A Just Transition

01/06/22 • 30 min

Industries around the world including the garment sector have to change if we’re going to survive the climate and ecological crisis. How can we make sure that worker and community rights are at the centre of this change?

In this episode:

Efforts in the Philippines to develop a Just Transition campaign for workers and communities (Rochelle Porras, EILER)
What a Just Transition must involve, from a global union perspective (Alison Tate, ITUC)
Campaigns to pressure garment manufacturers to stop polluting the environment that also highlight worker rights (Urska Trunk, Changing Markets)
How environment movements and worker movements share the same goals in a Just Transition (Karin Nansen, Friends of the Earth)
Steps the Clean Clothes Campaign can take to push for a Just Transition for garment workers (Tibbe Smith-Larsen, CCC)

Please tell us what inspired you about this show, and share your feedback, comments and questions, by emailing: [email protected]

Speakers:

Rochelle Porras, EILER, Philippines
Alison Tate, ITUC
Urska Trunk, Changing Markets
Karin Nansen, Friends of the Earth Uruguay & Friends of the Earth International
Tibbe Smith-Larsen, Europe Coalition Coordinator

Host: Febriana Firdaus (febrianafirdaus.com)
Field Reporters: Petra Ivsic and Aca Vragolovic
Sound Engineering Support: Steve Adam (www.spectrosonics.com.au)
Producer: Matthew Abud
Clean Clothes Podcast Team: Anne Dekker, Johnson Ching-Yin Yeung, Liz Parker, Tanne de Goei

Full Transcript

HOST:

Welcome to the Clean Clothes Podcast.

In today’s show we’re talking about a Just Transition.

It’s a big conversation.

KARIN:

We believe that the systemic crisis are interconnected, be it the climate crisis, biodiversity crisis, water crisis, food crisis, and now the pandemic. So if we all want to overcome this crisis, this systemic crisis we face, we really need the people’s movements, people’s organisations, to come together.

HOST:

It’s about how we need to build a better world, if we want to survive in the future.

And about what that means for the rights of all workers.

URSKA:

I mean in general we’re talking about one of the most polluting industries on the planet, synonymous with over-consumption, pollution, increasing waste crisis, but also exploitation of workers in the global supply chains

HOST:

And what the Clean Clothes Campaign Network needs to do.

TIBBE:

To have a consciousness about the environmental issues, climate issues, it’s still quite a new thing. And I think it really is a challenge for us as a Network now to understand what are these implications for workers, and what are the responses that we propose and what is it that we imagine a Just Transition looks like

HOST:

You just heard from several of our guests – we’ll meet them all again, later in the show.

I’m Febriana Firdaus.

The challenges of climate and ecological crisis are profound. But in many ways, we’re still working out what it involves for workers.

How do we transition from the current business model to one that is good for workers and the environment?

In mainstream debates a lot of the talk is about a just transition in the energy sector.

Often Just transition is seen as something for the energy sector to carry out.

We need to change the energy sector – but we also need much more than that

This episode is about starting some of that discussion.

With people in the Clean Clothes Network, and with others outside it.

Right now, a Just Transition can have different meanings for different movements.

But the campaigns will be stronger, if these meanings are connected. If the understanding is shared.

How do we make that happen in our own countries, and our own places of work?

Rochelle Porras is Executive Director of EILER, Ecumenical Institute For Labor Education and Research in the Philippines.

ROCHELLE

It’s true, we have to really transition into a low-carbon economy otherwise we won’t have a planet to live in, the production system is absolutely not sustainable as of the moment. But I guess the problem lies in the implementation of the programs that the country-level policies when we talk about Just Transition. First and foremost Just Transition in developing countries like the Philippines receive less attention because the energy industry is still is facing the very basic of problems such as you know, many of our areas still don’t have electricity. So it’s mind-blowing for us to talk about these technological advancement when the very basic, you know we need electricity to run things...

In this episode:

Efforts in the Philippines to develop a Just Transition campaign for workers and communities (Rochelle Porras, EILER)
What a Just Transition must involve, from a global union perspective (Alison Tate, ITUC)
Campaigns to pressure garment manufacturers to stop polluting the environment that also highlight worker rights (Urska Trunk, Changing Markets)
How environment movements and worker movements share the same goals in a Just Transition (Karin Nansen, Friends of the Earth)
Steps the Clean Clothes Campaign can take to push for a Just Transition for garment workers (Tibbe Smith-Larsen, CCC)

Please tell us what inspired you about this show, and share your feedback, comments and questions, by emailing: [email protected]

Speakers:

Rochelle Porras, EILER, Philippines
Alison Tate, ITUC
Urska Trunk, Changing Markets
Karin Nansen, Friends of the Earth Uruguay & Friends of the Earth International
Tibbe Smith-Larsen, Europe Coalition Coordinator

Full Transcript

HOST:

Welcome to the Clean Clothes Podcast.

