The Trade Unions and Their Political Mandate

If someone had told me back in 2013 that this impressive but perhaps rather niche conference, nestled on the leftmost fringes of the trade-union movement, would one day bloom into an event in which 3,500 participants would explore “Gegenmacht im Gegenwind” (“Counterpower Facing Headwinds”), I would not have believed it.[1] Back then, in Stuttgart, a joint initiative from Bernd Riexinger and the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung brought union activists together, mostly from the left-wing opposition. That was a net positive, because the topics that were up for debate and the things that people said were meant to be provocative — towards the German Trade Union Confederation (DGB) and its member organizations, but also towards academia, which, in distancing itself from class issues and from the trade unions, had simultaneously given up its frame of reference for lively social critique. 

Trade-union activists who were mostly preoccupied with inter-site competition, defending hard-won gains, negotiating with individual workplaces, and crisis management found themselves confronted with scholarship that held that living in an era of global competition simply meant “adapt or die”. From the perspective of mainstream academia, labour relations in the era of globalization seemed little different from how they had previously been — just with enfeebled unions that now had almost no influence. The argument was that, because the unions were toothless and not battle-ready, they should focus instead on pragmatic cooperation with businesses and, if at all possible, making backroom deals with political elites. That was my summary of the labour-relations research at the time, to which I added the polemical statement: “When there is no longer any friction between academia and practice, the overwhelming result is boredom”.

Class Struggle Instead of Boredom

Conceptual monotony and predictability were certainly among the reasons why trade-union research had long been sidelined in the German-speaking world. Recent years have seen a shift in this dynamic — for better and for worse. Above all, the practical work of trade unions has itself changed: the bad news is that the de-collectivization of workplace relations in Germany and the EU has clearly continued, even if its course has not been a straight line. In Germany, only 17 percent of employees were union members in 2021. But there is also some good news: in 2023, the DGB’s member organizations recorded an increase in membership for the first time since 2001 (+21,909). These new members were mostly prompted to join because of their involvement in labour disputes . If we delve a bit deeper, it is evident that many of the methods and tactics we identified using the Jenaer Machtressourcenansatz (Jena power resources approach) as starting points for revitalizing the trade union movement have since become relatively common practice. This is particularly true for various approaches to organizing, including the targeted recruitment of members who are frequently involved in labour disputes and strike actions.

Experiences of conflict and powerlessness are therefore close bedfellows, and it cannot be overlooked that a societal shift to the right, which is also being felt in workplaces and offices, can make even the most committed union members lose heart.

What conventional union scholarship once dismissed as pointless due to entrenched path dependencies in organized labour relations has nevertheless come to pass: even German trade unions have been dipping their toes into social-movement unionism, which involves approaches that mostly emerged in the Global South and North America. These practices are once again part of a thoroughly vital and critically engaged field of trade-union research driven primarily by young people. A prominent example of this is the hospital workers’ movement in North Rhine-Westphalia, where a multi-week strike secured a collective agreement to reduce staff workloads. A group of students at the University of Jena examined this case as an example of the revival of grassroots emancipatory politics. The trade unionists they interviewed for the study consistently pointed out that organizing methods that focused on personal responsibility proved highly effective for attracting new members, even when the strike was over.[2] More important than membership figures were experiences that made unions more battle-ready, and that to some extent also allowed committed members to reappropriate union structures: the democratization of strikes. The project group cited an intensive care nurse, who told them:

“It's my belief that trade unions need to wake up to the fact that democratic movements are an essential part of labour struggles, and that it is these that will keep unions alive. ... Unions don’t function because of functionaries or because of this or that person in such and such role, but rather because of the unpaid comrades who get involved and because union members take the fight to the streets. And that won’t happen through private backroom deals. … I think that struggles like the hospital workers’ movements in Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia in particular show that what really matters is colleagues getting involved, and once they do, there’s no way to defeat them.”

The union officials involved noted that the ver.di union has taken “a very open approach” during the negotiations over the collective agreement on workload relief in North Rhine-Westphalia and that it deviated fairly widely from conventional labour dispute strategies. They also emphasized that the unions’ institutional power resources and established routines and structures remain indispensable for successful strikes.

