Environmental Labour Studies

The critical strand of the current sustainability discourse often refers to Karl Polanyi's work "The Great Transformation" (e.g. “World in Transition – A Social Contract for Sustainability”, German Advisory Council on Global Change (WBGU), 2011). However, this reference is usually shortened, since in particular Polanyi's remarks about the commodification of labor are disregarded. Overall, work still plays a marginal role in the entire sustainability discourse. Consequently analytical as well as transformative potential remains unused. In our paper we want to put work into the center of the reflections on transformation and outline ways of a socio-ecological transformation
towards a sustainable work society.

Der seit vielen Jahren geforderte Übergang zu einer sozial und ökologisch nachhaltigen Entwicklung steht immer noch aus. Zwar ist das Thema „Nachhaltigkeit“ allgegenwärtig, aber dem notwendigen tief greifenden Wandel stehen vielfältige Widerstände entgegen. Um diesem Problem nachzugehen, untersucht das Schwerpunktheft die Grundlagen und Wirkungsweisen ungleicher Machtpotenziale im Feld von Arbeit und Nachhaltigkeit. Denn eine Transformation in Richtung nachhaltiger Arbeit – als Voraussetzung von Nachhaltigkeit überhaupt – ist vor allem
auch eine Frage der Machtverhältnisse: Welche Machtbasis hat die Interessenpolitik von Akteuren, die Arbeit und Natur vernutzen und zerstören? Und welche Schnittmengen bzw. widersprüchlichen Interessen gibt es hinsichtlich einer sozial und ökologisch nachhaltigen Arbeitsorganisation? Theoretische und empirische Beiträge sowie Praxisbeispiele loten Wege des Übergangs in eine nachhaltige Arbeitsgesellschaft aus und thematisieren die dabei auftretenden Hindernisse.

The issue of fracking highlights the variability of trade union approaches to the environment in the UK energy sector, as reflected in their narratives and strategic organising orientations. Stories alone cannot change the material interests underlying complex societal conflicts, yet transformative policies on the climate crisis cannot emerge without a coherent story about the environmental crises and possible solutions. This article uses unions’ positions on fracking as a proxy for opposing/supporting/hedging against climate action to see how divergent positions amongst the UK’s three biggest unions in the energy sector (UNISON, Unite and GMB) and the TUC are reinforced or challenged by internal union narratives and strategic foci. Drawing on four in-depth expert interviews and 148 union documents, the main union narratives and strategies are analysed and clustered. The article’s key insight is that unions’ specific narratives differ depending on a union’s orientation. Pro-fracking...

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.