From Treadmill of Production to Just Transition and Beyond

Introduction

Treadmill of Production (ToP) and Just Transition (JT) are two paradigms to frame the role of unions and, more broadly, industrial relations institutions in accelerating or slowing global warming and climate change. ToP is based on the idea that industrial relations institutions embrace the capitalistic illusion of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’, at the root of the global environmental crisis (Goodstein, 1999; Gould et al., 2004; Obach, 2004). JT gives unions a key role in fostering a socially fair move away from fossil and other polluting, energy-intensive industries and services (Lipsig-Mumme and McBride, 2015; Räthzel and Uzzell, 2013). Both theories were developed with reference to Western capitalism but have become relevant to social and environmental problems globally (Gould et al., 2016).

In core countries, such as the US, Canada and partially France, Germany and the UK, the divide between ToP and JT has been highlighted in sharp ways. This article looks at the Italian case, where the historical and current evolution of industrial relations sheds light on the continuity and tension between contrasting patterns and suggests more nuanced frameworks.

In principle, the three main Italian unions have evolved along the three logics of union action identified by Hyman (2001), which have a parallel in Hampton’s (2015) classification of JT approaches: the radical transformation perspective, adopted by class-oriented unions (CGIL); the neoliberal discourse, adopted by market-oriented unions (CISL); the ecological modernization approach, embraced by society-oriented unions (UIL). Despite this, views and policies of central-level actors in Italy swing within these taxonomies, and do not necessarily translate into coherent actions at local level.

To explain the peculiarities of the Italian case in comparison to broader trends, this article contends that the social movement origins of unions in Italy (Ferrarotti, 1974: 282–283; Giugni, 1956), in contrast to business unionism in other countries (Taft, 1963), contributed to mitigate the industrialist vocation of trade unions. This made them more open to broader societal and (partially) environmental concerns in the struggle for sustainable work organization of the late 1960s/early 1970s (Lumley, 1990). In turn, what constitutes a constraint to be eliminated or a resource to be utilized is still unclear in contemporary union strategies to promote JT. As for any transitional phase in which a new stable model has not yet emerged, this situation generates pragmatic and adaptive behaviours in which contextual variables are of paramount importance (Locke, 1995; Regini, 1995). The legacies of Italy’s uneven development explain why good JT cases coexist with new forms of ToP. Theoretical and practical implications of these arguments for ToP and JT are provided in the following sections.

Treadmill of production, just transition and theories of industrial relations

The Treadmill of Production (ToP) theory was elaborated by environmental sociologist Allan Schnaiberg (1980) to show how the post-Second World War growth model led to huge extraction of natural resources needed for the production of goods and services. For Schnaiberg, Western capitalism runs on a treadmill, where the more resources for economic development are extracted, the more environmental degradation worsens. Ecological destruction is a by-product of ToP, but uncontrolled depletion of finite resources also makes further economic development difficult.

As a product of industrial capitalism, industrial relations institutions in advanced market economies contributed to speeding up ToP (Goodstein, 1999; Obach, 2004). The contraposition between group interests mediated within the industrial relations system and the general interest in environmental sustainability rendered controversial unions’ stance regarding environmental choices affecting jobs and income. With the aim of increasing the share of resources redistributed from capital to labour, unions in Western countries embraced the capitalistic mantra of growth, drawing away from the implications for the environment of increasing industrial production (Gould et al., 2004). This dynamic is particularly accentuated when it comes to the business union model, under which the advancement of working standards is pursued regardless of socio-political conditions of those falling outside the scope of organized labour (Taft, 1963: 20; Thomas and Doerflinger, 2020).

