Presentation short abstract

The study assessed the impacts of climate change on workers and just transition demands of unions in the Philippines and found a disconnect between the strong green advocacies of a national labor center and the weak climate praxis of local affiliates. Thus labour’s praxis can vary across the scales.

Presentation long abstract

A robust literature has examined climate interventions in the Philippines, a country that is disproportionately affected by global warming. Understudied though are the responses of the labour movement, especially at the local and sectoral level. This research gap tracks the global trend. Through a labour-centric qualitative methodology of focus groups involving 22 unions and 68 workers across five industrial sectors, and document review of resolutions of one labor center and collective bargaining agreements of its affiliates, the study assessed the impacts of climate change on workers and just transition demands of unions. The study found a disconnect between the strong green advocacies of the national labor center and the weak praxis of local enterprise-level unions for climate action. While it is commonly held that workers are climate skeptic and transition defiant, the literature in fact reveals that unions can be both enabling and and constraining in the fight for a just transition. The study argues that this variation occurs not just at the horizontal but also the vertical axis in that labour’s praxis can vary across the scales. In the Philippine case, weak interventions by enterprise-based unions occurs hand-in-hand with strong advocacies at the national level. The study thus recommends bolstering the dissemination of advocacies from national centers to local unions, and integrating climate advocacies in collective bargaining and union activity at the firm-level.