Burgmann, Verity (2010) From 'jobs versus environment' to 'green-collar jobs'. In: Australian Political Studies Association Annual Conference, University of Melbourne, 27-29 Sep 2010 (Unpublished)

Abstract

Since the 1980s, a ‘jobs versus environment' paradigm has depicted job protection and environmental protection as incompatible. This paper investigates the power relations at play in this popular representation of the incongruity of labour and green imperatives; and how trade unions both connived in this process but also occasionally contested this representation as a ‘false dichotomy'. Significantly, the climate crisis and the global financial crisis have, together, altered the balance of forces and dramatically changed understandings about the relationship between ‘jobs and environment'. Indicative of this transformation is the emergent discourse of ‘Green New Deal' and ‘green-collar jobs', which argues that climate change can be mitigated and economic recession averted at one and the same time by the conversion of existing ‘brown' jobs to ‘green' jobs and the creation of new green jobs. Many Australian unions have turned decisively away from the old ‘jobs versus environment' paradigm to articulate a new vision that depicts jobs and climate change mitigation as compatible rather than incompatible. This paper explores this development by examining union policies and practices around this issue. It also enquires whether this newfound congruence between labour and green imperatives has significance for the long-running debate amongst theorists of social movements about the decline of ‘old' social movements based on working-class organisations, such as trade unions, and the rise of ‘new' social movements, such as the environmental movement-or climate movement as it has increasingly become.

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