SEPTEMBER 26, 2025
Sustainability and socio-ecological transformation:
Why put work at the center of a Just Transition
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. 

In continuity with my research and publications focusing on workers and communities, I propose putting work at the center of sustainability and the socio-ecological transition. Why focus on work when life is threatened by climate catastrophe? We live in a work society. Work is seen as a means to satisfy individual and social needs. Reconceptualizing, reorganizing, and valorizing work as sustainable work is a crucial tool from below to advance and ensure a just transition. Employment and labor markets are already changing, and we need to ensure that work itself becomes sustainable in all its aspects. We must also ask whether it is even possible to transform production and consumption patterns without transforming the working society (and vice versa).

Workers and related communities are potentially the only ones who have a real interest in sustainable and non-polluting production – and thus in overcoming labor society as we know it. And they are also the ones who will have to bear the brunt of the socio-ecological transformation. If they do not take the central role in defining and practicing the transformation, no such transformation will take place.

In my talk I will discuss why the focus on production and consumption alone is not effective, present a holistic concept of sustainable work, differentiate it from green jobs, provide examples for a working-class led socio-ecological just transition.

Dario Azzellini, professor, researcher and documentary director, holds a PhD in political science and a PhD in sociology. His research and writing focuses on labour, Just Transition, platform work, workers' struggles, worker’s and local self-management, and social movements. He published several books, journal articles and documentaries. 

Presentation paper: 
Azzellini, Dario; Brandl, Sebastian; Matuschek, Ingo. 2025. “Sustainable work and industrial relations in Europe.” Industrielle Beziehungen. 31:1. 85-107. 

Related links:

• ResearchGate.
  
• Personal website.