Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Respond to Climate Change (ACW), 2014-2021

The documents archived at this website are the result of research done under the direction of Principal Investigator Dr. Carla Lipsig-Mummé, Professor of Work and Labour Studies at York University, from 2014- 2022. This research was pioneering in its foresight about the problem of global heating and the potential role of workers to contribute to a cleaner economy. Building from What Do We Know? What Do We Need To Know? The state of research on work, employment and climate change in Canada (2010), one of the goals of the Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces to Climate Change (ACW) project was to produce practical tools for education and action – for example, through the Green Collective Agreements database (which was featured by the International Labour Organization in its 2018 publication, Greening With Jobs: World Employment and Social Outlook 2018), and by the W3/ACW Environmental Racism project, which produced, for example, the Environmental Racism Workshop Companion Guide to support the many labour-focused workshops it conducted. The Just Transition and Beyond Roundtable Summary Report documents the 2018 gathering of Canadian unionists that was part of a broader series of reports undertaken by the Adapting Canadian Work and Workplaces research grant in cooperation with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

The ACW research project was unique, not only in its subject area, but in how it was conducted. This was recognized by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council in 2018 when it awarded the SSHRC Impact Partnership Award to Professor Lipsig- Mummé for her accomplishment in building a unique, “community-university network partnership” which grew from five partners and eight researchers initially to 52 partners in seven countries. One of the rarest features of this collaborative approach was that it brought together researchers in academia with those in civil society organizations – especially labour unions. For many years, academics, environmental activists, and union leaders convened annually in informal, face-to-face meetings and discussions.