“We are currently experiencing a fundamental shift in organized labour relations.”

Despite such positive examples, organized labour relations as a whole paint a contradictory picture: on the one hand, labour struggles and organizing strategies demonstrate how well trade-union activists can adapt; on the other, even the unusually fierce labour disputes of 2023 and 2024 were unable to prevent substantial losses in real income for workers on the lower half of the income spectrum. Experiences of conflict and powerlessness are therefore close bedfellows, and it cannot be overlooked that a societal shift to the right, which is also being felt in workplaces and offices, can make even the most committed union members lose heart.

Power Resources and Political Mandate

Under these circumstances, what does exercising the trade unions’ political mandate mean? In the Jena power resources approach, this concept had long been confined to the margins.[3] That was in part because the power of wage labour — expressed, for instance, in readiness to organize or to engage in conflict, institutionalized rights, or a capacity for discussion and building alliances — already at least implicitly assumes a political mandate. In times of upheaval, it is nevertheless worth revisiting the term. When we talk about the political mandate of the unions, this by no means refers to the trappings of party politics. In view of the strategic schism between the unions and a social democracy that had sought greater economic competitiveness by turning the screw on society’s most vulnerable groups, Frank Deppe formulated the idea of a political mandate in the early 2000s as follows:

“The old axiom that social peace means economic productivity no longer holds.”

“The disintegration of society — as a result of the ongoing economic crises, the employment crisis, and neoliberal policy — is weakening the essence of the trade unions because the traditional tools of union politics can hardly change … the forms of social fragmentation and (subjective) loss of solidarity that go with that. As the number of people who are permanently excluded from ‘standard employment conditions’ increases (due to long-term unemployment, precarity, or exclusion), the unions’ traditional claim — that they represent the general interest of all employees or articulate the collective interests of the working class in terms of the conditions of the reproduction of labour power — is losing credibility. In the prevailing ideology, the unions are often depicted and discredited as conservative defenders of relatively privileged sections of the workforce (‘labour aristocracies’), such as the auto workers at Daimler or VW, whose pay still exceeds what is stipulated in the collective agreements. Like the guilds of the late Middle Ages, the unions are increasingly degenerating into conservative gatekeepers of the status quo, increasingly willing to cosy up to the powers that be in exchange for guarantees of job security for their shrinking clientele.”

This could just as easily have been written for the present moment. The political mandate refers to the unions’ claim to represent the general interests of the wage-dependent classes. That implies that the content and interests that are to be articulated through a political mandate are constantly adapting to changes in social structures, class relations, and society as a whole. This means that the lower the degree to which a union is organized and ready for conflict, the more likely industry associations and their powerful allied state officials are to push back against this claim. This is the archetype of ideological class struggle from above, and it is far from new. Nowadays, however, attempts to brand union power as an obsolete relic of a bygone industrial age have plumbed new depths. This became clear in the recent Volkswagen wage dispute. The liberal weekly Die Zeit railed against Volkswagen’s “elite and out-of-touch workers divorced from reality”, ranting that “in the middle of VW’s worst crisis, unions are demanding hefty pay rises. For these privileged industrial employees, this is tantamount to denying reality”.

“Trade unions fulfilling their political mandate today would mean resisting an ‘authoritarian liberalism’ that combines economic stagnation, ecological backsliding, and a political assault on trade unions, worker participation in governance, and democratic civil society as a whole.”

Such accusations overlook the price many VW workers have long had to pay for their comparatively high wages and relatively secure jobs in the form of flexitime requirements, constant pressure to increase productivity, and loss of control over their own time. “Working twelve days straight, working triple shifts, even working on holidays … takes a toll on your private life and family.” A team spokesperson at the VW plant in Kassel-Baunatal succinctly described the mood on the factory floor when he called the comparatively good pay Schmerzensgeld, or “pain money” to compensate for the time workers are losing from their lives.

Trade unions fulfilling their political mandate today would mean resisting an 'authoritarian liberalism'.

