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It might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think about trade unions, but workplace sustainability is essential for us. Our first duty is to our workers’ livelihoods. So, building the conditions by which jobs and workplaces can survive and thrive in an era of net zero and destabilising climate change is a top priority.
This is about job security. It’s also about helping our members – a quarter of all workers – to be part of shaping a future of positive growth in their organisations.
The term ‘just transition’ came out of 1970s North American trade union campaigns to reduce pollution, safeguard local communities from industrial hazards and promote protections for populations from take-them-or-leave-them dirty jobs.
In the UK, trade unions have been pushing since the late 1980s to build sustainability into workplace strategies and industrial relations. Over the past decade, we’ve seen growing demand from trade union members to be part of workplace climate action.
In some industrial actions, managers have refused to include workers in their planning, but we have also seen collaboration agreements struck with unions on this agenda nationwide. The latest is the Just Transition Framework recently agreed in further education, where annual negotiations resulted in a recommendation that all colleges work alongside unions and staff to rapidly decarbonise and make provision to future-proof jobs. This is the first sector-wide agreement, but it builds on local agreements from workplaces around the UK, and we expect other sectors to follow suit.
We are also now seeing a growing number of trade union branches electing ‘green reps’ to focus on sustainability. They educate members and colleagues on the importance of sustainability and how to achieve it. They work with enterprise sustainability leads to make progress on climate action and workplace decarbonisation, offering shopfloor perspectives and insights, providing useful grounding voices and jockeying along more ambitious action. And they provide prized conduits for workers’ concerns, easing and enabling effective change management.
Green reps’ essential framing is ‘just transition’, ensuring that change happens and in a way that staff can support and value.
Several other types of trade union workplace representative are supported by statute to take time out of their normal working day to engage in their work. But, so far, these time-release rights have not been applied to green reps, a situation we seek to change. Many employers who see their worth provide this, of course, but it has to be won workplace by workplace. As sustainability professionals, you may wish to push for the green reps in your organisations to have this time. Especially now.
The period 2025-26 has been designated the Year of Trade Union Climate Action. As such, we’re expecting a large number of events, from climate action stalls to green rep recruitment drives to sustainability CPD to fresh policy interventions.
We have rewritten our Green Reps at Work training course to provide reps with the best education and strongest tools for creating impact in each workplace. We have released our Greener Workplaces Toolkit, a handbook for worker climate action that made the Top Reads list in May’s The Green Edge Podcast. We are also looking to hold a national green reps conference in summer 2026.
Our simple message to those wanting to increase their impact is to: embrace, empower and work with trade union green reps.
Sam Perry is policy lead at the Trades Union Congress
