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:

• Efforts in the Philippines to develop a Just Transition campaign for workers and communities (Rochelle Porras, EILER)
• What a Just Transition must involve, from a global union perspective (Alison Tate, ITUC)
• Campaigns to pressure garment manufacturers to stop polluting the environment that also highlight worker rights (Urska Trunk, Changing Markets)
• How environment movements and worker movements share the same goals in a Just Transition (Karin Nansen, Friends of the Earth)
• Steps the Clean Clothes Campaign can take to push for a Just Transition for garment workers (Tibbe Smith-Larsen, CCC) 

Please tell us what inspired you about this show, and share your feedback, comments and questions, by emailing: podcast@cleanclothes.org 

Speakers:

• Rochelle Porras, EILER, Philippines
• Alison Tate, ITUC
• Urska Trunk, Changing Markets
• Karin Nansen, Friends of the Earth Uruguay & Friends of the Earth International
• Tibbe Smith-Larsen, Europe Coalition Coordinator

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 co...