The last few years have seen climate activists around the world struggle to maintain momentum in the face of rising temperatures and climate disasters. Meanwhile, workers face relentless attacks, as Donald Trump and other right-wing leaders crack down on their rights. In Germany, for example, the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) is on the rise, polling as the country’s strongest party for the first time in recent weeks, while the once-massive Fridays for Future campaign is a shell of its former self.
Aaron Niederman (they/them) researches worker-led decarbonization efforts and the Wir Fahren Zusammen alliance, with support from the German Chancellor Fellowship and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation.
Thus, at least on the surface, things appear grim. Yet if we look a bit closer, we can also see a few glimmers of hope. The German democratic socialist party, Die Linke, enjoyed a surprising surge in the last election, and public sector workers have shown renewed strength in their most recent collective bargaining rounds. In Berlin and other major cities, this strength has been expressed in a series of unique strikes — workers across multiple sectors are standing together with community members and climate activists under the motto “Berlin Steht Zusammen” (BSZ) or “Berlin Stands Together”.
BSZ is the latest iteration of the “Wir Fahren Zusammen” (We Ride Together, or WFZ) campaign, an alliance between Fridays for Future and the public sector union Ver.di. Their alliance has led to joint actions in over 70 cities across Germany and contributed to Ver.di’s largest strike since 1992. Now expanding into the Netherlands and Austria, the alliance is a prime example of what is known as “just transition” organizing, a prescriptive and at times prefigurative approach to labour organizing. Also referred to as “climate-labour turn” organizing, it seeks to organize for better working conditions in a green economy, often seeking support from the climate movement and use of Bargaining for the Common Good techniques. In the case of just transition organizing for decarbonization, workers expand their struggle beyond wages and benefits and demand the climate-friendly conversion of their industries.
Based upon analysis of a number of worker-led decarbonization projects, this essay argues that four factors are vital to their success: a well-organized workplace, community support, a clear alternative production plan, and public funding/ownership. Based on these four key factors, I then go on to identify areas of improvement and gaps in the movement ecosystem where workers, activists, and academics can come together to make a just green future reality.
Workers and the Climate Movement: A Natural Alliance
Wir Fahren Zusammen is a particularly strategic alliance with potential for widespread replicability. WFZ came to be after Fridays for Future in Germany made a huge splash, mobilizing 1.4 million people in 2019. Following this, however, their numbers dwindled as they struggled to achieve their goals — mainly a special 100-billion-euro fund that would be used in part to expand public transport infrastructure. These failures can be attributed to many factors, of which the COVID-19 pandemic and the Green Party pacifying climate demands are often cited.
Subsequently, disillusioned climate activists sought new tactics. Many attended the Organizing for Power course sponsored by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and sought to align with the labour movement to bolster their struggle. While public transportation was only one part of their climate agenda, it is one of the few sectors that should expand(rather than contract or convert) to reach climate goals and exhibits a self-evident connection to environmental sustainability (unlike care work or sanitation, for example). Simultaneously, they saw that Ver.di, despite its high membership figures, was far from militant, limited by legal barriers preventing “political strikes” and behind the times in its use of media and technology. As a result, they offered organizing, communications, and political support to the union in a bid to strengthen and expand the public transport sector — already one of the climate movement’s central demands. WFZ activists conducted outreach to the public, collected petitions, organized town halls, and directed messaging campaigns grounded in Bargaining for the Common Good principles.
On the union side, audits, resolutions, and new contracts have all been deployed in the climate justice struggle.
Wir Fahren Gemeinsam, WFZ’s Austrian counterpart, became especially close with its partner union, VIDA, and many of its members became integrated into the latter’s structures, functioning as volunteer union organizers. Altogether, both campaigns successfully built public support for the workers and politicized their demands. In the newest campaign cycle in Germany, activists supported and connected hospital, sanitation, and transport workers, providing infrastructure between sectors and workplaces, similar to one part of the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee’s work in the United States. This movement showcases how climate activists can fill gaps in the labour movement ecosystem, working hand-in-hand to advance mutual goals.