Authors contesting these arguments maintain that industrial relations are not necessarily associated with ToP’s acceleration (Obach, 2004). Industrial relations institutions, in the US for example, contribute to slowing the treadmill in two ways: collective action can limit growth, efficiency and automation, and unions can explicitly integrate environmental sustainability in their programmes, building alliances with environmental groups to make the protection of labour and the environment convergent. More radical justifications of industrial relations, however, question ToP’s assumptions at a deeper level, seeing the environmental crisis as a crisis of human hierarchies and equalities (Grear, 2014). For example, Murray Bookchin (1982) argues, ‘the very notion of the domination of nature by man stems from the very real domination of human by human’ (p. 1). These critical views on the environmental crisis touch the essence of industrial relations theory.

Unions’ goals of authentic participation and freedom contrast with the ‘jobs vs. environment blackmail’ (Capra and Mattei, 2015: 121; Hampton, 2015: 186), which impairs labour’s capacity to react to environmental stress (Barca and Leonardi, 2018; Tiraboschi, 2014). Where democratic deficits and dependency increase and labour vulnerabilities are exacerbated by occupational threats and other forms of subordination, workers and their representatives are inclined to accept unfair working conditions and business practices potentially dangerous to health and environment (Montuschi, 1976).

Instead of being inherent in the relationship between labour and environment, the contraposition between industrial relations and environmental sustainability is socially and juridically constructed (Zbyszewska, 2018), and it largely depends on institutions, power relations and economic constraints. In a market economy, the trade-off between labour and environment can arise, but can be strategically deconstructed through industrial relations strategies addressing and protecting both values, rather than accentuating the difference.

Schnaiberg (1980) was aware of this when he confronted union policies in the US and Europe. He observed that in line with the business union model, American unions had fought primarily over the share and size (in terms of wages and fringe benefits) of surplus going to labour. This became evident in times of economic downturn: during the US fiscal crisis, organized labour ‘reversed itself, and sided once more with monopoly-capital owners/managers in calling for increased production to generate jobs and wages’ (Schnaiberg, 1980: 38). Western European experience in the post-war period was considerably different, as the labour movements exhibited ‘far more sustained political activity and consciousness-raising, leading to a more social democratic form of productive control in many periods and societies’ (Schnaiberg, 1980: 235). The gap between the US business unionism and the social movement orientation of unions in Western Europe became even more accentuated in the 1960s and 1970s. Turner and Hurd (2001: 16), for example, noted that far from developing a socio-ecological reform strategy as German unions have done starting from early 1970s, US labour leaders reacted to demands for environmental preservation in many cases solely as attacks on union jobs.

Unlike ToP theory, JT assumes that unions’ ability to mediate and aggregate interests is crucial to mitigating the social effects of the transition to a low-carbon economy (Lipsig-Mumme and McBride, 2015; Räthzel and Uzzell, 2013). Compared to ToP theory, however, the concept of JT is more nebulous and has controversial implications for industrial relations (Hampton, 2015; Räthzel and Uzzell, 2011; Stevis and Felli, 2015), and its application is likely to be shaped by resources and constraints.

Consider the ‘technological fit’ discourse (Räthzel and Uzzell, 2011), which Stevis and Felli (2015) call the ‘shared solution approach’. Advocates of a capital, labour and environment alliance argue that growth can be decoupled from environmental degradation thanks to technological advance and market dynamics (e.g. emissions trading). For unions traditionally subscribing to market efficiency (Hampton, 2015), green growth is as a shared interest that can be mediated within the industrial relations system, increasing the possibility of capital redistribution between labour and the environment and preventing competition between the two. The example frequently used is the UK, where union representatives are engaged in a wide range of climate-related activity in the workplace, including mitigation and adaptation to cut emissions, based on workers’ involvement in green technological improvements and energy efficiency (Hampton, 2015).

JT approaches based on technological optimism and market forces assume growth as independent variable. Instead, in many cases the conflict between labour and the environment takes place in depressed areas and sectors with low added value and growth capacity, where monopsonist labour markets preclude any alternative option to plant shutdown or perpetuation of industrial activities dangerous to health and the environment (Gould et al., 2016). As economic growth is strongly connected to reduced unemployment, for example, Austrian unions ended up prioritizing a development model that ultimately conflicts with the environment, despite their willingness to include environmental sustainability in the industrial relations agenda (Soder et al., 2018: 528). Unions’ strategies should, therefore, confront socio-economic structural constraints that they can hardly influence, and reorient their JT strategies accordingly.

