Running with or against the treadmill? Labor unions, institutional contexts, and greenhouse gas emissions in a comparative perspective

Hyde, Allen; Vachon, Todd E.

doi:10.1080/23251042.2018.1544107

Cited by 15 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 43 publications

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“…This is especially true in Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey, Florida, and Georgia, where state inmates have been paid not in dollars, but in time off their sentences (UNICOR 2017). We note that a number of recent studies have found that union participation suppresses CO 2 emissions (Alvarez, McGee, and York 2019;Hyde and Vachon 2019). Considering as much, we argue that the use of incarcerated labor to undermine unions may also reduce the tendency of U.S. unions to curb emissions.…”

Section: Prison Labor Used For Industrial Productionmentioning

confidence: 64%

Locked into Emissions: How Mass Incarceration Contributes to Climate Change

2020

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The phenomenon of mass incarceration has dramatically altered the economic and infrastructural landscape of the United States. These changes have numerous implications regarding the use of fossil fuels, which are the single largest contributor to climate change. The present study argues that mass incarceration creates three social patterns that result in significant increases in industrial emissions. (1) Mass incarceration incentivizes further industrial development through the construction of new prisons and the continued maintenance of existing prisons to house prisoners. (2) The needs of the millions of individuals currently incarcerated in the United States incentivize industrial expansion through the production of goods and materials used inside prisons. (3) Incarcerated individuals are being used to reduce the cost of labor, which expands economic growth. We construct several fixed-effects panel regression models with robust standard errors predicting industrial emissions for U.S. states from 1997 to 2016 to assess how increases in the number of individuals in U.S. state, federal, and private prisons is correlated with industrial emissions over time. We find that increases in incarceration within states are associated with increases in industrial emissions, and that increases in incarceration lead to a more tightly coupled association between gross domestic product per capita and industrial emissions.

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Section: Prison Labor Used For Industrial Productionmentioning

confidence: 64%

Locked into Emissions: How Mass Incarceration Contributes to Climate Change

2020

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“…Since ecological research often points to management actions that are of benefit to humans in the long term, but look detrimental to profits or jobs in the short term (Hoffmann and Paulsen 2020 ; Caplan 2016 ; Hyde and Vachon 2019 ; Leonard 2019 ; Scanlan 2017 ), governments will be more likely to implement the recommendations of ecological research if public opinion supports such activity (Burstein 2003 ). The required groundswell of public opinion is often created when grassroots organizations are able to obtain media attention and gain sufficient momentum to shape public opinion.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management

et al. 2021

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As many ecosystems worldwide are in peril, efforts to manage them sustainably require scientific advice. While numerous researchers around the world use a great variety of models to understand ecological dynamics and their responses to disturbances, only a small fraction of these models are ever used to inform ecosystem management. There seems to be a perception that ecological models are not useful for management, even though mathematical models are indispensable in many other fields. We were curious about this mismatch, its roots, and potential ways to overcome it. We searched the literature on recommendations and best practices for how to make ecological models useful to the management of ecosystems and we searched for ‘success stories’ from the past. We selected and examined several cases where models were instrumental in ecosystem management. We documented their success and asked whether and to what extent they followed recommended best practices. We found that there is not a unique way to conduct a research project that is useful in management decisions. While research is more likely to have impact when conducted with many stakeholders involved and specific to a situation for which data are available, there are great examples of small groups or individuals conducting highly influential research even in the absence of detailed data. We put the question of modelling for ecosystem management into a socio-economic and national context and give our perspectives on how the discipline could move forward.

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“…Two cases in point are environmental labour studies and the debate on 'Just Transition'. Environmental labour studies focus on work and environment from the perspective of labour organisations and their relation to 'nature' also under the global green economy agenda, but partly with a critical stance towards the latter (e.g., Barca 2019;Barth, Jochum, and Littig 2016;Hyde and Vachon 2019;Lundström, Räthzel, and Uzzell 2015;Räthzel and Uzzell 2013;Rosemberg 2010;Stevis, Uzzell, and Räthzel 2018). Through their common ideological grounding in Marxist theory -disregarding Marx' famous discussion of the 'realm of freedom' beyond labour and the necessity to shorten the working-daywork is taken for granted in the Marxist notion of work as an 'eternal natural necessity' and as something inherently good to be secured and expanded (an interpretation predominating in the Marxist and socialist tradition).…”

Section: Conventional Approaches In the Work And Environment Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…3 Accordingly, it needs to be reconciled with ecological concerns, but not be questioned as a potential part of the problem. The debates on 'Just Transition' for example are selective about who deserves justice and on what grounds, and the priority lies clearly with the industries and workers immediately affected (Hyde and Vachon 2019). Contributions like these also underrate the scale of ecological challenges by focusing on certain 'green' sectors and too often disregarding, or disproportionately downplaying, the sectors that cannot be 'greened' and need to be reduced or discontinued entirely (ILO 2012).…”

Section: Conventional Approaches In the Work And Environment Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

“…To fundamentally transform society's energy and material basis as well as its systems of production and consumption will entail profound consequences for work in all social spheres. This central importance of work for sustainability transformations regularly becomes apparent in what is often referred to as the 'jobs-environmentdilemma' (e.g., Hyde and Vachon 2019;Räthzel and Uzzell 2011). The argument that jobs must take precedence is usually put forward to justify environmental destruction and to prevent unsustainable sectors of the economy from being transformed.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Resolving the ‘jobs-environment-dilemma’? The case for critiques of work in sustainability research

Hoffmann

Paulsen

2020

Environmental Sociology

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Modern-day work is a central reason for unsustainability, and its transformation is therefore key for sustainability. A recurring manifestation of this issue is the 'jobs-environment-dilemma', a trade-off arising due to severe ecological impacts caused by work on the one hand, and the structural constitution of modern industrial society as work-centred and work-dependent on the other. We draw on interdisciplinary literature from environmental sociology and related fields to analyse both aspects: distinct factors of ecological problems associated with modern work, and various dimensions of structural dependence on work in modern society. We find that this conflict, and the fundamental role that work plays for unsustainability, are not sufficiently addressed and remain unresolved issues in sustainability research. To change this, we propose the conceptual approach of 'postwork' or critiques of work to open up a new perspective on the work-environment problem. We introduce postwork theory and discuss different ways in which ecological postwork perspectives and arguments can contribute to understanding and resolving entrenched sustainability issues. Finally, we briefly illustrate existing postwork politics and practices. While clearly contested, there is renewed momentum for social change towards a sustainable society which would benefit from addressing work and critiques of work.

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Running with or against the treadmill? Labor unions, institutional contexts, and greenhouse gas emissions in a comparative perspective

Cited by 15 publications

References 43 publications

Locked into Emissions: How Mass Incarceration Contributes to Climate Change

Locked into Emissions: How Mass Incarceration Contributes to Climate Change

Towards Building a Sustainable Future: Positioning Ecological Modelling for Impact in Ecosystems Management

Resolving the ‘jobs-environment-dilemma’? The case for critiques of work in sustainability research

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