Despite these synergies, however, the alliance exhibits several limitations. First, it was established when the climate movement was stronger and well-organized — this is no longer the case, particularly with regard to youth-led climate justice groups. German activists changed course by seeking to build anti-fascist student movements instead. Additionally, building this alliance was a slow process. Organizing efforts wane with bargaining cycles and many of the activists prioritize a “No Shortcuts” approach inspired by the late Jane McAlevey, preferring to build bottom-up worker power rather than mobilize a large swath of activists, which may raise suspicions of co-optation among union members. While this allows for deeper connections and true collaboration (rather than superficial coalition building), it takes time. Lastly, the movement failed to harness what many organizers refer to as the “Moment of the Whirlwind” — natural inflexion points that trigger mass action and social change.
NGOs Provide Support, Unions Institute Reforms
Since the emergence of just transition in the 1990s, various NGOs and unions have convened stakeholders, proposed policies, and instituted internal reforms. While NGOs are not at the centre of labour power, they can provide insight and support for a transition.
For example, the UK-based Campaign against Climate Change published multiple One Million Climate Jobs Reportsthat unions can reference to push for transition. Trade Unions for Energy Democracy convenes over 120 trade union bodies, while the International Transport Workers Federation and the International Trade Union Confederation maintain multiple ongoing research and organizing projects around just transition. More locally, the Green Workers Allianceorganizes within the clean energy sector in the US, Climate and Community develops climate and economic policies that can inform union struggles, the Netherlands Trade Union Confederation (FNV) combines just transition work with Global South solidarity in their Mondiaal project, and groups like Climáximo in Portugal or the Labor Network for Sustainability in the US alternate between acting as movement organizations and conveners, like when Climáximo held a Global Climate Jobs Conference in 2023.
On the union side, audits, resolutions, and new contracts have all been deployed in the climate justice struggle. Unite in the South West of England is training “green reps” who advocate for larger changes along the supply chain and use environmental audits to reform workplace processes via new contract demands. SEIU 26 in Minnesota had what some call the first “union-authorized climate strike” when janitors side-stepped US labour law by proposing a “green training program” and received support from climate groups like the Sierra Club and Minnesota Youth Climate Strike. Amazon Employees for Climate Justice organized an almost 2,000-worker walkout, conducted a full “unsustainability report”, and still pushes Amazon to honour its climate pledge through organizing and direct action.
Fight Layoffs, Fund the Transition
Worker struggles against layoffs are common, but the workers at Lucas Aerospace and their creation of the Lucas Planare often heralded as one of the most innovative and effective cases of resistance. When the workers received word of mass layoffs, they came together across all 15 worksites to form a “combine”, and with support from sympathizing academics, they developed a plan to produce beneficial products for society like solar energy cells, heat pumps, and railroad vehicles. In response, management called off the layoffs, and while the plan was not implemented due primarily to lack of government support, its framework continues to inspire workers to propose alternatives to existing modes of production — especially those that are becoming antiquated as a result of the climate crisis.
Auto workers from Campi Bisenzio at Collettivo di Fabbrica – Lavoratori GKN Firenze or GKN for short are a prime result of said inspiration. In 2021, the factory’s 422 workers were abruptly laid off, with management citing off-shoring and deindustrialization related to the green transition as cause. In response, the workers occupied the factory — a move reminiscent of workers’ struggles in Buenos Aires — and garnered huge community and climate movement support through demonstrations, music festivals, and more. Similar to the Lucas Plan, workers collaborated with nearby university researchers to map the factory and come up with a conversion plan to produce electric bikes and solar panels. The final piece was financing — GKN first opted for a cooperative model and launched a crowdfunding campaign that raised over 1 million euro. Now, they’re pressuring the regional government to provide funding to aid in the conversion.
While both unions won because of organizing strengths, one might wonder what a transition plan or factory occupation would have done to secure even more justice for workers.
While GKN’s occupation is unique, many workers in industries impacted by the green transition are facing threats and responding in other ways. Just last year, VW workers in Germany successfully bargained for a moratorium on layoffs until 2030 when 35,000 out of 120,000 workers were originally projected to be cut.
