My fellowship and the scientific output of Eco-Unions have contributed to the cutting-edge debate on trade unions, just transitions and the future of work – both within the trade union movement and the fields of employment relations, environmental sociology, and environmental labour studies. Theoretically, I moved beyond the state-of-the-art by introducing the concept of discursive power to this flourishing area of scholarship, which until now has almost entirely overlooked the significance of the media for trade union movements navigating the jobs versus environment binary. In doing so, I bridge the literature on workers, trade unions and the media with the emerging debate on the role of unions in transforming global capitalism to tackle the climate crisis. This helps scholars grasp not just the range of environmental discourses that trade union movements are producing, but also what happens as these circulate internally among union officials, shop stewards, and the rank-and-file, and externally through the political system and into wider society.
Finally, in terms of the wider societal implications of the project so far, Eco-Unions demonstrates that labour-environmental coalitions are developing a powerful range of truly just and sustainable climate policies across a range of policy areas such as education, healthcare, transport, food and agriculture, pensions, and heat-related stress at work. These coalitions have the potential to generate a substantial ecological shift in the strategies of British and Danish trade union movement through mobilization, knowledge exchange and media activities. But this potential has yet to be fully realized due to a mix of organizational issues, communication issues, an inhospitable media landscape, and limited uptake among private sector trade unions. As the publications come to fruition, Eco-Unions may help inspire trade unions unaffiliated to labour-environmental coalitions in Denmark and the United Kingdom to adopt ambitious climate action policies by disseminating well-laid blueprints for best practice.
