The world faces several major environmental dangers, including climate change, biodiversity loss, change in land use and chemical pollution. Ensuring a sustainable planet will require a significant change in our production and consumption habits. As a result, many industries are expected to undergo a major change as part of the transition to a green economy. Similarly to other structural changes, workers will be affected by the transition – new jobs will be created, while other jobs may be threatened. In addition to changes in the quantity of jobs, their quality may be affected, and workers will need to update their skill set.
The effect of the transition to a green economy on the labor market has been researched thoroughly. However, worker participation in this context has not been sufficiently studied. This paper addresses the gap in the literature by analyzing the effect of the transition on worker participation and on by discussing how employee representatives are responding to the transition. The purpose of this paper is not to identify causal links of specific effects in one industry or country, but rather to present the big picture by comparing the economies of Germany, Israel, the UK and the US. Since the scope of the paper is rather wide as is, I focus throughout the paper on climate change and unionization.
While results are presented for all four countries, the goal of the paper is to draw conclusions and recommendations for Israel.