Similarly, the United Auto Workers (UAW) in Belvidere, Illinois received news in 2023 that Stellantis was idling their plant and putting 1,350 people out of work. In response, the UAW fought back with the historic Big Three Stand-up Strike, winning a commitment to reopen the plant by 2027 and create a brand-new electric vehicle battery plant that would add thousands of additional jobs. This reversal included a special contractual stipulation granting workers the right to strike over plant closures in other regions and also initiated a “master agreement” that included future electric vehicle workers within the Big Three in the contract.
Not only did this win demonstrate the power of “Bargaining to Organize”, it was also a point of convergence for a disorganized US climate movement. Activists came out to the picket lines and the Labor Network for Sustainabilityorganized a solidarity letter from over 150 (mostly climate justice) groups in support of the UAW. Now the grassroots movement, UAWD has launched an EV transition committee.
While both unions won because of organizing strengths, one might wonder what a transition plan or factory occupation would have done to secure even more justice for workers.
Strikes and Setbacks
Nevertheless, for every green transition win there have been countless losses. In Austria, MAN Steyr closed its truck manufacturing plant with over 2,000 workers when the union ÖGB opted to fight for severance and ATTAC failed to galvanize support for conversion. Since then, projects like Con Labour and activists like Iris Frey have been researching how to restructure the sector and deal with funding and ownership questions.
Despite its isolated battleground, Austrian workers might have benefitted from processes developed in a similar struggle in Spain’s Basque country, where workers went through scenario planning exercises to analyse the strengths of four possible production options and three potential ownership models. In the end, the workers sought financial support from the local government but were refused, as the latter claimed it was already investing in transition via private corporations and could not fund unions. Hence, the factory closed.
Green Jobs Oshawa (GJO) shows another iteration of the same phenomenon. In 2018, GM announced it would be closing its facility in Oshawa and over 2,500 jobs would be impacted. Workers from the Canadian Auto Workers union came together with community members and researchers like Sam Gindin to create a feasibility study, concluding that the closure would cost the region over 15,000 jobs (and billions in GDP). The study then explored two main manufacturing scenarios that would lead to profitability, avoid job loss, and decrease emissions.
In both cases, GJO emphasized that public ownership and procurement were necessary for the transition and cited a variety of relevant cases in the US where companies received tax credits and federal loans for similar projects like Illinois’s move to award 827 million US dollars to Rivian or Tesla’s receipt of 425 million in low-interest loans. In addition, they mentioned how, in recent history, government leaders have compelled private corporations to change production, as Trump did in 2020 during the pandemic. Altogether, GJO laid the groundwork for a continued struggle for governmental intervention but failed to hold on to their factory. Worker and community power must now be built to compel public ownership.
In a similar vein, unions in France and Wales in particular have excelled at creating transition proposals, both within their sectors and beyond. In 2020, a fight organized by the Confédération générale du travail (CGT) began when Renault pushed French workers to equalize their contracts with weaker contracts in other countries. Instead, the union drew up their own proposal to rebalance production across regions, manufacture more small EVs, develop domestic electric battery manufacturing, and even recycle old vehicles.
In 2023, Tata Steel in Wales announced layoffs and plans to reduce production as they shifted to electric furnaces, but Unite drew up an alternative. The union proposed keeping the furnace running until it would no longer impact the workforce, while simultaneously constructing additional electric furnaces using green hydrogen as part of a plan to eventually build a new manufacturing site. The union also included industrial revitalization plans for the whole region.
Unfortunately, in the CGT’s case, Renault ignored the union’s proposal and signed a three-year social agreement with two other unions that failed to prioritize long-term job stability or energy transition. Similarly, Tata Steel rejectedUnite’s plan — the furnace was shut down and workers laid off. As in GJO’s case, without a tightly organized workforce and community support, transition plans alone are not enough.
Oil and gas workers in the Scottish North Sea find themselves in a similar position, but Platform London and Friends of the Earth Scotland (FOE) proactively brought them together via their “Our Power” report to build power and establish demands before layoff announcements came. Similar to WFZ, these climate justice organizations saw an opportunity for support. Starting in 2020, they hosted six demand development workshops, then collected feedback on the demands via phone calls and eventually sent out a survey that garnered over 1,000 responses. Altogether they established ten demands, each with over 90-percent approval, that concern training programmes, worker representation, wage floors, public ownership, and more.
