Let’s stop an acceleration of capitalism:

The climate crisis and workers’ health rights

Cheonghee Yu, KILSH staff

2022

It is needed to have a fight to change the system that has brought the climate crisis and hurt bodies and lives of workers.

Many
plants and animals, including human beings, are suffering, and losing their
homes due to the climate crisis and destruction of ecosystems. Meanwhile,
countless people have died during the COVID-19 pandemic, and each country has
urgently suggested solutions to the pandemic problem. Their attitude in dealing
with the COVID-19 pandemic is clearly different compared to their attitude
toward the climate crisis or the destruction of ecosystems. However, both the COVID-19
pandemic and the climate crisis are the results of capitalism that has indiscriminately
exploited natural resources and accelerated production, distribution, and
consumption for the sake of profits and economic growth. 

With this awareness of the problem, the
Korea Institute of Labor Safety and Health (KILSH) prepared opportunities to
think about what to do to obtain the health rights of workers in the era of the
climate crisis. From June to July, KILSH held three book seminars, which the
members and sponsoring members studied with activists of the Climate Justice
Alliance.

On August 25, 2022, we had a meeting
with activists of various industrial unions to listen to their concerns about
their workplaces. During the process, we came to believe that in the era of the
climate crisis, the struggle for climate justice should go together with activities
to achieve workers’ health rights. This article summarizes and introduces the
major concerns that have been shared at the seminars and the meetings.

Government
and corporate climate crisis measures going in the wrong direction

Many countries signed the Paris Climate
Agreement to cope with the global climate crisis and decided to limit the global
average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. In
2021, the South Korean government also set a goal of reducing its total
greenhouse gas emissions by 24.4% compared to the 2017 level by 2030. Companies
are claiming to be ‘green companies.’

However, such measures by governments
and companies are nothing but a huge scam in that they do not touch the
unleashed capitalist production system which is the culprit of greenhouse gas
emissions and the climate crisis. What can be intuitively seen is SK Energy’s
proud “carbon neutral gasoline.” It is gasoline, but aren’t
greenhouse gases emitted during the combustion process? If carbon emission
rights are purchased to “cover” greenhouse gases generated in the process of
refining crude oil, they are considered to be carbon neutral. The emission
trading system[1] promoted by the Korean government
cannot be an alternative to the crisis at all. Moreover, the system should be
criticized for preserving inequalities between the northern and southern
hemispheres permanently.

Let’s
stop an acceleration of capitalism

Many workers are directly affected by
the climate crisis. Outdoor laborers in the construction industry or
agriculture, firefighters, and healthcare workers such as emergency medical
workers face hardships more frequently due to heat waves, heavy rains, droughts
and wild fires. On the other hand, there are also workers in fields where
industrial transition is being discussed. In the case of the automobile
industry, conversion of the internal combustion engine into an electric motor
is happening, and coal-fired power plants are also identified as the “main
culprit of the climate crisis” and being shut down one by one. For those
workers, the climate crisis is a problem that affects their survival. 

However, the health rights of workers relate
to the climate crisis at a more fundamental level as well. Capitalism has
existed only for and by growth from the beginning. For growth, capitalism
accelerates an increase in its scale by exploiting nature and humans. Capitalism
has made people work and consume constantly by making them believe that they
are lacking in resources even though they possess enough, which has resulted in
inequality and the climate crisis. While the capitalists, especially those in
high income countries in the northern hemisphere, have enjoyed the fruits of
growth, the southern hemisphere has suffered from it.

Capitalism’s unrestrained growth not
only ruined nature, which resulted in the climate crisis, but also damaged the
bodies, minds, and entire lives of workers. At the dawn of capitalism, even
children under 10 years old had to work up to 16 hours a day. Even now, when
capitalism is more sophisticated, it forces night work that destroys human biorhythms.
Workers have musculoskeletal disorders due to intensive and repetitive work,
are dying at workplaces where workers’ safety is sacrificed for cost, and
become subjects of self-exploitation in competition over performance.
Therefore, measures for ending the climate crisis and ways of making workplaces
safer are interconnected.

It is degrowth that can oppose
capitalism that has been constantly exploitative. Jason Hickel suggests decreasing
working hours and retaining full employment by downsizing the economic sectors
designed purely for profits, and not for human needs (Less is More, 2021). The
idea is to restructure society so that it can spend time focusing on essential
labor, including caring labor that emerged during the COVID-19 period, that is,
labor with useful value. So, what he says is to become more affluent by
organizing our lives in an alternative way. This is not a path to poverty and
deficiency.

The
climate crisis and workers’ health rights

Capitalism has deprived workers of
wellbeing, health, right to work for appropriate hours, and democracy at the workplace.
Therefore, we have argued that our struggle for healthy and safe work and
control over workplaces is to put the brake on the acceleration of capitalist
development and to crack the capitalist system.

We have fought against musculoskeletal
diseases left by high labor intensity on workers’ bodies and struggled to win
the right to stop work in dangerous workplaces that prioritizes profits over
safety and lives. We have opposed long working hours that cause death from
overwork, and struggled to change day-night shifts which threaten workers’
health into consecutive day shifts. We also have
fought to restore mental health devastated by performance pressure and
competition among workers. What we have done so far is struggle against
capitalism that has thoroughly exploited the bodies and minds of workers. 

This is a struggle against capitalism
that causes the climate crisis and deepens it by talking about growth. 

Workers
should refuse dangerous work caused by the climate crisis and demand the right
to repair rather than continue unnecessary production. Workers should be able
to decide the direction of industrial transition and the amount of production. Just transition does not just mean a change from internal
combustion engines to electric motors. It should include organization of labor
processes so that all working populations can work safely and healthily. It is a
way to fight against capitalism in the era of the climate crisis so that all
people including nonstandard workers, women, and the disabled, who have been
marginalized, build a healthy workplace together.

On September 24, 2022, a march for
climate justice, urging the government and companies to resolve the climate
crisis, will be held in Gwanghwamun Square in Seoul. We hope that readers join
us in changing the system and join us in the march as well.