Industries around the world including the garment sector have to change if we’re going to survive the climate and ecological crisis. How can we make sure that worker and community rights are at the centre of this change?
In this episode:
Please tell us what inspired you about this show, and share your feedback, comments and questions, by emailing: podcast@cleanclothes.org
Speakers:
Host: Febriana Firdaus (febrianafirdaus.com)
Field Reporters: Petra Ivsic and Aca Vragolovic
Sound Engineering Support: Steve Adam (www.spectrosonics.com.au)
Producer: Matthew Abud
Clean Clothes Podcast Team: Anne Dekker, Johnson Ching-Yin Yeung, Liz Parker, Tanne de Goei
Full Transcript
HOST:
Welcome to the Clean Clothes Podcast.
In today’s show we’re talking about a Just Transition.
It’s a big conversation.
KARIN:
We believe that the systemic crisis are interconnected, be it the climate crisis, biodiversity crisis, water crisis, food crisis, and now the pandemic. So if we all want to overcome this crisis, this systemic crisis we face, we really need the people’s movements, people’s organisations, to come together.
HOST:
It’s about how we need to build a better world, if we want to survive in the future.
And about what that means for the rights of all workers.
URSKA:
I mean in general we’re talking about one of the most polluting industries on the planet, synonymous with over-consumption, pollution, increasing waste crisis, but also exploitation of workers in the global supply chains
HOST:
And what the Clean Clothes Campaign Network needs to do.
TIBBE:
To have a consciousness about the environmental issues, climate issues, it’s still quite a new thing. And I think it really is a challenge for us as a Network now to understand what are these implications for workers, and what are the responses that we propose and what is it that we imagine a Just Transition looks like
HOST:
You just heard from several of our guests – we’ll meet them all again, later in the show.
I’m Febriana Firdaus.
The challenges of climate and ecological crisis are profound. But in many ways, we’re still working out what it involves for workers.
How do we transition from the current business model to one that is good for workers and the environment?
In mainstream debates a lot of the talk is about a just transition in the energy sector.
Often Just transition is seen as something for the energy sector to carry out.
We need to change the energy sector – but we also need much more than that
This episode is about starting some of that discussion.
With people in the Clean Clothes Network, and with others outside it.
Right now, a Just Transition can have different meanings for different movements.
But the campaigns will be stronger, if these meanings are connected. If the understanding is shared.
How do we make that happen in our own countries, and our own places of work?
Rochelle Porras is Executive Director of EILER, Ecumenical Institute For Labor Education and Research in the Philippines.
ROCHELLE
It’s true, we have to really transition into a low-carbon economy otherwise we won’t have a planet to live in, the production system is absolutely not sustainable as of the moment. But I guess the problem lies in the implementation of the programs that the country-level policies when we talk about Just Transition. First and foremost Just Transition in developing countries like the Philippines receive less attention because the energy industry is still is facing the very basic of problems such as you know, many of our areas still don’t have electricity. So it’s mind-blowing for us to talk about these technological advancement when the very basic, you know we need electricity to run things, something as basic as that, we don’t have it yet. Likewise the Philippine energy industry’s also guided by privatisation, liberalisation, and so no public ownership. And renewable energy industries are primarily being provided and enjoyed by the biggest industry players as well.
As a third-world country it’s a lot different. So a lot of production are happening in South East Asian countries including the Philippines. But a lot of the design, the research, the planning, these are happening in the countries where multinational corporations are hosted or based. So what we get here in producing countries are the model of production that these multi-national corporations want us to take on in order to produce the products that they needed. So essentially there is no technological transfer and once a new technology is introduced in a setup of a neo-colonial country and with the rise of neo-liberalisation as well, most of the workers experience displacement.
Decent work will not exist if workers’ rights and welfare are not protected, and if the current economic systems that you know, we have in this present COVID-19 pandemic is promoting neo-liberal policies and extreme attacks on workers’ wages, labour standards and welfare, if this persists you know, green jobs will not really mean decent work or decent job quality for all.
We felt like it is high time to start a worker-led Just Transition, hence we started a round table discussion in 2018 and from there we gathered more facts and then brought it out and presented it to NGOs, CSOs that we work with, such as environmental groups that are working on transition to renewable energy and so on. By 2019 we have pledges from unions in the service sector, in the manufacturing sector, and likewise included are the agricultural workers. We have all agreed and pledged that this will be a campaign platform and a research platform to conduct more evidence-based research on the possibility and understanding the impact of implementing just transition in the particular industries.