Consider the ‘differentiated responsibility approach’, focussing on labour market implications of JT (Stevis and Felli, 2015). Depending on sector, new green jobs are created and existing ones modified (Lipsig-Mumme and McBride, 2015). Yet, restructuring and technological changes that JT involves come with occupational challenges, including plant closures, job losses and workers functional and geographical mobility (Rustico and Tiraboschi, 2010). Institutional cooperation between public authorities, firms and unions is crucial to mitigating the effects of transition to a low-carbon economy (Casano, 2019). The example frequently used is Germany: when many of its coal-fired power stations closed, German government and unions provided transitional schemes for workers to find employment in the renewable energy industry (Abraham, 2017; Galgóczi, 2014). Labour market transitions support may reduce workers’ vulnerability and empower them to react to environmental stress.

Assuming all social and institutional conditions exist, economic development is also necessary to make the transitionary infrastructure work. Instead, vast areas of underdevelopment are visible within the boundaries of Western jurisdiction (Gould et al., 2016). JT experiences in Australia, for example, suggest that the ability for workers to find alternative decent employment after a facility closure for environmental reasons is not good (Snell, 2018: 561). JT strategies should therefore be reoriented towards non-traditional industrial relations issues such as public authorities’ and employers’ financial support and educational opportunities for workers displaced by environmental policies. The Ruhr case in Germany and the 2011 tripartite agreement to close Centralia Coal Plant in the US are emblematic of this JT pattern (ILO, 2018: 7).

Among radical approaches to JT, the ‘socio-ecological’ pattern (Stevis and Felli, 2015) and the ‘social movement discourse’ (Räthzel and Uzzell, 2011) assume that capitalism and its dividing categories (e.g. state and market, private and public property) are intrinsically incompatible with environmental sustainability. Alongside work activities within the collaborative commons (Capra and Mattei, 2015), models of reproductive and non-market work in the so-called solidarity economy (e.g. care work, work in cooperatives) are emphasized as the privileged way to deconstruct the trade-off between labour and the environment (Barca and Leonardi, 2018; Zbyszewska, 2018).

Provided that unions are willing to consider these JT approaches, many contradictions arise in turning policies into reality. As a result of structural deindustrialization, emissions are declining in developed economies, in part due to the transfer of polluting production to the developing world (Gould et al., 2016). Similarly, the shift towards alternative energy sources in the North is often combined by the import of extractive and polluting energy from other countries.

Research design and method

Italian industrial relations have always been difficult to classify: taxonomies used in comparative analysis ‘are apparently less clear, less generally applicable and less able to yield unequivocal results in Italy than they are in the other countries with which comparisons are made’ (Regini, 1995: 68). The same complexity is observable in relation to ToP and JT patterns.

Within a European Union (EU) comparative project, Agreenment – A Green Mentality for Collective Bargaining, Italy stood out as an excellent case study to deconstruct the conceptual alternative between ToP and JT and different union approaches to JT. The project run from June 2018 to June 2020 and focused on the role of industrial relations institutions in promoting sustainable development and JT in France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK. The research confirmed Regini’s (1995) claim that

interpretation of the Italian case and of its evolution consists mainly in highlighting a series of ‘shifts’ within a context considered, for reasons that are rather unclear, to be more multiform and complex than that of other countries and which therefore cannot be captured by oversimplified concepts. (p. 56)

The uncertain boundaries of the Italian case on the labour and environmental nexus, therefore, deserve more investigation.

