Sustainable Workplaces?

How we might combine social-economic transition with climate change adaptation

The growth of capitalist economy can’t continue forever: the natural resources of wealth have been exploited for centuries. And humankind is more and more threatened by the destruction of world climate. Not only through global warming and water scarcity, but also through land use change and destruction of biodiversity on this planet by competing enterprises.

The market economy, subsidized by the state, has permanently disturbed the sensitive system of ecological interrelations by massive burning of fossil energy (coal, oil, gas), eg. leading to melting ice caps. To prevent further tipping points, we have to relearn how to run the economy in a sustainable way. Meaning: self-organized, decentralized resource planning and services instead of big business monopolies. Therefore we have to start, where the destruction of nature originates: in the workplace.

Whether in production or manufacturing, transport logistics, education, cultural and welfare sectors, healthcare industry, construction or agriculture and trade – there’s a wide range of opportunities to locally resist the destruction of nature by industry. An effective, coordinated use of all resources is as important as the protection of waters and soils. To avoid waste and pollution there’s an increased need for renewable energy and organized metabolic circular economies, both regional and global.

But we also need a diverse adaptation to the progressing multiple crisis. Because the transformation of ecnonomic management is not only aiming to achieve ecological sustainability, but also social justice and participation through socialisation. Because all humans are equal and have the right to be protected from enviromental pollution and health risks, as well as to dwell in a liveable habitat.

Therefore we have to mindfully avoid exclusion in the form of gender discrimination, racism and nationalism. Our aim is not to defend the wealth of the industrial nations, which they accumulated by imperial wars, colonial exploitation and patriarchy. Instead, climate justice means that the consequences have to be taken by the ones responsible for this world-wide mismanagement: the ruling classes in the metropolises of fossil capitalism. This is why all people in the Global South have to get as much helpful solidarity and practical support as possible to fight the effects of climate change.

Here in Europe this means organizing rank-and-file resistance to enviromental destruction and by supporting societies in the most endangered regions of the planet. Every tenth of a degree of warming that we might avoid can help to stop this catastrophic „progress“. But the socio-ecological transformation should not lead to green-washed capitalist exploitation. Through autonomous workplace struggles for a sustainable transformation of all enterprises we take some steps towards global climate justice.

This means practically: to fight as workers in everyday life for social change and ecological transformation in each industrial sector. But we also start collectively with need-orientation in the household (and while on holiday) towards a sustainable future for all living beings on Earth. There are many ways to act as unions against the „externalization“ of destructive effects in the interest of profit: occupational health and safety, water and air quality, waste reduction, recycling, energy and soil conservation, mobility transistion, biodiversity, food sovereignty, enviromental education, network communication,…

This includes the main task of adapting to climate crisis, because living conditions on the planet are changing at lightspeed. In the last few years heat waves, heavy rainfall, flood disasters, hurricanes and droughts have became daily occurrences. Being presented in the media as „once-in-a-century events“ shows, that there is still a dominating perception of a „normality“, which doesn’t exist anymore.

But the collapse of the ecological world systems are already a brutal reality, while there is almost no effective mass resistance against this enviromental destruction. Therefore we should build a global subsistance provision beyond the market and a socio-ecological transformation from below as soon as possible: be it through strikes, boycott, blockades or occupations.

Stop climate crisis: Abolish capitalism!

Anarcho-Syndicalist Netzwork – ASN Cologne

Creative Commons: BY-NC

Occupational Health & Safety and Climate Crisis:

Heat, Sunshine and Occupational Safety
https://asnkoeln.wordpress.com/2022/07/22/heat-sunshine-and-occupational-safety/

Health & Safety in Heavy Rain and Flood
https://asnkoeln.wordpress.com/2023/10/18/health-safety-in-heavy-rain-and-flood/