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This book offers a genuinely interdisciplinary engagement with the future of paid and unpaid work in the context of the twin challenges of decarbonisation and the growing impacts of an unstable climate.
It is innovative in its grounding of such discussions in the everyday realities of workers' experiences with an empirical focus on skill, occupational shifts and technological change at the workplace level.
Part I: Skills and Training delves into how workers gain crucial skills across their lifetimes. From survivalist "preppers" to local microgrid operators, the chapters reveal practical and often unrecognised but essential expertise. Case studies include air-conditioning technical educators and construction trades leveraging tacit knowledge of sustainable practices.
Part II: Industrial Transformation draws on empirical studies from coal mining, manufacturing, defence and construction to highlight workers' experiences of climate shifts, heat and industrial transition. Theoretical contributions explore novel legal strategies such as fossil fuel "cessation" and examine the role of health and safety frameworks in addressing worker democracy and climate-change mitigation.
This collection will resonate with scholars, students, policymakers and trade unionists interested in environmental labour studies, just transitions and the future of work. It offers vital lessons for navigating complex industrial transformations.
Key features:
- Detailed case studies in critical sectors such as energy, construction, defence and manufacturing;
- A dynamic interdisciplinary fusion of human geography, political economy, sociology, industrial relations and law;
- Emphasis on worker agency, practical skill and grassroots adaptability amid intensifying climate impacts.
Inhaltsverzeichnis
Skill, industrial transformation and work in a climate changing world
PART I: SKILLS and TRAINING 1."What's your apocalypse skill?": Revaluing Flexible Skills for the Apocalyptic Good-Life 2. Localising the Operation of Grid-Tied Microgrids for Future Resilience 3. Navigating Skills in Uncertain Energy Futures: Education, Skills and Training for the Australian Air-Conditioning Workforce 4. Quiet Sustainability: Tacit Knowledge and Emic Capacities in Building and Construction 5. "Creative technicians" and "technical creatives": Transferable Skills for Challenging Times
PART II: INDUSTRIAL TRANSFORMATION 6.
A Transition with Teeth: Reconfiguring the Concept of Just Transition to Recognise the Imperative of Fossil Fuel Cessation 7. Place-Sensitive Approaches to Coal Transitions in Australia 8.Industrial Democracy and Climate Struggle: The Limits and Possibilities of Using Health and Safety Committees to Promote Industrial Democracy and Address Climate Change 9. Hot Under the PPE Collar: Occupational High Heat During the Covid-19 Pandemic 10. Industrial Control and Capitalist Inefficiency: Manufacturing Workforce Development in the Polycrisis 11. From Occupational Steering to Occupational Citizenship? Understanding Career Pathways After the Demise of Australian Automotive Manufacturing
Über den Autor / die Autorin
Chantel Carr is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow in Geography and Sustainability at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Chantel is a human geographer working on the social and labour dimensions of energy transitions and decarbonisation.
Jesse Adams Stein is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Design at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. Jesse is an interdisciplinary design researcher whose work focuses on labour, technology and industries in transition.
