Union Actors and Socio-environmental Problems: The Trade Union Confederation of the Americas

• Author: Cecilia Anigstein,Gabriela Wyczykier
• Published date: 01 November 2019
• Date: 01 November 2019
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19868179
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X19868179

LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES, Issue 229, Vol. 46 No. 6, November 2019, 109–124

DOI: 10.1177/0094582X19868179

© 2019 Latin American Perspectives

109

Union Actors and Socio-environmental Problems

The Trade Union Confederation of the Americas

by

Cecilia Anigstein and Gabriela Wyczykier

Translated by

Mariana Ortega Breña

The Trade Union Confederation of the Americas is analytically interesting because

international trade unions have promoted the framework of a “just transition” to protect

workers’ rights during the shift to sustainable energy and the response to climate change

and because the confederation has undertaken something of a “Latin-Americanization” of

the just-transition notion that is nurtured by the environmental/territorial turn of social

struggles on the continent. The current convergence between unions and social move-

ments (peasant, feminist, environmentalist) has contributed to an important renewal of

the union movement in Latin American environmental matters.

La Confederación Sindical de las Américas reviste interés analítico porque las orga-

nizaciones sindicales internacionales promovieron una “transición justa” para resituar

y visibilizar a los trabajadores en las negociaciones multilaterales del clima y procesos de

transición energética y porque la confederación ha emprendido una “latinoamerican-

ización” de la noción de la “transición justa” nutrida de un giro eco-territorial de las

luchas sociales en el continente. El actual proceso de convergencia entre sindicatos y

movimientos sociales (campesinos, feministas, ambientalistas) ha contribuido a una

importante renovación de la narrativa del movimiento sindical en materia medioambien-

tal en América Latina.

Keywords: Trade Union Confederation of the Americas, Socio-environmental demands,

Just transition, Latin America, Social alliances

In recent years, Latin American unionism has articulated new demands

linked to environmental struggles. In a regional context marked by a critical

stance toward neoliberalism and the progressive and popular orientation

adopted by various national governments,1 a certain consensus has solidified

among different social and political sectors that the climate crisis and our cur-

rent intensive and predatory use of natural resources is significantly affecting

socio-environmental conditions, the reproduction of life, and, ultimately, the

Cecilia Anigstein is an Argentine sociologist and a researcher and teacher at the General Sarmiento

National University. Gabriela Wyczykier, also an Argentine sociologist, is a researcher at the

Argentina’s National Council of Scientific and Technical Research and teacher at the General

Sarmiento National University. Mariana Ortega Breña is a translator based in Mexico City.

Preliminary results of this research were presented at the Thirty-first Congress of the Latin

American Studies Association in Uruguay in 2017 under the title “Sindicalismo y luchas medio-

ambientales: la transición justa en clave latinoamericana.”

868179LAPXXX10.1177/0094582X19868179Latin American PerspectivesAnigstein and Wyczykier / Unions and Socio-Environmental Problems

research-article2019

110 LATIN AMERICAN PERSPECTIVES

workforce. From this perspective, nature is being appropriated by capitalism

to guarantee the material, social, and cultural reproduction of classes and social

groups, but the unlimited, unequal, and asymmetric nature of these processes

has had globally devastating effects on people and the environment. Although

unions have been reluctant to incorporate socio-environmental issues into their

agendas, workers have begun to take a different political position. Although it

is still rare, a socio-environmental turn can be observed in union action, mainly

in organizations with international and regional representation.

Since the middle of the past decade, the Trade Union Confederation of the

Americas (hereafter TUCA), a regional division of the International Trade

Union Confederation (hereafter ITUC), has promoted the concept of a “just

transition” to reinstate workers as relevant in the multilateral negotiations

regarding the climate crisis and the transition to sustainable energy. The appli-

cation of this notion to the problems of Latin American societies has given rise

to a Latin-Americanization of the just transition.

This process, in which the environmental demands of the ITUC and the

TUCA converge, is closely linked to the alliances built by the regional union

organization because of its leading role in a dynamic of continental articulation

with social movements traditionally involved in antiglobalization actions,

movements, and protests such as the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de

Organizacions del Campo–Vía Campesina, REDES (Network of Social Ecology)–

Friends of the Earth Latin America, the World Women’s March, and Jubilee

South. As a result, the TUCA has modified its discourse on social issues to incor-

porate an environmental agenda.The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an

ongoing debate by addressing the actions and narratives of regional union orga-

nizations not only in terms of the contradictions inherent in the capital-labor

conflict but also in terms of those pertaining to the socio-environmental and

territorial dimensions of the conditions of working-class reproduction.

We employ qualitative and sociopolitical approaches to social research; this

paper is the result of a combination of information-gathering techniques includ-

ing a dozen interviews with leaders of the TUCA, representatives of allied

social movements, and key informants carried out during 2016 and empirical

data collected at various events convened by the TUCA between 2013 and 2017.

We analyzed materials and documents produced by the TUCA, the ITUC, and

regional social movements and systematized and analyzed the communica-

tions issued by various news media and official information sources. First we

will briefly describe the case study (see Anigstein, 2016; 2017) and then intro-

duce some conceptual debates regarding the relationship between unionism,

socio-environmental issues, and the environmental/territorial turn of collec-

tive action in Latin America. Next we will address the notions of just transition

and climate justice. Finally, we will reflect on the Latin American reinterpreta-

tion of the just transition from the end of the past decade to the 2015 Paris

agreement.

Since that agreement, environmental issues have been visibly eclipsed on the

regional union agenda. Given the conservative turn in labor and regional inte-

gration policies after 2015, with the electoral triumph of a conservative alliance

in Argentina and the coup d’état in Brazil, demands have focused on the

defense of democracy and human rights and criticism of neoliberalism.