The article attempts such investigation through historical-comparative analysis of Italian industrial relations (Mahoney and Thelen, 2015) and an evaluation of its implications for ToP and JT theories based on nine semi-structured interviews with employers and workers’ representatives, a focus group and Italian secondary sources (academic literature, reports, collective agreements and policy documents). As employers’ associations were unavailable, HR managers from key industrial companies were interviewed (see Appendix 1 on respondents). The interviews were conducted between September 2018 and April 2019. The focus group with six different participants (see Appendix 1), held in October 2019 in Rome and audio-recorded, was used to elicit social partners’ reactions and interpretations of the early results of the research, with the facilitation from a research expert from the union-linked Di Vittorio Foundation. All the union’s representatives interviewed and invited to the focus group have high-level political roles in their confederations and/or are responsible for environmental policies at national or firm level. HR managers were selected on the basis of the firm case studies conducted within the Agreement project, which include core Italian-based industrial companies confronted with JT dilemmas.

Treadmill of production within the Italian industrial era

After the fall of fascism, the newly born Italian civil society developed an awareness of the environmental implications of industrial activity only very slowly. The idea that health is an indispensable and inalienable worker and citizen right also developed with some delay in the Italian union movement (Montuschi, 1976: 11). In post-Second World War reconstruction, growth and industrialization were political and socio-economic priorities to build up Italy’s democratic order (Luzzi, 2009: 24). The environmental effects of new production models lagged behind in central unions’ agenda, considered as a small sacrifice worth paying on the ‘altar of industrialization’ (Calavita, 1986; Montuschi, 1976: 42). When businesses unleashed a strong offensive against workers’ rights, given the accessibility of a low-cost, low-skilled workforce flowing from the agricultural exodus, unions responses focused on protecting workers’ health inside factories (Luzzi, 2009: 41) and elaborating a collective strategy to address contingent workers’ needs and guarantee their livelihood (Falasca, 2006: 46).

Regarded as an opportunity to escape from rural conditions and material scarcity, the paradigm of development dominated the so-called Italian miracle phase (Falasca, 2006: 39). The fascist stereotype of the subordinated citizen influenced the post-war model of ‘the resigned and fatalistic’ worker, who accepts, without disputing, ‘the dogmas of rationalizing Taylorism’ (Montuschi, 1976: 12). Within this paradigm, removed from reference to sustainable development and antithetical to the ideal of progress, the political and social consensus of workers and unions concentrated around those business initiatives that, in the early post-war decades, radically reshaped vast territories of the country (Adorno and Neri Serneri, 2009; Righi, 1992).

Union ‘awakening’ to the environmental and health implications of industrial activities paralleled workers’ rapid political development after 1968 (Montuschi, 1976: 12; Righi, 1992):

The intense bargaining round concerning environmental conditions of work involved thousands of workers between the ‘hot autumn’ [1969] and the early 1970s: this was not only a step forward in improving occupational health and safety and overall working conditions, but a remarkable example of collective participation in a different and more sustainable design of work and societal organization. (WR5)

In this context, the social movement origins of Italian unions were revitalized to influence collective bargaining strategies: the new content of firm-level agreements challenged the very system of authority within the factory (Lumley, 1990: 281), and workers’ antagonism extended far beyond the organization of work, embracing the planning of firm’s development ‘as a global reality’ (Ferrarotti, 1974: 294–295; Giugni, 1970: 42).

While the ‘struggle against Taylorist work organization’ of the late 1960s and early 1970s came to acquire symbolic value as the first step towards the construction of a more humane society (Regini, 1995: 125), uneven industrial and socio-economic development led to diverse unions responses to social and environmental problems (Bedani, 1995; Locke, 1995). From the late 1960s, the contiguity between industry, residence and farmlands triggered environmental protests by local communities and unions in the most industrialized and unionized areas. In 1972, the Cremona sections of the three main national union confederations CGIL (Confederazione Generale Italiana dei Lavoratori), CISL (Confederazione Italiana Sindacati Lavoratori) and UIL (Unione Italiana del Lavoro) strongly opposed further expansion of the Amoco Corporation oil refinery (Ravelli, 2014: 11). In 1974, chemical risks for the population living around the petrochemical plant of Marghera were discussed in a union assembly for the first time (Casson, 2007: 27).