‘’The fact that the corporation’s executive board unilaterally revoked a long-term employment guarantee that was negotiated in exchange for a drastic increase in worker flexibility and productivity is rightly viewed by the workforce as a breach of established norms. Even in the Volkswagen Group, no one talks seriously any more about “transformative corporatism” that offers job security in exchange for worker cooperation in the transition to electric vehicles. Although plant closures are off the table for the time being, our surveys indicate that works councils are struggling to explain the collective agreement in works assemblies. Speaking off the record, union officials admit that there has been widespread discontent as well as incomprehension in the corporation and even workers leaving the union.

However, if valid collective agreements are no longer honoured by a company that once epitomized a functioning model of social capitalism, then there has been a sea change in labour policy. The old axiom that social peace means economic productivity no longer holds. This observation brings me to my first thesis: we are currently experiencing a fundamental shift in organized labour relations. 

Trade unions fulfilling their political mandate today would mean resisting an “authoritarian liberalism”[4] that combines economic stagnation, ecological backsliding, and a political assault on trade unions, worker participation in governance, and democratic civil society as a whole. Future industrial disputes will therefore also be a matter of ensuring that trade unions are still capable of taking action and fighting, with the longer-term goal of building them back up. If this fails, the once-powerful trade union movement risks being reduced to nothing more than a willing crisis manager that has once and for all abandoned its claim to represent the general interests of waged workers.

Manufactured Crisis

One objection could be that the weakness of the trade unions might be put down less to the aggressive power of capital than to the effects of structural crisis. EU states are facing rapid deindustrialization. Once the world’s biggest exporter, Germany’s economy has been hit particularly hard. In March 2025, the manufacturing sector recorded a year-on-year decline of 12,000 employees on regular contracts; 93,000 such jobs were lost in the metal, electrical, and steel industries. And it is not just the manufacturers of finished products that are going full steam ahead with job cuts, but also their suppliers. Companies such as Ford, Stellantis (Opel), Bosch, ZF, Tesla, and Michelin have planned tens of thousands of redundancies or, in the case of Ford Saarlouis, even entire plant closures. More and more small and medium-sized suppliers are going bust; key firms have already been forced to shutter. At the same time, the ruthless approach taken by VW’s management seems to be catching on. After successfully negotiating a collective agreement, Deutsche Post/DHL announced 8,000 redundancies, resulting in more stress and worse service. Industrial companies such as Thyssenkrupp, Porsche, and ZF want to push through additional “cost-saving packages” without offering employees any greater job security in return.

“We are witnessing the return of an ‘authoritarian liberalism’, this time in new garb and reacting to the conflict-ridden socio-ecological and digital transformation by freeing the economy of red tape, disruptions caused by worker participation in management, and recalcitrant unions — while giving over principal control to market forces and technological progress to dictate the shape of the working world.”

Despite both an urgent appeal to then-Chancellor Scholz that was jointly signed by major suppliers and the metalworkers’ union IG Metall, and an investment offensive announced by the Merz government, it remains unclear what corporate strategies can find a path out of the crisis. Let us return to the example of the auto industry and its suppliers. While some end-product manufacturers, including VW, are forging ahead with the shift to electric vehicles — a core project of the European Green Deal — the pace of this transition is set to slow considerably. Corporate boards and industry bodies are also sending out signals implying that they are putting the transport and energy transition on ice. This flirtation with backsliding on electric vehicles is only exacerbating doubts about the commitment to ecological sustainability and climate targets. Germany’s CDU, FDP, and the far right are all singing from the same hymn sheet in calling for the planned 2035 ban on new combustion vehicles to be reconsidered. Calls for “technological openness” and the (now enacted) suspension of fines for excessive emissions from vehicle fleets indicate that climate protection is slipping ever lower on the political agenda. Rather than hastening the progress of the socio-ecological transformation, the goalposts are being moved. Instead of speeding up the socio-ecological transformation, targets and rules are being changed, and the game of transformation is being moved to a new playing field: competitiveness. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung sums up the desired shift in policy: “Worse than a climate tipping point is a tipping point in Germany’s competitiveness”.

