Presentation short abstract

JT emerged from yet shifted away from worker-centred origins, always excluding informal and Global South workers. We propose inclusive analysis spanning formal-informal labour and North-South relations, exposing how energy transitions depend on exploitation requiring transformative solidarity.

Presentation long abstract

Just Transition (JT) emerged as a labour-oriented framework to protect workers and communities impacted by environmental policy. Though incorporated into the 2015 Paris Agreement, JT has become contested with interpretations that increasingly marginalise workers' voices, particularly from the global South.

Dominant JT frameworks focus narrowly on formal, unionised workers in the global North, treating informal work as failure rather than recognising how capitalism structurally depends on informal and unpaid labour. This exclusion is problematic given precarious workers constitute the vast majority of the global workforce in energy systems.

A worker-centred transition requires expanding analysis to include all 'classes of labour': formal employment, informal energy provision, reproductive labour, and displaced agricultural work. These workers share common exploitation, with capital strategically fragmenting the working class globally to weaken resistance.

Current transitions risk perpetuating colonial dynamics through 'sacrifice zones' where costs concentrate to enable accumulation elsewhere, and 'stranded communities' facing deindustrialization in the North. These spatially differentiated but interconnected processes demand relational analysis spanning North and South.

Building transformative solidarity requires: fostering cross-sectoral worker alliances; developing international labour solidarity challenging global exploitation; and strengthening community-labour alliances connecting workplace organising with broader energy justice struggles.

This paper and panel recentres labour in JT by foregrounding marginalised workers' voices, examining struggles relationally across North-South divides, questioning whose voices count in JT agendas, and identifying institutional interventions required for a just transition serving all workers rather than capital accumulation.