A landmark event in the formation of an Italian ‘working-class environmentalism’ was, in the fall of 1971, a national meeting on the theme ‘Man, Nature, Society’ held by the Italian Communist Party (Barca, 2012: 71). Top-ranking cadres and organic intellectuals of the party noted, ‘how toxicity had become the existential condition of global capital’ (Barca, 2012: 71), emphasizing the need to consider the environment a working-class priority. Yet, it was only the Seveso Icmesa disaster of 1976, when a chemical plant’s accidental release of 6 tonnes toxic chemicals forced a large evacuation of local inhabitants that provided a shock marking an irreversible change in unions’ attitude to environmental risk.

This dramatic event represented a turning point for enlarging union attention to health and safety of the wider community (Falasca, 2006: 61). The illusion that what happened inside factories had no substantial impact on the natural environment and communities demonstrated its fallacy. The Seveso disaster, and the following one at Anic (Enichem) in Manfredonia (26 September 1976; Di Luzio, 2003; Luzzi, 2009: 152–155) changed both public opinion and the references of unions, politicians and the judiciary system (Centemeri, 2006; Luzzi, 2009: 148; Penelope, 2006: 36–37). The impact went beyond narrow labour issues (it drove the legalization of abortion the year after) and beyond Italy (the first European Seveso Directive on industrial hazards was passed in 1982).

In the 1980s, an increasing number of firms undergoing restructuring processes found that important sectors of the labour movement were ready and willing to negotiate change in production processes (Regini, 1995: 125). Within sectors most exposed to environmental regulation, this cooperation resulted in mitigation and adaptation policies to reduce the impact of production on the environment and local communities. However, the increased business orientation that unions showed in this phase, made them more vulnerable to the jobs versus environment blackmail, which regained traction during the economic recession of 1981–1985 (Adorno and Neri Serneri, 2009: 27).

At the local level, some union organizations were able to absorb radical pressures into more complex mediation strategies. Elsewhere, conflicts between individual and collective interests concerning strategies to combat the environmental impact of production arose within the labour movement. Emblematic were the Montedison case in Marghera and the Acna one in Cengio (Luzzi, 2009: 126–130), in which individual workers’ grievances on health and the environment inside and outside the factory ended up in collision with the interests of production and the ‘controversial position of the confederal unions’ (Casson, 2007: 146; Nebbia, 1994: 42).

The de-industrialization process gradually changed the perceived trade-off between jobs and environment to the benefit of latter, as jobs were gradually lost but environmental damage became more apparent (Nucifora, 2009: 317). Environmental disasters and industrial desertification involved an increase in abandoned areas of high environmental risk, with a rise of conservationist concerns (Tiraboschi, 2014). The Chernobyl disaster of 26 April 1986 and the following anti-nuclear referendum also contributed to bringing the ‘external environment’ back on central unions’ agenda. For the first time, collective agreements of the late 1980s and early 1990s introduced measures to prevent environmental risk and promote energy efficiency and conservation (Falasca, 2006: 73–75). In 1988, CGIL General Secretary Bruno Trentin defined a healthy, safe and clean environment as a fundamental right of workers and citizens:

This stance represented a turning point, because that right had not been considered as essential for a long time within the union movement. (WR5)

The Italian way to just transition

Despite the long wave of JT detected in the previous section, Italian social partners’ environmental concerns remained relatively narrow during the 1990s, with few exceptions of deeper involvement mostly in the chemical and energy sectors. With the emergence of the climate crisis from the mid-1990s Italian social partners became more and more concerned with the environmental effects for current and future generations. Many union organizations, at both national and local levels, take part in the Friday for Future initiatives, including the global climate strikes:

Workplace assemblies are organised all across the country to discuss the climate emergency and struggle for climate justice, to raise awareness among workers on the issue of global climate change, the dramatic consequences for the planet, and the need to act quickly to guarantee human rights, social justice and full employment. (WR8)