Even in key economic areas such as the auto industry, there is a growing danger that employees will have to accept a lasting decline in their standard of living.

Such declarations point to the politically staged nature of the current crisis. My second thesis is that, in the present moment, we are witnessing the return of an “authoritarian liberalism” this time in new garb and reacting to the conflict-ridden socio-ecological and digital transformation by freeing the economy of red tape, disruptions caused by worker participation in management, and recalcitrant unions — while giving over principal control to market forces and technological progress to dictate the shape of the working world. With their strident calls to boost economic competitiveness, large sections of the capitalist elite are now deliberately ignoring the evidence presented by long-term studies on the relationship between productivity growth and wage trends.

If we look at the period between 1980 and 2020, we can see a gradual decoupling of pay and productivity across the old capitalist centres. In the major EU countries, as well as the UK and the US, the middle classes have enjoyed consistently higher income growth than the working classes. The disposable real income of working-class households in France, Germany, and the US averaged a yearly increase of less than half a percent, while for middle-class households it grew by one percent or more. The prospect of doing better than one’s parents remains viable for middle-class children (for now), but this has not been the case for working-class children for a long time .[5] Admittedly, there are significant differences from country to country: since 1998, working-class households have fared relatively well in the UK, with increases in annual income of between half and one percent, and Spain, with more than one percent; in Poland, the working class even recorded annual gains of four to five percent during the first two decades of the twenty-first century. In France, Germany, and the US, however, working-class households achieved only minimal gains, averaging less than half a percent per year. The situation is especially bleak for younger generations of the German working class, who had already been forced to reckon with a clear decline in their standard of living even before the pandemic.

The Choke-Chain Effect

War and inflation have further hastened the decline. Even in key economic areas such as the auto industry, there is a growing danger that employees will have to accept a lasting decline in their standard of living. Despite falling long-term unemployment, around 12 million people were getting by on less than 60 percent of the median income in 2023 (adjusted for household size and composition). Among the under-65s, 6.9 percent were suffering significant material and social deprivation. Some 6.2 million people were unable to afford rent, mortgage payments, a week’s holiday, or a family meal at a restaurant.

On the other hand, there have been bumper profits for major German manufacturers, even for the crisis-stricken auto industry and its suppliers. In 2022, Mercedes-Benz topped global rankings with an operating profit of around €5.2 billion, followed by VW with €4.3 billion, while BMW placed fifth with €3.7 billion. Because of unfavourable exchange rates (a weak yen), German manufacturers achieved total profit growth of “only” seven percent in 2023. Still, Mercedes-Benz maintained its position as market leader, reporting a profit margin of 12.8 percent, putting it ahead of Stellantis (12.1 percent) and BMW (11.9 percent). Meanwhile, Tesla’s profit margin sank from 16.8 to 9.2 percent.

The end of the era of these kinds of excess profits has come largely at the hands of what economist James Galbraith has aptly described as the “choke chain effect”. Industrial models that depend heavily on fossil fuels, raw materials, and natural resources — assets that amortize slowly — can only function in a stable environment. In an unsteady global economy marked by wars, pandemics, disrupted supply chains, recession, and stagnation, the prospect of being able to forecast profits and plan investments for the long term has greatly diminished. As profits decline, there are intensifying conflicts between workers, management, owners, and tax authorities over how to carve up limited resources. Confidence in positive developments is lost, and major projects are postponed. With Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the prolonged war, and the rise in energy prices, dependence on cheap Russian oil and gas has tightened like a choke chain around the necks of German and European industry. Although the impact varies greatly across sectors and companies, this “choke chain effect” is a major reason why leading firms are increasingly reluctant to invest in the socio-ecological transition. To meet its climate targets, the German economy would need to reduce its emissions by a factor of more than 1.5 over the coming years. According to the think tank Agora Energiewende, implementing effective climate protections would require investments amounting to roughly 11 percent of GDP; 80 percent of these investments will be happening regardless and need to come from the private sector. The state would then need to additionally invest approximately 3.5 percent of GDP — an amount roughly equivalent to what is earmarked for achieving “war readiness” under recent EU agreements, not counting investment in military infrastructure.

