During the Trade Union Pre-COP, held in Brasília on October 9 and 10, Sebastián Ordóñez Muñoz, representative of the British organization War on Want and member of the Political Commission of the Peoples’ Summit toward COP30, issued a strong warning: the just transition agenda was originally raised by the labor movement but now risks being emptied of meaning and co-opted by corporate interests.
Ordóñez emphasized that just transition was born as a banner of the international labor movement, rooted in the defense of rights, social justice, and the structural transformation of the economy. However, he noted, “we are at a moment when this banner risks being turned into a market tool—without rights or justice—so it is more urgent than ever to defend its transformative roots.”
Speaking also on behalf of War on Want, an organization with trade union roots in the United Kingdom—founded nearly 75 years ago by the British labor movement and now working in alliance with Global South movements for economic justice, internationalist solidarity, and systemic transformation—Ordóñez added: “We are in the Global North, but committed to the struggles of the peoples of the South, because it is there that the weight of inequality and the extractivist model is most strongly felt and must be transformed.”
He situated the debate on just transition within a systemic and interconnected crisis that combines climate collapse, rising inequality, loss of rights, and democratic erosion. “We live in a moment when all crises are interwoven: the climate crisis, inequality, the loss of rights, the erosion of democracy. These are expressions of the same predatory capitalist system, based on extraction and structural inequality—what some describe as an economy of unequal exchange between the North and the South,” he said.
Commenting on the previous day’s discussions, Ordóñez cited concrete examples that reveal the global and unequal nature of the crisis. In the Arab world, he observed, trade unions face authoritarian contexts and oil-dependent economies, while migrant workers suffer new forms of exploitation—even in so-called “green” industries.
He also drew attention to the growing militarization and rising defense spending that fuel conflicts and divert essential resources away from climate action. And he stressed that climate collapse already directly impacts the working class, exposed to extreme heat, water scarcity, and increasingly unsafe working conditions.
“These examples remind us that just transition is, above all, a labor struggle. And in the face of the far right, which manipulates science and fear, our challenge is to politicize the debate—to connect the struggle for work and dignity with the struggle for climate and justice,” he said.
Ordóñez argued that trade unionism should not only bring its own agenda to climate negotiations, but act as a driving force for a broader agenda of transformation—uniting people’s struggles and confronting the systems that perpetuate inequality and environmental destruction.
He praised the initiative of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Trade Union Confederation of the Americas (TUCA), and Brazil’s Central Única dos Trabalhadores (CUT) in organizing the Trade Union Pre-COP, describing the space as an exercise in “minga,” an Andean concept referring to collective, solidarity-based, and transformative work.
The Peoples’ Summit, to be held from November 12 to 16 in Belém, was described by him as a strategic space to build alliances between trade unions, social movements, and global networks, and to consolidate a common agenda for a Just, Popular, and Inclusive Transition, the theme of Axis 3 of the Summit process.
“Trade unionism can once again be the force that unites our struggles and reminds us that transition is not a sacrifice, but a collective achievement,” he concluded.
Photo: Naira Leal