Nevertheless, politicians have been reluctant to embrace the report — the only response since its publication came in March 2025, when the UK Government opened a consultative investigation into the North Sea’s energy future set to conclude at the end of April. While this project shows an effective process of engaging workers, it reaches a similar barrier to the French and Welsh struggles: implementation.
Tentative Wins
The organizing by FNV Metaal in the Netherlands and Unite/GMB in the UK highlight how workers can not only fight back against layoffs, but win tangible steps to a just transition. For FNV Metaal, this started in 2019 when Tata Steel announced 1,600 layoffs at its Dutch plant. In response, the union organized a survey on strike readiness along with a hotline to solicit demands and eventually went on a 24-day strike — as a result, they won a commitment to no layoffs through 2026.
The workers then came together with scientists and professors to establish the “Zeester” working group and produce a plan urging transition to green steel and expansion of offshore wind power. On top of the strike pressure, this plan galvanized support from the climate movement and Tata Steel accepted the proposal — now, they have already signed contracts to produce green steel.
Across many of these examples, it’s clear that prioritizing organizing is key to winning a just transition.
In the UK case, Rolls Royce announced a global 9,000-employee cut in 2020 coupled with plans to move manufacturing from the UK to Singapore. In response, workers at three plants in the UK organized by Unite and GMB took over nine weeks of strike action and won an agreement to keep the factories open for up to ten years. During the process, they assembled a worker-led “combine” and came together with their local MP to create a “Green New Deal” proposal. Their combine has a strike fund, but for now, primarily leveraged media campaigns to win a commitment from Rolls Royce to establish a “centre of excellence” to support development and manufacturing of carbon-neutral technology.
These successful cases show the power of combining tight organizing with a clear transition plan. Still, the question remains as to how they could take their struggles further by building wider community support and organizing around public funding and ownership.
Filling in the Gaps: Organizing, Messaging, and Proactive Alliance-Building
Across many of these examples, it’s clear that prioritizing organizing is key to winning a just transition. CGT in France and Unite in Wales are prime examples: while their visions were well-researched and articulated, their lack of implementation boiled down to an ungalvanized workforce. By contrast, GKN shows how a rank-and-file organizing approach can prime workers to stand behind transition plans.
There are a variety of ideas as to what type of organizing interventions are most effective, but some particularly relevant ones can be found in this article by Marilyn Sneiderman and Stephen Lerner, which draws from the Union Cities model and Justice for Janitors campaign. One especially apt recommendation is to use bargaining to strengthen organizing. This is exemplified by the UAW Belvidere case, where one contract stipulation paved the way for more cross-factory struggles and therefore sectoral bargaining.
To build alliances and community support, both climate activists and trade unionists need to be strategic with their messaging. On the workers’ side, messaging aligned with Bargaining for the Common Good creates an onramp for positive engagement with the climate movement. On the climate side, sources like the “Our Power” report show how even terms like just transition or conversion can be polarizing. Production restructuring and diversification are already commonplace, and may represent a more neutral point of departure. In general, non-workers should take inspiration from Wir Fahren Zusammen activists in how they agitate around economic demands rather than push an overt climate focus — especially at the outset of a campaign.
On top of messaging, climate activists should be proactive and build alliances before moments of inflexion come. Otherwise, they risk an outcome such as MAN Steyr, where workers became closed off to external support as soon as their jobs were under threat. Climate activists should find organic entry points, such as when Wij Reizen Samen in the Netherlands stood by bus drivers fighting against the transfer of their company. Then, when an inflexion point does come, activists can spring into action, already connected to union structures and aware of where they can fill in the gaps.
WFZ shows how this work is possible in a general sense, while GKN shows how workers’ struggles can in fact help the climate movement further its own organizing. Strategically, climate activists would do well to step back and analyse the potential alliances in their community, such as public transport and emerging campaigns like Fare Free London. Specific sectors aside, climate activists should look to labour movement inflexion points on the horizon as potential moments to build coalitions. For example, in the US, the UAW’s call for contract alignment and general strike is still three years out, and there is a lot of potential for climate-side alliance building in the meantime.