Even from the perspective of an ideal total capitalist, the state should focus its spending on actively creating forward-thinking green markets and industries in order to direct investments toward future-oriented fields. This would include, for example, shepherding things like electric vehicles or green hydrogen through the “valley of death” that new technologies and their associated products must inevitably traverse when they first enter the market. But unlike in China, one cannot seriously talk about such a long-term strategy in Germany or in the EU  — it is a “blocked transformation”.

Against a political backdrop in which a rightward social and political shift is encroaching on factories and offices, we have to rethink what it means for trade unions to exercise a political mandate today.

This acute self-imposed paralysis of the dominant capitalist actors exposes a fundamental problem inherent in all forms of green capitalism. When too much importance is placed on market mechanisms, that comes at a cost to social justice, and this ends up creating resistance to the ecological transformation. On the other hand, when the state makes targeted interventions in markets in order to prop up emerging sectors, it runs the risk of misallocating funds and incurring a backlash from business interests. That is why states that are aiming to make a green energy transition are continually seesawing between market demands and the need for carefully thought-out investment. The core challenge is then to direct surplus capital towards future-oriented sectors — walking a tightrope with the constant risk of falling due to slow and overladen bureaucracies and unfavourable political trends.

Authoritarian Offensive

Because green growth has failed to materialize and social instability is increasing, my third thesis is that there are strategies taking hold that, in their most extreme forms, represent an authoritarian and pro-fossil-fuel backlash. By casting doubt on the need for socio-ecological restructuring, it aggressively calls the economic value of organized labour relations into question at the same time. This authoritarian offensive is directed against trade unions, which are depicted as having rendered companies ungovernable. As in the 1970s, it draws on a “whole range of tactics aimed at ‘de-unionization’” . The aim is not to do away with unions entirely, but to weaken them to the point where they can no longer legitimately claim to represent the general interests of wage-dependent workers. The far right’s considerable political influence, particularly within the industrial working class, has intensified this trend and puts pressure on democratic works councils and to some extent also unions to adapt.

“I’m not an AfD supporter — I’ve never voted for them. But when you see them get 15 percent in some places, and then all the other parties team up to form a governing coalition by hook or by crook, and what’s important is that it’s not them, that isn’t the will of the voters,” argued a VW worker in Baunatal before the state and federal elections the following year. The same voices who have called for the AfD to be treated like any other party also insist that the trade unions remain neutral when it comes to party politics:

“In the past, I occasionally noticed that certain people would not even get appointed to union positions because they were supposedly close to the AfD. To my mind, that’s against the law. One has to accept that the AfD is democratically elected just like any other party. But in politics, you’re seen as the good guy if you’re on the left, and the bad guy if you’re on the right. That’s spreading to the unions a bit too. They should in theory be neutral — but they’re not.” (Final assembly worker at Opel)

The subtext of such statements is that the union is there in the factory, but if necessary, the AfD is there outside of work and in politics. Seen from this perspective, the AfD is a party to be dealt with like any other. Those who try to shut it out are thus behaving undemocratically. People do not want unions to prescribe how they should think or act politically. Things that are discussed only with caution within the influential milieus of the works councils and unions come out into the open when it comes to arguing about who should shoulder the costs of the economic crisis. The entire political class appears to be completely detached from the problems of ordinary people. Legislative proposals such as those around energy-efficient homes are regarded as simply out of touch with reality. And unions that advocate for the Paris climate targets are accused of going along with an “electric vehicle planned economy” that is ruining “our country” and is “no less than a monstrous de-industrialization programme”. By this logic, these unnecessary climate protection measures do not leave any money to address “the impact of uncontrolled migration on the welfare system and crime statistics”.

