Climate and Labour Unite! - Ideological and Material Conditions of the German Climate-Labour Coalition “Wir Fahren Zusammen”
Year: 2025
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This thesis contributes to the relatively recent call for a climate-labour turn. This turn positions the alliance building between the climate and labour movements as crucial for developing a strong counter-hegemonic movement with the power to push for a just green transition and confront the forces of capitalism. To understand the conditions and strategies necessary to foster such climate-labour coalitions, this thesis investigates the case of “Wir Fahren Zusammen” (WFZ), a German alliance between the public transport department of the labour union ver.di and the German branch of Fridays for Future. Based in eco-Marxism and ideology theory, this thesis seeks to understand the ideological and material conditions that formed the coalition as well as how praxis affected coalition members’ ideology. This was done through the causal thematic analysis of interviews with 13 members of the coalition, coming both from a labour and climate background, as well as analysis of several documents that played a role in the coalition’s work. The findings show that the unifying campaign set-up of WFZ based on the sustainable nature of the public transport sector enabled a diversity of actors to unite. Through the praxis of WFZ, a counter-hegemonic ideology developed that was able to resist the hegemonic ideological discourse which divides workers and environmentalists. A central aspect of this ideology was the interpellation of public transport workers as active subjects of the green transition. This highlights the need to centre the protection of working class living conditions in a climate-labour coalition’s framing, and the importance of workers to develop a subjectivity as central actors in the sustainable transition.
Author: Pitz, Lina Monika
Institution: Lund University
Language: English
Topic: Labor Movements and Unions
Subfield: Industrial relations
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Climate action
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7112243287