You know the organised forces of labour and along with the environmental groups and the youth are all involved in understanding that without a collective voice and collective action, we will not arrive at a common goal of what we want to be the model of Just Transition that works in the Philippines.
What makes it very difficult to do so is the repressive situation that we have in the Philippines. It’s sad to say but the Philippines is the number one country in terms of the killings of environmental and land rights defenders. We’re also included in the top ten lists of the worst countries for workers, because of extreme violation of trade union rights, and to date there are fifty one trade unionists that have been victims of extra-judicial killings in the Philippines. And there’s also the war on drugs that targeted the poor. I invite also you and the listeners to take a look, take a closer look at the Philippines situation and express your solidarity, echo the call for justice especially the land rights defenders.
HOST:
That’s Rochelle Porras from EILER.
The Round Tables are a starting-point for a social dialogue – which brings together different communities and sectors in society.
In The Philippines, these didn’t only talk about changes in the energy sector.
They also highlighted growing automation at work, as a major transition that workers face.
The challenges are global, and workers in all sectors must respond globally.
Alison Tate is Director of Social and Economic Policy at the International Trade Union Confederation, ITUC.
That work includes the ITUC’s Just Transition Centre.
The Centre was set up after the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change
That was the first time governments promised to commit to a Just Transition, in an international agreement.
ALISON:
So we set up the Just Transition Centre as a way to support the capacity and the engagement of trade unions around those challenges, and to really develop the relationships with business and government at local level, that means municipal level, at state level, at a national level and indeed above that, across countries, to really shift what’s possible in terms of ensuring a Just Transition.
So we have to acknowledge at a societal level we all need to make changes and transition. But transitions in the past haven’t gone so well where they haven’t been
planned. So you know we can see examples where people, local economies have been devastated. We’ve been left with inter-generational unemployment because there hasn’t been the forward thinking about what’s needed in those communities.
So what should be involved is workers, and in their workplaces, being able to really engage with their management as to what steps the companies are taking to reduce carbon emissions. Whether that’s workers on a production line or in a manufacturing process, or in an agricultural process, they are the people who really know the local conditions best. And when that knowledge is really taken into the process to think more creatively about what we need, then we can see that a genuinely economic and social, as well as environmental sustainability plan can be put in place.
What we would see as a good Just Transition plan is that governments, employers, unions and community are all involved in anticipating the changes and responding to that in a way that you know, the United Nations has this language in the Sustainable Development Goals of not leaving anyone behind. That’s what’ it’s all about, it’s having an employment plan, a skills training plan, what are the investments needed for that local economy to thrive, what are the jobs that are going to be needed in that local economy, and how are those workers who are currently part of that community, with the skills level that they currently have, what’s going to be needed to transition, to actually re-deploy workers where workers are going to be phased out of that work because the industry’s going to be phased out or that type of production’s going to be phased out, and that’s really different in different countries, in different societies, in different cultures, and in different local economies.
I would give one of the really great examples of being the coal phase-out plans in Spain. You know Spain’s one of the few countries that’s taken on actually having a Just Transition plan at the national level. They set up a whole process that engaged trade unions in the companies and the regions that are most impacted. They have a plan around what kind of investment is needed, what kind of hours of work is needed as a transition. There’s a plan for the future, rather than just you know crossing fingers and hoping it will all work out, they’ve actually pulled together the real stakeholders in these processes. And it hasn’t been an easy process, it’s taken time, but there’s a real engagement around understanding that it’s not only about what that particular industry delivers to the economy, but how that fits within the bigger picture of the economic future of the country, and the economic plans for social policy, you know what it means in terms of pension ages, what it means in terms of younger workers having access to apprenticeships and training, and really having a forward-looking view.
I would say that in some cases, because of the way we organise society you know there are different movements. There’s the labour movement, the environment movement, there are others who see their identity around working for ensuring human rights are respected. And somehow we’ve got those separated, like siloed in some way. But I would say that the importance of dealing with climate change, and addressing it from the perspective of both equality and ensuring transition is a process that engages the stakeholders, then that is about alliance-building. And sometimes people see themselves on different sides of the fence. But actually a Just Transition process can really bring together in a really profound way those different actors into an understanding that we’re not actually going to achieve it if we don’t all work on the same side of the fence.