These changes were driven by three main convergent forces:

Against this background, in March 2018, CGIL launched the ‘Integrated Platform for Sustainable Development’, aiming to retain environmental protection, legality and job creation under the umbrella of labour union’s collective bargaining initiatives to offer an integrated answer to both (environmental and employment) issues, by proposing a different development model. The platform promotes a ‘multi-level approach’ based on three vectors – that is, air, water and land – and issues relating to the urban environment, such as mobility, waste management and construction. The ultimate goal is to make the green economy a driving force for new employment and the JT towards a decarbonized world. However, a CGIL representative involved in the focus group pointed out that, while inevitable, JT is not an easy process:

Interests are divergent both between labour and capital, and different union federations. Participation and collaboration are of paramount importance for the just transition, but most importantly they should be authentic and not cosmetic. (WR8)

CISL is also vocal on sustainable development and the need to promote JT through social partnerships and industrial relations, although, compared to other union confederations, the emphasis is on labour market efficiency and technology:

Investment in workers’ training and active labour market policies are of paramount importance to tackling the JT, along with the organization of work and design new job classification systems able to reflect the new occupations in the green economy. (WR9)

The key policy channel to reaching these goals is the circular economy, an economic paradigm ‘meant to regenerate itself’, where production and consumption waste can be turned into new material or goods for ensuing cycles. CISL representatives interviewed and involved in the focus group are convinced that energy savings and CO₂ reductions will positively influence a better redistribution of productivity for workers.

UIL efforts to support a JT away from coal are linked to its self-perception as a ‘citizens’ union’, for which environmental, public health and quality of life are central. It also shares technological optimism:

As long as we’re able to make technological advancements compatible with job protection and decent work, through collective bargaining for example, technology can be crucial for sustainable development. (WR10)

UIL also stresses the importance of social dialogue in the JT process at national and supranational levels:

Unions should be aware that in the globalized economy, closing a plant in a country for environmental reasons, could imply the delocalization of production elsewhere, with the externalization of its social and environmental costs. (WR10)

In September 2019, CGIL, CISL and UIL launched a policy document for a model of sustainable development driven by industrial relations. This emphasizes the need for a holistic approach integrating the three social, environmental and economic dimensions of sustainability:

CGIL, CISL and UIL are willing to embrace the promotion of a JT, but also recognize many contradictions in the concept along with the challenges that the shift from policies to practices involves. Sustainable development requires a deep change in personal and organizational behaviours, as well as a consistency between sustainability values, goals and daily practices. (WR8)

The document sets recommendations for union structures at sectoral and local levels. Drawing on the existing content of sectoral and firm-level collective agreements, concrete examples of bargaining measures to combine labour and environmental sustainability are provided, including gain-sharing plans linked to energy efficiency and energy conservation; steering a share of firm profits to social and environmental investments for the region and local communities; promoting sustainable consumption and welfare; promoting sustainable home-to-work commuting by incentivizing public transport use, bicycles and so on; plastic reduction and sustainable canteens. The document further proposes to expand traditional prerogatives of workers’ representatives for occupational health and safety to environmental aspects. The importance of using inter-professional training funds to requalify workers for transitioning towards a greener economy is also emphasized, along with promoting green public procurement and union control over global supply chains.

Sustainability is also at the centre of business organizations’ agenda with a narrative focused on green technology, the circular economy, energy efficiency and corporate social responsibility. In 2011, the Italian union confederations and the employers’ association, Confindustria, signed a policy agreement on energy efficiency and conservation focusing on eco-economic decoupling. While this policy framework sets core principles for the JT, it sometimes justified alliances between business lobbies and sectoral unions’ federations to block state regulations, in order to avoid additional financial burdens on companies. Recent cross-class alliances emerged to scrap the suspension of oil and gas rigs in 2017, to withdraw sugar-tax proposals in 2018, and to reduce the proposed plastic tax on packaging in 2019.