Emancipation via Transformation: A Perspective

Against a political backdrop in which a rightward social and political shift is encroaching on factories and offices, we have to rethink what it means for trade unions to exercise a political mandate today. What was true back at the first strike conference in Stuttgart still fundamentally applies: even, and perhaps especially, when things are difficult, trade unions can still make a strategic choice. They can either submit to real or imagined practical constraints, or they can actively work to give themselves a wider scope of action by putting the power resources they have at their disposal to good use and aggressively exercising their political mandate. However, our present moment requires new justifications for that strategic choice and the political mandate. This observation brings me to my fourth and final thesis: exercising the political mandate now and in future will mean countering the rebellious authoritarianism of the far right with an emancipatory rebellion by trade unionists who are ready to fight, linking transformation with emancipation. There are multiple arguments that back up this thesis.

The state is increasingly an opponent, or at least the recipient, of trade union demands. 

A first justification arises from the functional shift in labour disputes and interest-driven trade-union politics that has been noticeable for some time. Strikes and labour conflicts are increasingly becoming a form of mobilization used to expand trade-union organizing power and thereby to create the conditions under which negotiated conflict regulation becomes possible at all. Because trade unions are less and less able to rely on their institutional power resources, they are increasingly dependent on their ability to guide conflict. This capacity is based on organizational power. However, collective capacity to take action and to strike must be rebuilt again and again today—workplace by workplace and company by company. It depends entirely upon organizing new groups of wage earners. Women are increasingly getting involved in or leading labour struggles, and these struggles are spreading into the precarious sector, being waged with particular intensity in the service industries.

“Exercising the political mandate now and in future will mean countering the rebellious authoritarianism of the far right with an emancipatory rebellion by trade unionists who are ready to fight, linking transformation with emancipation.”

The state is increasingly an opponent, or at least the recipient, of trade union demands. In the aforementioned strike over collective agreements to reduce workloads in the healthcare sector, the central issue is not wages but rather staffing assessments and performance criteria and therefore interventions in managerial authority. In the collective bargaining rounds over municipal public transport, unions are calling for an investment programme that would ensure well-funded, green mobility in cities and rural areas. In the event of transport strikes led by ver.di or the rail and transit workers’ union EVG, Deutsche Bahn’s business model, among other things, is a central issue. Labour conflicts in which the state is directly or indirectly involved are political. They are “political class struggle” that draws its raw material from the overall economy. Failing to exercise their political mandate would therefore amount to union suicide. It would mean that union representation would have to be confined to a narrow set of socioeconomic issues. Unions would become mere pressure groups defending the interests of core employees in certain sectors and companies; they would no longer be able to look out for the general interests of wage-dependent workers.

Secondly, that is why it makes no sense for unions to try to reinvigorate themselves by adapting to society’s shift to the right. Instead of focusing primarily on workers who sympathize with the far right, union policy in the workplace must hinge on those who oppose the rightward drift and who offer constructively critical support for the socio-ecological restructuring of the economy and society. These are the people the unions should get behind. That is why it would be irresponsible to jettison the socio-ecological transformation as a field of trade union politics. Decisions about business models, products, and production processes are monopolized by tiny minorities within the ruling class. Even the strongest works councils and trade union organizations are largely excluded from such decisions. It has been completely taboo to even mention this exclusion in political debates, which focus exclusively on consumer habits. 

Alliances between unions and environmental movements could gain new momentum in the coming years if market-centred climate policies are to have their intended effects.

Thirdly, however, the primary drivers of greenhouse gas emissions are investments linked to access to the means of production, not individual consumer habits. Unfortunately, the public pays little attention to such relationships because for a long time, manufacturing, industrial labour, and key public services have only rarely been up for discussion. That is why it is important to make what is invisible visible and to give a voice to those who have been forgotten. Strong works councils and unions are certainly not enough to bring about an energy, transport, mobility, and sustainability transition. However, they will prove indispensable for future conflicts around job security amid the transformation and over a shift toward ecologically sustainable work. This is especially true because only they are capable of addressing what one works council member summarized as follows:

“In my view, we need to democratize society. … I think that workers have far too little say in the workplace. What products are being invested in? How is work being done? How many people do we work with? What conditions do we work under? We have an incredible amount of catching up to do.” (A works council member at Opel Eisenach)

