The green transition is an unavoidable transformation of our economies and workplaces. Industries will have to decarbonise, some jobs will disappear, new ones will emerge, and workers will need to adapt to changing technologies and forms of production. But there is nothing inevitable about how these changes are experienced.
The question of who bears the costs of transition, who benefits from it and who gets to shape the decisions involved is ultimately a question of power. As TUC General Secretary Sarah Woolley has put it, ‘the question is not whether change will happen but who will shape it’.
This issue of Futures of Work explores different dimensions of that question. Across the contributions, a common theme emerges: a just transition cannot simply mean compensating workers and communities after decisions have already been made. Instead, it requires giving voice to those most affected so that they can meaningfully influence the decisions that will shape their futures.
Chris McLachlan’s discussion of the UK steel industry illustrates the problem particularly clearly. The closure of the blast furnaces at Port Talbot and their replacement with a less labour-intensive electric arc furnace was an important step towards decarbonisation, but it also involved substantial job losses. The subsequent involvement of Tata Steel, trade unions, government and the Port Talbot Transition Board provided mechanisms for managing the consequences. Yet, many of these mechanisms resembled established approaches to employment restructuring. The question, therefore, is whether a transition is genuinely ‘just’ simply because the consequences of restructuring are managed somewhat better than they otherwise might have been.
This question becomes particularly important when we consider who has a voice before such decisions are taken. Lilit Popoyan’s contribution, focusing on Italy, shows how political influence over climate policy is itself unequally distributed. Firms with greater resources are better placed to lobby policy makers, while workers, smaller firms and affected communities may have fewer opportunities to make their interests heard. Trade unions can provide an important counterweight, but their influence is also uneven across sectors and workplaces. The fact that a company employs thousands of workers does not mean that those workers automatically have an equivalent voice in the policy process. Corporate interests and workers’ interests may overlap but, in practice, they are rarely the same.
Huw Thomas, Michele Ford and Michael Gillan’s contribution further highlights the tensions involved in translating the idea of a just transition into practice. Examining the role of Global Union Federations in global climate governance, and the modernisation of public transport in the Philippines in particular, they show how a common commitment to a just transition can produce different responses among workers and their organisations. While one union resisted the government’s vehicle modernisation programme, another pursued critical engagement, organising transport cooperatives and campaigning for greater subsidies. Their analysis highlights the limits of securing labour a place in international climate negotiations if this does not translate into the collective power of workers to shape the transition in their own workplaces and communities.
This points towards the importance of collective organisation. As Giorgos Galanis argues, strong trade unions and enforceable rights at EU level are central to ensuring that workers have the bargaining power needed to influence transition plans. Voluntary commitments may provide valuable protections, but their effectiveness ultimately depends on employers’ willingness to honour them.
Béla Galgóczi similarly highlights the limitations of existing EU just transition policies and the importance of effective social dialogue and worker participation. A just transition therefore requires not only support for workers, but institutions capable of giving them a meaningful say. At the same time, the meaning of ‘just transition’ itself is not fixed. Galgóczi traces how the concept has shifted from its origins in environmental justice towards a much broader and more contested set of concerns around climate policy, energy security, competitiveness and industrial strategy. These shifts matter because changing the meaning of ‘just’ can also change what workers are expected to receive in the process of transition. A concept originally concerned with protecting workers and communities from the costs of environmental change can easily become focused on managing disruption after the fact, rather than giving workers greater capacity to shape change in advance. Accordingly, Galgóczi highlights the limitations of the EU’s existing Just Transition Framework and the need for stronger legislation, social dialogue and worker participation.
The final contribution broadens the discussion further. Dimitrios Efthymiou shows how climate adaptation and displacement can transform working lives even outside carbon-intensive industries. For communities facing relocation, losing a home can also mean losing access to employment, care networks, social relationships and forms of community life tied to a particular place. Compensation or rehousing may therefore address some consequences of displacement without addressing the deeper inequalities in people’s capacity to adapt. The issue is not simply whether people are protected from change, but whether they retain meaningful control over what happens to their lives and communities.
Taken together, these contributions suggest that the future of work and working people’s lives under the green transition should not be simply reduced to a problem of skills, employability or compensation, as many international organisations often do. The more fundamental underlying issue is power and who decides which industries are transformed, where investment goes, which jobs are protected, what kinds of new jobs are created, and what happens to communities whose economic and social lives are tied to existing forms of production.
The idea of a just transition emerged precisely because environmental transformation cannot be separated from these questions. If workers and communities are only invited into the process once decisions have effectively been made to manage expectations and mitigate backlash, ‘just transition’ risks becoming little more than another tokenistic way of managing the consequences of economic restructuring. A genuinely just transition would require something more ambitious: not simply protecting people from the future, but giving them a meaningful role in shaping the future of their lives, in and outside work and workplaces.
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