From policies to practices of just transition

As the previous section showed, in principle, the need for a JT is nowadays widely accepted within Italian industrial relations. The following cases emphasize how controversial the implementation of JT policies is, and how union positions can diverge when confronted with economic and institutional constraints that transitionary practices involve.

Discussion and conclusions

Within the historical evolution of Italian industrial relations, there has been a continuum of ToP and JT; both patterns have coexisted within the same country and organizations. The prevalence of one model over the other was largely owing to structural constraints and the uneven evolution of industrial capitalism over time and space.

During the post-war economic miracle, ‘environment’ for trade unions meant, if at all, only the ‘internal’ factory environment and occupational health and safety. In line with ToP theory and the path followed by unions in other Western jurisdictions, the Italian labour movement has traditionally dealt with environmental sustainability as a short-term problem. When economic pressures exacerbated the competition between jobs and environment concerns, ToP prevailed.

Environmental sustainability was considered an instrumental goal (anthropocentric perspective), a means towards accomplishing labour contingent needs.

Such contradictions reflect the broader structural paradoxes of capitalism: ‘the social structure which creates employment drained of meaning and control, and the deprivations which this inflicts on the employee, impose severe limits on the chances of meaningful and creative life outside work’ (Hyman, 1975: 100). Arguably, workers’ disempowerment and societal vulnerabilities make this contradiction more evident: the more labour is instrumentalized and privatized, the more it is alienated from nature and the environment (Zbyszewska, 2018).

Despite ToP being the main logic of union action during the Italian miracle, a long wave of JT can be identified in Italy from the late 1960s. Explanations for an Italian ‘hidden history of working-class environmentalism’ (Bell, 2020: 146) can be found in the longer tradition of social unionism in the country, which originally made local union units a place for popular and civic education (Giugni, 1956: LXIII) and the factory a site of political confrontation (Lumley, 1990: 281). Within the context of workers’ power revitalization in the early 1970s, the social movement orientation of Italian trade unionism revived, and traditional bargaining issues turned into sources of a more general demand for societal progress. As in other capitalist economies, the contribution of the Italian labour movement to the ‘humanization of production’ did not necessarily and everywhere translate into positive environmental effects, but responsibility for this cannot be attributed to workers or their representatives. Instead, it was the outcome of an economic and institutional system that to some extent legitimizes capital to pollute, extract resources and use labour for profit purposes (Capra and Mattei, 2015; Hampton, 2015).

In this reading, ToP must be deconstructed and reconsidered as follows. Labour’s collective action grounded in democratic ideals mitigates the industrial system of hierarchy and dependency at the root of the environmental crisis (Bookchin, 1982: 85–87), in which law and the constitution of legal subjectivity have long been structurally complicit (Grear, 2014: 127). Union efforts to establish more mutualistic and democratic social structures, lying ‘between’ state and market, function to create conditions for environmental sustainability. Beyond this, any direct effort that industrial relations institutions can make to incorporate environmental sustainability in their logic of collective action is a contribution towards a better society.

The long but weak wave of JT identified in the ToP era is nowadays reinforced and made more visible by an explicit integration between labour and environmental protection through institutional alliances, collective bargaining and social partnerships. As in other advanced economies, an overall consensus of national social partners is observable around the idea that, thanks to technological advancements, growth can be decoupled from environmental degradation. However, beyond ‘technological fit’ discourses (Räthzel and Uzzell, 2011) and ‘shared solution approaches’ (Stevis and Felli, 2015), a large gap exists between words and deeds on the need to combat global climate change.

Regardless of their different identities and ideological roots (Bedani, 1995; Hampton, 2015; Hyman, 2001), all three union confederations in Italy firmly refuse the alternative between labour and environment and carry out activities ranging from confrontational positions against capital, to cooperation with business aimed at promoting the three dimensions of sustainability at once. Instead of being mutually exclusive within a clearly identifiable country model and between different unions, diverse JT approaches coexist and are combined in variable manners, depending on the economic and institutional constraints involved in transitionary practices, except for the most radical positions that only some sectoral union federations embrace (Clarke and Sahin-Dikmen, 2020).

