Sustainable Work and Just Transition

Please join us for a Masterclass on Sustainable Work and Just Transition with Dario Azzellini, Autonomous University of Zacatecas, Mexico. The masterclass will be held on the 11th of June between 3 and 5pm in the Graduate Center building, room GC201, in Mile End Campus.

There is a scientific consensus on the need to keep the global temperature increase below 1.5 degrees Celsius. Governments and capital focus on changing consumption and production patterns, but want to keep everything as it is. In production, the focus is on the “technological fix”. Technology and recycling are important for socio-ecological transformation. However, they have already failed as a solution to the environmental crisis. Changing production and consumption patterns alone will not lead to the necessary socio-ecological transformation. Employment and labour markets are already changing, and we need to ensure that work itself becomes sustainable in all its aspects.

What is sustainable work? First of all, “sustainable work” is part of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the UN for 2030, adopted in 2016, which should be included in global, EU-wide and national policies, but this is not happening with regard to sustainable work. Sustainable work is a holistic approach. It involves looking at economic, social, and environmental issues as an interrelated whole. Moreover, in order for the socio-ecological transition to be a just transition, different levels need to be taken into account. These include social security for those directly affected by job loss, as well as class, North-South relations, and gender. If workers do not take a central role in defining and practicing the transformation, it will not happen.

Dario Azzellini is Political scientist, sociologist, author, and filmmaker at the Autonomous University of Zacatecas (Zacatecas, Mexico). He lived in different Latin American countries and is now based in the USA, Mexico and Berlin. His studies focus on labour, social movements, self-management, sustainability and just transition and global political economy. He has conducted research into social transformation processes for more than 30 years with a special focus on Latin America and Europe. He has published 11 films, and more than 20 books and 100 journal articles and book chapters, many of which have been translated into various languages. He authored Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century Socialism from Below (Brill 2017), co-authored Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work: When Workers Take Over(forthcoming), and co-edited the Handbook of Research on the Global Political Economy of Work (2023). More information is available on his personal website at: www.azzellini.net.