have both effective protection and the collective power to influence the decisions that shape their future.
Giorgos Galanis is an Associater Professor in Applied Economics at the Queen Mary Business School. He is a quantitative and mathematical political economist interested in questions related to sustainability, social justice, income distribution, and climate action. His current research lies at the intersection of behavioural economics, (international) political economy, and sustainable development.
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