In comparison to broader trends, the heavy legacy of Italy’s uneven development explains why in this country union responses to environmental dilemmas are varied and multi-layered. Monopsonist labour markets in the most depressed areas of the country (as with the Ilva case), local industrial district specialization and the consequent socio-economic vulnerabilities make JT dilemmas more accentuated and generate pragmatic and adaptive responses in which contextual variables are extremely important (Locke, 1995; Regini, 1995). Because of this, the Italian way to JT can be seen as a portfolio of policies, systematized in the 2019 CGIL, CISL and UIL document for a sustainable development driven by industrial relations, which unions may activate or not according to the contextual socio-economic conditions.

The Ilva case is a clear example of how defending jobs and wages still comes before health and environmental protection (Goodstein, 1999; Obach, 2004). This case study, however, shows that conflicts of interest involved in JT go far beyond the traditional contraposition between industrialism and environmentalism. JT does not imply a simplistic choice on whether priority be given to labour or environmental protection but involves complex choices on how to shift from a linear to a systemic type of protection in which both values are pursued simultaneously.

The dramatic case of Ilva illustrates how difficult it is for public institutions and social partners to envisage concrete alternatives to the continuation of industrial activity that are sustainable for both local communities and the environment, without externalizing the social and environmental costs of JT elsewhere. Unlike successful JT stories in both Western countries and the Global South, convergence of labour and environmental protection in Taranto has not been pursued through plant closure, income support and reallocation of workers displaced. Ilva’s plant shutdown, in fact, would not resolve the environmental disaster in Taranto: improvement to the industrial area requires massive investment that public authorities are simply not able to sustain (Mah, 2012), bringing Italian union confederations to put trust in the saviour role of private investment.

Within the JT framework, therefore, a new dimension of ToP is visible. Even if unions refuse the job versus environment blackmail and accept the integration of environmental sustainability in their industrial relations agenda, they are still dependent on firms’ monopsonist power when private investment is necessary to close the transition, especially if public resources are unavailable or insufficient. The realistic turn taken by unions in many JT cases is the result of evaluations that see partnership with private capital as the best road to combine environmental and labour protection. While heavy public debt and low capacity to attract investments make transitionary options tighter, when private investments in the green economy are available, institutional cooperation between firms, unions and public authorities stand out as a JT enabling factor, as in the discussed Enel case. Of course, the success of this case partially flows from the solidity of the system of industrial relations operating in the Italian energy sector and the inevitability of having an electricity producer in the country; the potential for repetition in other sectors and companies is limited (Rugiero, 2019: 111). Yet, it still proves that effective transitional labour markets governed by mature industrial relations institutions can reduce societal and labour vulnerabilities (Casano, 2019; Tiraboschi, 2014), increasing workers’ independence from coal and other highly intensive industrial activities.

Doubts remain about whether greener industrial activities resulting from successful transitionary stories can suffice to combat the challenges involved in climate change. Technological utopianism perpetuates the illusion of ‘infinite growth on a finite planet’. The ITUC’s (2015) concept that ‘there are no jobs on a dead planet’, embraced by international and Italian unions, is also controversial: while fostering long term industrial relations policies that refuse the trade-off between labour and environment, it somehow reproduces the capitalist idea of work as simply a means of production and of ‘earning a living’ (Hyman, 1975: 100), hiding all the limitations that anthropocentric approaches to environmental sustainability involve. These include their incapacity to imagine a radical transformation perspective to the current socio-economic model (Hampton, 2015), such as collaborative commons, ‘ecological’ and non-market forms of work in which the contraposition between labour and the environment can be further deconstructed (Barca and Leonardi, 2018; Zbyszewska, 2018).