Transition Plans, Public Ownership, and Imaginative Conclusions
These case studies show that workers cannot expect their employers or politicians to create transition plans that prioritize their rights. Even more so, they highlight how announcements of closures and layoffs immediately weaken struggles for a just transition — workers become suspect of outside support and may opt to organize for higher severance pay instead. If workers already had plans drawn up for what a transition might look like, they could immediately respond and push it forward.
Therefore, workers in sectors impacted by transition should be proactive in organizing themselves in combines and reach out to local universities or research institutions for support. Climáximo, the Next Economy Lab, the Con Labour Project, and Climate and Community are all well-positioned for this sort of work. Khem Rogaly at Common Wealthwent through this process for the military sector in the UK in his Lucas Plan for the Twenty-First Century, while Martin Lallana utilizes the aforementioned scenarios approach.
Currently, however, there is no template nor a handbook on how to organize these combines. Creating a plan is a technical, organizational, and financial endeavour, and therefore requires a variety of systems of support. Still, there are similarities across workplaces and sectors, so filling this gap is both possible and necessary — unions, NGOs, and academics should all proactively seek to do so.
Between these four factors — an organized workplace, community support, an alternative plan, and funding — there are a variety of roles that need to be filled to win a just transition.
Finally, as seen in the GKN case, even if workers have a plan, are tightly organized, and supported by the community and the climate movement, funding still poses a significant barrier. Even with GKN’s international financial support, the costs of transition along with separation from the global supply chain make the enterprise’s financial burden too high. On top of this, given how transitions benefit society, the question remains as to what role the government should play in supporting them.
In the case of Tata Steel, Max Vancauwenberge argues for a shift away from governmental subsidies, positing that profitable companies ought to be legally obligated to transition rather than incentivized. Moreover, he argues for a socialization of the energy sector, benefitting citizens rather than multinational companies. In a similar vein, Khem Rogaly argues that the government already subsidizes the military-industrial complex, and therefore a transition to socially beneficial goods does not even require new funding sources. He adds the demand to establish a research and development company (a combine of sorts) to manage the transition and pushes government coordination via existing initiatives like Great British Energy, Transport for London, and ScotRail.
Altogether, his and many of the aforementioned transition proposals merely lack the political will (not capacity) to make them happen. Seth Klein echoes this in his book A Good War: Mobilizing Canada for the Climate Emergency, arguing that a “war-time” approach to transitioning the Canadian economy is possible. Whether a transition from the military sector or another high-carbon industry, all groups engaged in this work should explore how workers can uniquely pressure the government to take up demands for public ownership and procurement. Campaigns around public power like Public Grids in the US could be reference points.
To conclude, Hilary Wainwright, a long-time activist and author of a book on the Lucas Plan, broadens these worker-led struggles in her piece “Beating the Climate Clock: Workers, citizens and state action in the UK”. She argues these workers’ struggles constitute a form of prefigurative politics, whose organizing for a transition emphasizes participatory democratic processes that are otherwise scarce in representative democracies. While the fight for workers at one factory might be localized, should they organize for public ownership, they lay the groundwork for other factories and sectors to follow suit. By doing so, they create created a new path towards empowering citizens to shape the economy, taking one step more towards a society that prioritizes its citizens and the environment over corporate power and profits.
Between these four factors — an organized workplace, community support, an alternative plan, and funding — there are a variety of roles that need to be filled to win a just transition. Simultaneously, there are a variety of groups already engaged in organizing, meaning that what is really needed is a convergence of forces. Unions should focus on self-organization, climate groups on community support, academics on alternative plans, and politicians on funding. However, if the respective groups and regions remains siloed, they risk transitioning too slowly to beat the climate clock, or even worse, being overtaken by the rise of far-right forces and technocratic oligarchies.
These examples present models of what convergence can look like on smaller scales, but without a strong nucleus like an international, multi-sector union — or better yet, an international socialist political party — they can only reach so far. At the same time, climate activists, unionists, academics, and community members of all sorts cannot afford to delay any longer. We must come together to organize for the just green transition we all deserve.