ETUI online workshop ‘Exploring interfaces between labour and environmental law’ on 27 April, 2-5.30pm CET.

The ETUI is pleased to invite you to an online workshop exploring the connections and scope for interaction between labour law and environmental law. Different in their origins and aims, these fields of law and legal scholarship have rarely engaged directly with one another. Although pioneering action has been taken to promote labour and environmental sustainability at both the EU and national levels, these fields of policy and law have often remained constrained within distinct silos, failing to address the root causes of common problems.

The effects of the climate crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic, and the dematerialisation of workplaces remind us that labour and the environment are not, in fact, strictly separable. Environmental degradation and climate change increasingly affect workers, as do regulatory and policy responses to these challenges. At the same time, addressing these environmental issues in a meaningful way will require changes to patterns of production and consumption, which will entail changes to labour markets, labour organisation and policy. These issues, among others, provide scope for the two disciplines to explore tensions, shared interests and goals, and to engage in fruitful exchange.

This workshop brings together experts in labour law and environmental law with the aim of starting a conversation, with a specific focus on, but not limited to, the context of climate change and the just transition. The first panel will open a discussion on the interfaces between labour law and environmental law within just transition and sustainable development policies. The second panel will explore three different avenues of inquiry into the connections and potential channels of communication between labour law and environmental law.

Provisional programme
Intersections between labour and environmental law in the just transition and sustainable development context (14:00 - 15:45)
Moderator: tbc

Speakers:

David J Doorey (York University)
Navraj Singh Ghaleigh (University of Edinburgh)
Sanja Bogojevic (University of Oxford)
Discussants: Paolo Tomassetti (University of Bergamo), Lovleen Bhullar (University of Birmingham)

Perspectives on the nexus between labour and environmental law (16:00 - 17:30)
Moderator: tbc

Speakers:

Ania Zbyszewska (Carleton University)
Alexis Bugada (Aix-Marseille University)
Consuelo Chacartegui (Pompeu Fabra University)
Commentators: Margherita Pieraccini (University of Bristol), , Mathilde Hautereau-Boutonnet (Aix-Marseille University), Chris Hilson (University of Reading)