Date of Award

12-24-2025

Date Published

January 2026

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Geography & the Environment

Advisor(s)

Matthew Huber

Second Advisor

Tod Rutherford

Keywords

class theory;climate change;green transition;just transition;labor;trade union

Subject Categories

Geography | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Abstract

This dissertation examines how German industrial trade unions and workers in the automobile and coal industries navigate the profound challenges of the green transition. Workers’ experiences are situated within a broader political-economic context shaped partly by market-led decarbonization efforts, welfare retrenchment/austerity, erosion of progressive institutions in society, and global competition, as well as a global restructuring of value accumulation. The analysis critically engages with unions’ current responses to a market-led transition and their implications for labor’s future. The dissertation develops its argument across three empirical chapters. Chapter 2 investigates workplace-level changes in coal mining and automobile production, analyzing how workers experience restructuring processes such as electrification, automation, and job shedding. It distinguishes between individual and collective agencies of transition, showing how uncertainty and fears of decline persist despite unions’ strong institutional position and negotiated social provisions. Chapter 3 traces how these anxieties extend into the sphere of social reproduction, linking deindustrialization, rising costs, and welfare retrenchment to political disillusionment and the far right’s growing appeal. It argues that the green transition intensifies material insecurities, which in turn make far-right narratives appealing to segments of the working class. Moreover, I situate the current process of class dealignment within a broader historical conjuncture marked by the erosion of institutions of class formation, particularly leftist parties and unions. In addition, I argue that workers’ skepticism of climate policy is rooted in material conditions rather than false consciousness. Chapter 4 assesses unions’ broader strategies for a just transition, demonstrating how defensive approaches—focused on job security and industrial protectionism—remain inadequate for addressing the structural scale of the transition. Instead, it outlines how revitalized associational and societal power could enable unions to build a mass-based just transition project. The dissertation concludes that the potential for transformative class agency does not rest on workers developing environmental consciousness, but rather on a form of climate politics by proxy— one that directly addresses workers’ material fears and forges broad class alliances to rebuild a new welfare state. In doing so, it contributes to scholarly and political debates on the just transition by arguing that only a mass-based, labor and class-centered approach can bridge ecological imperatives with the material needs of workers, thereby opening pathways for progressive, rather than reactionary, forms of class politics in times of climate crisis.

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Open Access

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