In today’s show we’re talking about a Just Transition.

It’s a big conversation.

KARIN:

HOST:

It’s about how we need to build a better world, if we want to survive in the future.

And about what that means for the rights of all workers.

URSKA:

HOST:

And what the Clean Clothes Campaign Network needs to do.

TIBBE:

HOST:

You just heard from several of our guests – we’ll meet them all again, later in the show.

I’m Febriana Firdaus.

The challenges of climate and ecological crisis are profound. But in many ways, we’re still working out what it involves for workers.

How do we transition from the current business model to one that is good for workers and the environment?

In mainstream debates a lot of the talk is about a just transition in the energy sector.

Often Just transition is seen as something for the energy sector to carry out.

We need to change the energy sector – but we also need much more than that

This episode is about starting some of that discussion.

With people in the Clean Clothes Network, and with others outside it.

Right now, a Just Transition can have different meanings for different movements.

But the campaigns will be stronger, if these meanings are connected. If the understanding is shared.

How do we make that happen in our own countries, and our own places of work?

Rochelle Porras is Executive Director of EILER, Ecumenical Institute For Labor Education and Research in the Philippines.

ROCHELLE

Next Episode

Formalise It! Rights for All Workers

How can we expand rights to all garment workers, no matter where they work – in factories or their own homes, or as refugees or migrants far from their country of origin?

In this episode:

How workers from Myanmar fought for the pay they were owed, from a factory in Mae Sot, Thailand (Brahm Press, MAP Foundation)
Some of the challenges faced by migrant workers in Thailand, and what support is needed (Reiko Harima, Mekong Migration Network)
The story of Hussain, a refugee garment worker in Turkey
How home-based workers – mostly working in the garment sector – have got organised over several decades, and some of their wins (Janhavi Deva, HomeNet International; Zehra Khan, Home Based Women Workers Federation; Poonsap Tulaphan, Foundation for Labour and Employment Promotion)
Building collaboration between home-based worker and other worker rights supporters (Marlese von Broembsen, WIEGO)

Please tell us what inspired you about this show, and share your feedback, comments and questions, by emailing: [email protected]

Speakers:

Brahm Press, MAP Foundation, Thailand
Reiko Harima, Mekong Migration Network, Japan
Hussain, Turkey
Mariam Danishjo, Turkey
Janhavi Deva, HomeNet International, India
Zehra Khan, Home Based Women Workers Federation, Pakisan
Poonsap Tulaphan, Foundation for Labour and Employment Promotion
Marlese von Broembsen, Women in Informal Employment Globalising and Organising

Full Transcript

HOST:

Welcome to the show, in our second instalment of the Clean Clothes Podcast.

I’m Febriana Firdaus.

Today we’re talking about rights for all workers – meaning migrant workers. Refugee workers. Home-based workers.

Workers who might not have all the right documents, or who might be hidden from view.

Sometimes governments and employers, don’t see them as workers at all.

But they still demand their rights.

Mae Sot is in Thailand near the Myanmar border.

Refugees and migrant workers from Myanmar, have lived there for decades.

Now it has hundreds of garment factories that depend on migrant workers.

They’re often underpaid to an extreme degree.

The Kanlayanee factory there made clothes for famous brands: Starbucks, Disney, NBC Universal, and Tesco.

In 2019 the workers demanded their proper pay.

Brahm Press takes up the story.

And just a note: Kanlayanee is the name of the factory, and the name of the factory owner as well.

BRAHM:

My name’s Brahm Press, the Director of MAP Foundation. MAP Foundation started in 1996, and one of the things we do is we have a process of developing peer leaders, and other migrant worker leaders, identify people who are potential leaders, give them training, and eventually even have passed some through paralegal training. So these workers are able to organise other workers, so that they can collectively bargain with employers for improved working conditions.

In 2019, we invited a reporter from Reuters to Mae Sot to look at the issue of underpayment of wages to migrant workers in factories, and found workers from the Kanlayanee factory. Everyone was being underpaid and there were massive labour rights violations going on. And this developed into a story mainly because these factories were producing for American brands.

Soon after that, the factory closed once Starbucks withdrew its order. So out of the 50 workers around half decided they wanted to take their case for redress, they wanted to make claims for unpaid back wages, unpaid overtime including working on days off and holidays. This group as it turns out, had also passed through some paralegal trainings that MAP had provided so they were very active and very aware of their rights.

Kanlayanee wanted to negotiate with the workers, and so she started negotiations at around half a million Baht, and there were a couple of rounds of negotiation but it was unsatisfactory. So that was around the time that we decided that maybe we should look at the brands. MAP, CCC and WRC, Worker Rights Consortium, worked together along with our community partner CBO, known as Arakan Workers Organisation.

The factory owner actually put up pictures of all the workers who were part of the claims, and said do not hire these people, basically put out a blacklist and everywhere they w...