Anabella Rosemberg is senior advisor on Just Transition at Climate Action Network International (CAN-I).
This May Day, the battle lines are clear: workers’ rights and climate justice must stand together – or we will all fall together.
Jobs or the environment? For too long, politicians and corporations have framed the conversation as a false choice. Too often, environmentalists were lured into that same trap – crafting climate strategies aimed at convincing the privileged, while working people, especially those in polluting industries, were sidelined. Solidarity existed in moments, but the struggles for climate justice and labour rights ran on parallel tracks.
Then came an idea that reshaped our movements: Just Transition.
This Australian coal community is co-designing its own green future
Born in the US labour movement in the 1970s, Just Transition began as a simple, urgent demand: no worker should have to choose between a pay cheque and their health. Since then, it has grown into a global framework recognised by the International Labour Organization and the Paris Agreement, linking climate ambition to dignity, rights and economic justice. But on the ground, the promises remain far from reality.
This week, a new call for help reached us.
Court backs Colombian coal workers
The Colombian unions SINTRAMINERGETICA and SINTRACARBÓN have raised the alarm over Glencore’s conduct in Cesar and Magdalena, where the mining multinational is shutting down coal operations through its subsidiary Prodeco. More than 1,200 direct workers and 5,000 contractors have already been dismissed since 2020, as the company handed back its mining licenses in the country’s first “Just Transition” pilot zone.
Despite posting $10.6 billion in profits last year, Glencore has been accused of conducting only a single, superficial community meeting before walking away – prompting Colombia’s Constitutional Court to rule that it violated due process and failed to properly consult affected communities. The court has now ordered the company to reopen talks with more than 20,000 impacted people across four municipalities.
Critics argue the company is rushing the coal closure to cut costs, sidestepping the comprehensive social, environmental and labour measures a true just transition would require. Without proper investment, it is Colombian workers and communities – not Glencore – who will be left to bear the long-term costs.
This injustice is not isolated.
Spain shows the way
From Mpumalanga in South Africa to East Kalimantan in Indonesia, from Katowice in Poland to Cesar in Colombia, corporations are abandoning the very communities that built their wealth – sometimes even daring to call it climate leadership.
Transitions are happening without justice – without workers, without communities, without dignity. But none of this is inevitable. Deciding who designs and who pays the cost of the transition is a political choice.
But many countries, especially in the Global South, do not have such resources, nor the chance to diversify their economies. Without international support, they will be left behind.
Coal-reliant South African provinces falling behind on just transition
Examples of a different path are already out there. When a coal phase-out was decided, the Spanish government forced negotiations with trade unions, delivered sweeping support plans, and mobilised EU resources through the Just Transition Mechanism.
We will stand with our brothers and sisters in Colombia and all those on the frontlines of the transition. However, playing whack-a-mole with each crisis, site by site, is no strategy. We need something bigger. We need a global plan for Just Transition.
Time for a Global Just Transition Mechanism
Two years ago, at the UN climate talks, governments created the Just Transition Work Programme – a breakthrough for embedding social justice into climate action. Despite setbacks – especially at COP29 in Baku – the Work Programme still holds transformative potential.
Now, as we look toward COP30 in Brazil, the stakes could not be clearer.
At COP30, governments must act. They must agree that Just Transition policies – social protection for those losing their jobs and income, re-skilling, community investment, cleaning up polluted areas – are not optional extras, but fundamental to real climate ambition and justice.
After Baku setback, activists call for ‘just transition’ to be front and centre at COP30
They must launch a Global Just Transition Mechanism: to coordinate efforts internationally; to channel support to countries without the means to act alone; and to ensure true accountability and community participation. They must commit to the inclusion of workers, unions, civil society and impacted communities, to diversify economies and to produce real sectoral transition plans.
Ideas can be powerful drivers of change. And Just Transition is one of those ideas. But we must protect it from being hijacked by those who seek to delay climate action under its name, and from corporations that try to greenwash exploitation.
Movement rising for COP30
The enemies of Just Transition wear two masks: one, the face of denial and delay, bankrolled by fossil fuel interests; the other, the smiling face of companies across all sectors who talk about “green growth” while sacrificing workers on the altar of market logic. Both serve the few – and betray the many.
The only path forward lies with the majority: the workers, the communities, the people who today commemorate the Martyrs of Chicago (who were wrongly convicted of murder when they opposed their city’s elite businessmen) and the long, unfinished struggle for dignity and rights. It is only with these working people that we will build a just, livable future. Now is the time to put people and planet before private profit.
The mainstream media may not fully capture it yet. But a movement for Just Transition is rising. Trade unions, social movements, environmentalists, working people – we are converging. And our next fight will be at COP30 in Brazil: a fight for workers and communities.
This May Day, the call is clear: green must be just – or it will not be green at all. COP30 will find us united, fighting for dignity for all on a living planet.