HOST:
That’s Alison Tate, from the ITUC.
The clearest examples of Just Transition initiatives in action, are mostly in the energy sector.
That’s how the Paris Agreement talks about Just Transition as well.
But the challenge is much bigger than even that.
In 2015, ILO published its Just Transition guidelines.
That talks about sustainable development across all sectors.
It needs social dialogue, social protection, rights at work, and jobs.
Across the garment industry, it’s hard to find serious plans for any of this.
Consultancies and industry produce reports on the environment and fashion, but they never talk about workers.
URSKA
We’re talking about one of the most polluting industries on the planet become synonymous with over-consumption, pollution,
HOST:
That’s Urska Trunk, Campaign Manager from Changing Markets.
URSKA:
Our mission is to expose irresponsible corporate practices and drive change towards a more sustainable economy.
HOST:
This involves changing the way products are manufactured, how they’re used – and what happens after that.
It’s about making manufacturing more sustainable for the environment.
That’s just one small part of what a Just Transition needs.
URSKA:
And we are actually running two campaigns currently in the fashion industry, for example our recent campaign, called Fossil Fashion exposes that today’s fast fashion model is enabled by cheap synthetic fibres. Already more than half of all the textiles we use today is made from polyester and if the industry continues down this road in ten years almost three quarters of our textiles will be made from plastic-based fibres. Another one of our campaigns called Dirty Fashion that we have been running for four years now, looks at viscose and this is increasingly popular with the fashion brands. The campaign highlights that viscose is today largely manufactured through a dirty process that has a devastating impact on people and environment around the production sites, namely in Asia in countries such as India, China and Indonesia. And we want to hold corporations into account and push them to actually adopt more sustainable models of manufacturing.
Actually it might come as a surprise to many that less than one per cent of all clothes are recycled back to clothes, and this is what is currently needed, we need some sort of eco-design measures to make sure that the clothes that come to our market are not only produced in a responsible way, meaning that they limit the input of harmful chemicals but are also produced in a way that can be re-used and recycled at the end of life, and this is what we talk about, about circular economy. We still have a long way to go to actually achieve that.
The corporations themselves have you know, failed to change their dirty ways, and where we see the solution is in legislation, it’s time for policy-makers to step up and regulate the sector, and actually there’s a really great opportunity coming up. The European Commission is currently preparing an EU Textile Strategy which could really be a game-changer for a circular economy. And exactly what they’re discussing is eco-design measures to have criteria for what kind of materials come to the market, whether they have the potential to be re-used and recycled at the end of life. And what will also be discussed is to make sure that companies are responsible for the over-production they create and for the items they put out on the market.
While our own expertise lies in environmental protection and supply chain investigation, we understand that environmental and social issues are kind of two sides of the same coin and are intrinsically linked. So this is why we have a long-standing partnership with the Clean Clothes Campaign. This partnership allowed us to have a holistic approach and take into account not only social justice but also environmental justice
HOST:
Everyone in this episode talked about the need to build alliances between worker rights and other movements – you heard Alison and Rochelle say this earlier.
Karin Nansen is with Friends of the Earth in Uruguay, and is the chair for Friends of the Earth International.
For her, this alliance building is critical for a Just Transition.
KARIN
For us in Friends of the Earth, justice is at the core of everything we do. We believe that the systemic crisis are interconnected, be it the climate crisis, biodiversity crisis, water crisis, food crisis, and now the pandemic. They have common roots, with a system that puts priority on profit, puts priority on capital accumulation, instead of taking care of the planet and taking care of people’s rights and people’s needs. So if we all want to overcome this crisis, this systemic crisis we face, we really need the people’s movements, people’s organisations, to come together. So our struggles go hand in hand with the struggles of the working class, of the trade unions.
The first thing for us is to really have a common analysis which might have different perspectives, or there may be issues which we don’t have a common ground or we don’t have an agreement, but it is important to be aware of those common agreements, and where there are disagreements as well.
Then we think that it’s very important to recognise the struggles of the different movements and the different dimensions of justice. And when we identify whether we have this shared vision of justice at the core of everything we do, then we can understand better what it means environmental justice, what it means social justice, what gender justice means.