This trade unionist hits the nail on the head in highlighting how the majority of society is excluded from participating in decisions that affect everyone’s lives (and even their survival). Fourthly, correcting this exclusion will only be possible with the help of coalitions and alliances that are committed to advancing the socio-ecological transformation. The strategic alliance between the service-sector union ver.di and the climate movement when campaigning around municipal public transport is an example of a “climate-labour turn” of the kind long advocated by left-wing climate activists. This strategic alignment involves, on the one hand, the climate movement moving towards “the labour movement and, on the other hand, the adoption of ecological concerns in trade union struggles and the unions orienting themselves … toward implementing shared goals as a partner”. The #wirfahrenzusammen alliance (“we ride together”) can currently be considered the most successful attempt to practice ecological class politics with an emancipatory self-conception. The actions of the alliance, which has found support in 70 cities, reached their zenith during the joint strike as part of collective contract negotiations for public-sector workers in 2023 and the transport workers in 2024. Although this model cannot easily be mapped onto the industrial sector,[6] it nonetheless has the potential to stimulate union politics that are open to change and that also enjoy the support of democratic civil society.

Using social solidarity to build up that confidence is something that emancipatory class and trade union politics must relearn. 

Alliances between unions and environmental movements could gain new momentum in the coming years if market-centred climate policies are to have their intended effects. If all goes to plan and there is a sharp rise in the cost of CO₂, then the costs of fuel, electricity, housing, and food would also increase drastically. If no compensation is provided, this could prove explosive for society. The only effective countermeasure would be if it is generally accepted that the larger the climate footprint, the more one must pay to finance the socio-ecological transformation. Only this would serve to correct what studies on the relationship between social inequality and greenhouse-gas emissions have shown: the disproportionately high level of emissions from capitalist elites, the costs of which are borne primarily by the poorer populations that contribute the least to causing climate change.[7]

“Everything seems possible for the arms industry right now, which cannot be said for the civil economy: there is generous financing at the expense of a rising public deficit, long-term planning, state purchase guarantees, and deliberate monopolization that distorts market mechanisms.”

Fifth, unions will need to be smart about building alliances because successfully articulating the political shifts necessary for confronting today’s “authoritarian liberalism” will require broad support: political pathmaking in favour of a long-term, well-funded industrial and infrastructure policy that resolutely advances the socio-ecological transformation. Such a policy must aim to abolish the Schuldenbremse (debt brake) and make the public funds needed to transform the economy and society available. In this context, it must also be acknowledged that the credibility of any climate policy is currently being undermined by the political fixation on the “five-percent target” for defence spending.[8] Anyone who wants a socio-ecological transformation should not remain silent on rearmament. This is also true because everything seems possible for the arms industry right now, which cannot be said for the civil economy: there is generous financing at the expense of a rising public deficit, long-term planning, state purchase guarantees, and deliberate monopolization that distorts market mechanisms.

All of these are indeed enormous challenges for unions, and it would not be hard to think of additional ones. It is understandable that committed trade unionists may despair in the face of dramatically mounting pressures, so it is worth making one final remark. In direct, everyday communication, it is essential to break the spiral of denigration directed particularly at industrial workers. “Worker and proud of it!” is a slogan that women in the Austrian production workers’ union Pro-Ge use to draw attention to their organization. Shirts and bags emblazoned with the slogan have flown off the shelves. They symbolize what needs to happen if the working class is to cease to be fertile ground for the new authoritarianism. “Hold your head high!” is the message that needs to be conveyed by emancipatory trade union politics, despite the trials and tribulations of everyday life. Wage earners are well aware of the difficulties of their situation. What they need is basic confidence in their own abilities — abilities they undoubtedly possess. Using social solidarity to build up that confidence is something that emancipatory class and trade union politics must relearn. That can be aided by critical research on transformation and labour relations — research that is pursued as a kind of public sociology and that does not shy away from conflict with academia or with society as a whole.

This article first appeared in LuXemburg. Translated by Rowan Coupland and Joseph Keady for Gegensatz Translation Collective.