Give workers a vision and they will help with solutions

That is the central argument coming from the Southern African Clothing and Textile Workers’ Union (SACTWU), whose organizers are grappling with a question that global policy forums rarely answer. Specifically, how do you make a Just Transition relevant to workers who have never of heard the term? Simon Eppel, SACTWU research director who was in the room when the Just Transition manifesto for the textile and garment supply chain was launched, knows the gap between policy and factory floor.

“The Just Transition stuff right now is like preaching. You’ve got to do something about climate change. But there’s no incentive for workers to take the risk. Give them an incentive,”

he says.

The problem with reskilling in an economy without jobs

The Just Transition manifesto calls for reskilling and redeployment as central pillars of a Just Transition. SACTWU broadly supports these demands. However, they raise a critical challenge that is often overlooked in global policy discussions: reskilling only works where there are jobs to reskill into.

“Traditionally the most prominent part of the Just Transition concept is about reskilling and replacing workers. And that works in an economy of full employment. It just doesn’t work as well in the Global South,” Simon Eppel explains.

In South Africa, unemployment is among the highest in the world. Therefore, asking workers to accept job losses on the promise of future opportunities is asking them to gamble with their livelihoods. SACTWU’s argument is to broaden the Just Transition vision beyond jobs. They want to include giving workers a stake in the assets required for decarbonization and sustainable production.

“Poverty is not only income-related. It is also asset-related. In a future of economic, climate, technology shocks and more we need to think about how to make workers more resilient, including by having assets that earn workers incomes, not only jobs.”

A practical vision: workers as co-owners

SACTWU is already developing models. The union is building an education programme that starts with problems workers already understand, like coal-fired boilers in textile factories that damage their health. Then it aims to build toward collective solutions.

“You start with the coal-fired boiler. Workers breathe that in every day. You make the link between their health, their community and the broader climate challenge. Then you come with solutions,”

Simon Eppel says.

One such solution involves replacing coal boilers with solar thermal technology, dramatically reducing fuel consumption. But crucially, SACTWU argues that workers should benefit not only from this change, but from owning a share of it.

“Why is the union movement not conceiving models where workers are enabled to buy machines, the boss rents it from them and they earn a nominal rent every month? This model could be marketed to European buyers as sourcing from factories who practice sustainable green growth,” Simon Eppel challenges.

This is a vision the union believes workers could get behind. Not sacrifice, but shared opportunity.

What the Global South needs from the Global North

South Africa’s retail-textile value chain moves at a different pace from Europe’s. Local retailers are not yet demanding sustainable fibres or circular production models. This means the market pressure driving transition elsewhere simply does not exist here yet. But SACTWU is clear that this cannot be an excuse to wait.

“Left to its own devices, our local system will push us slowly. If we want to take advantage of the opportunities, we must push the system to move faster,” Simon Eppel says.

To do that, the Global South needs three things from the Global North: recognition that different contexts require different pathways, affordable financing and more crucially long-term purchase commitments from global buyers.

“If buyers say, we’ll give you orders, not for six months, but a three-year commitment and here is money and exposure to technology then factories can make the changes. That is what you need to build businesses and jobs and to enable the transition,”

he adds.

Without that demand signal from Northern buyers, even willing factories cannot justify the investment in green technology.

Moving from defence to offence

Historically, unions have been defensive by nature, protecting what exists. It is a shift that Simon Eppel, who has spent years working with garment workers on the Cape Flats, believes unions cannot afford to avoid.

“You can’t purely be defensive. You need to be offensive too. If we simply defend against risks, the nature and direction of change will be defined for us and we will lose the chance to shape the future as different from the present. To be offensive, you need an alternative world you are putting forward,”

he explains.

That means experimenting, sharing what works across unions globally and being willing to take risks even when the outcome is uncertain. SACTWU is now raising funds for an education and pilot project programme and identifying factories where new models could be tested.

A transition that works for everyone

The Just Transition manifesto sets out bold demands for brands, employers and governments. SACTWU supports the direction but insists that unless those demands are grounded in the lived reality of workers in the Global South, they risk remaining exactly that: demands on paper.

“You don’t have to learn basic human behaviour and human need. You just need to think about workers as people rather than as policy,”

he says.

For SACTWU, a Just Transition is not a compliance exercise or a green marketing opportunity. Instead, it is a chance to build a new relationship between workers, technology and ownership. This is one where the people who make our clothes also have a stake in the future of the industry that depends on them.