Workers and Trade Unions for Climate Solidarity : Tackling climate change in a neoliberal world

This book is a theoretically rich and empirically grounded account of UK trade union engagement with climate change over the last three decades. It applies a rigorous critique to the mainstream neoliberal and ecological modernisation approaches, extending the insights of Marxist social and employment relations theory to the climate realm. Secondly, the book extends insights from employment relations to the political economy of climate change, developing a model for understanding trade union behaviour over climate matters. Finally, the book has a strong interdisciplinary approach, in keeping with the subject matter: climate change requires insights from both physical and social science.

This book is a theoretically rich and empirically grounded account of UK trade union engagement with climate change over the last three decades. It offers a rigorous critique of the mainstream neoliberal and ecological modernisation approaches, extending the concepts of Marxist social and employment relations theory to the climate realm. The book applies insights from employment relations to the political economy of climate change, developing a model for understanding trade union behaviour over climate matters. The strong interdisciplinary approach draws together lessons from both physical and social science, providing an original empirical investigation into the climate politics of the UK trade union movement from high level officials down to workplace climate representatives, from issues of climate jobs to workers’ climate action.

This book will be of great interest to students and researchers in environmental politics, climate change and environmental sociology.