Paper short abstract:

This paper details how Zambian and South African unions are grappling with pressure to close coal mines; and how these unions are responding to the rapid growth in demand for transition minerals. The paper considers who benefits from the Just Transition, and whose concept of justice is prioritised.

Paper long abstract:

In Zambia and South Africa, the militancy of mining unions was crucial to achieving democracy. However, in both nations’ democratic eras, these unions have been weakened by international capital. They increasingly take corporatist stances, working with employers and the government to expand employment numbers and maintain minimum salary standards, and are often criticised for failing to inspire workers or challenge capital. These corporatist unions have much to gain and to lose from the ‘Just Transition’: a collection of policies, practices and values aimed at ensuring social cohesion in the transition to climate friendly energy production and usage. Based upon work with the Southern African office of the IndustriALL Global Union Confederation, this paper details how Zambian and South African unions are grappling with national and international pressure to close coal mines – and their role in representing workers through this process; as well as how these unions are responding to the rapid growth in demand for transition minerals, and with this demand under-regulated new mines. More broadly, the paper considers the core questions posed by the union movement about the Just Transition: who benefits from this transition, and whose concept of justice is prioritised. In doing so, it explores how unions are attempting to challenge a capitalist-led transition and their spaces of shared resistance and tension with other civil society organisations.