So what we say is that the Just Transition cannot be paid by the workers, cannot be that those who didn’t generate the problem, are the ones who are going to pay this transition.
We have quite common history with trade unions, I’m talking for example about the history of campaigning against energy privatisation and commodification in the nineties for example, or our joint campaigning with unions against water privatisation which was a very strong campaign in my country for example, in which we came together with the trade unions to fight against the privatisation of water.
So there is a real commitment, strong commitment to build alliances with trade unions. If around specific projects we might have differences from time to time, but I think it’s also a matter of how much interaction we have and we cultivate. We have you know seen how the unions, the workers’ movement, is really also committed to the same kind of principles we are committed to.
Currently our work is mainly about Just Transition in terms of climate justice and energy. And this is going to allow us not just to think about technology. Technologies are very important because we need to really you know leave behind an energy system that is totally dependent on fossil fuels, we need to leave behind that system. But it is also about who controls it, who has the power to decide, how decision-making is taken. Because that’s a risk, we might win the battle around renewable energy, but we could have a future in which transnational corporations are controlling the energy system in a way that doesn’t allow the democratisation of energy, doesn’t allow for the right to energy.
So we do agree that the transformation needed goes well beyond the energy sector, and that applies also to the food system, applies to the way we manage biodiversity, the forests and so on. But maybe we are not yet calling that Just Transition. It’s framed in a different way. And I think it’s a lot of how the movements want to frame the proposals for transformation of society. How broad we want the concept or the principle of Just Transition It’s something we need reclaim as movements, that we need to make sure that we are the ones setting the framework and setting the principles and really you know also having a control in terms of how the transition is taking place.
HOST:
So what’s needed for a Just Transition in the garment sector?
And what does this mean for the Clean Clothes Campaign?
Tibbe Smith Larsen is the Network’s European Coordinator.
TIBBE
Clean Clothes has a fairly long history with working with workers’ rights specifically in the garment sector, and I think that to have a consciousness about the environmental issues, climate issues, and how it actually links to garment workers, it’s still quite a new thing for the consciousness of the Network. And it’s only now being also written into the Global Strategic Framework, our strategy for the next five years, under the headline ‘A Just Transition to a New Business Model’. So understanding the broad inter-linkages, we don’t have the analysis behind us in our history of work, to really provide us with a coherent understanding of it.
It’s both taking into consideration at the core unsustainability of the business model, which is based on exploitation of both workers and resources, environment. And also taking into consideration the move to new types of businesses, e-retailers, direct sales, etcetera. So there are some changes in the market, it’s not just the big brands and fast fashion retailers any more, there are multiple players that are using slightly different business models. And all of these things together with a general increased focus on environmental issues linked to the garment sector, it does have an impact on workers.
Any transition shouldn’t come at the expense of workers, it needs to include workers, it needs to have worker rights and human rights at the core of it. We also know that the ways of production ,where it hurts climate it hurts the environment, it also hurts workers in various ways. So it’s really about not separating the two.
There are different imperatives from the fashion industry for these changing business models. At the core of it it’s still about being able to earn as much money as possible, and then managing or overcoming whatever risks there may be, for instance in terms of climate crisis, changing consumer behaviour in consumer markets.
And I think it really is a challenge for us as a Network now to understand what are these implications for workers, and what are the responses that we propose and what is it that we imagine a Just Transition looks like, and it involves understanding very well the impacts of different changes, the different implications that these changing business models have on workers.
I think this is also about the bottom-up approach in the Network, it’s also at the core of what we want, the social dialogue and the inclusiveness of the workers who are directly impacted.
It's urgent but I think that this is really the first step and I hope that within the next coming years we have a more broader involvement and engagement and a strong conversation within the Network about this so that it’s not just coming from a few entities, but it’s really, it’s greatly mobilising the Network behind what this means. And because of this strong internal focus on it, being able to make the strong links with alliances as well because we have the core contribution from our side as well about what it means.
So this is my hope for the coming years.
HOST:
That’s Tibbe Smith Larsen, ending our show.
Like always – please send us your feedback!
You can find us at podcast@cleanclothes.org.
Matthew Abud produced this episode, with Anne Dekker, and the Clean Clothes Podcast team.
Liz Parker, Tanne de Goei, and Johnson Chin-Yin Yeung.
Sound engineering support is by Steve Adam
I’m Febriana Firdaus.