By Johnny Sharp

The Stockholm Environment Institute’s (SEI) project JUSTIT has been developed to examine the impact environmental policies are having on society and particularly the transport professionals whose wellbeing and employment conditions may be significantly affected by policies putting sustainability first.

The project is a joint undertaking involving the SEI teaming up with researchers from Lund University with input from the Swedish Transport Workers’ Union. And although the work is ongoing, they have already identified some prominent areas where lessons can be learned and carbon tunnel vision – focusing on the carbon footprint above all other considerations – can be avoided.

“It’s meant to help us understand better how workers could be impacted by decarbonisation and how we can try and mitigate some of the more negative impacts,” Claudia Strambo, SEI Research Fellow, explains. “We looked at safety, health, quality of working life, job security and identity issues.”

Sweden is aiming to achieve net zero by 2045, with the country’s transport industry adopting familiar measures such as the adoption of electric vehicles and optimising fleet and route algorithms to minimise emissions. But JUSTIT aims to combine research into these initiatives with the input of unions and surveys of transport sector employees, with the aim of achieving a wider view of the challenges, effects and potential solutions.

Strambo explains: “On the safety side, we found there would probably be positive impacts [with] advanced driver assistance systems, but there are also concerns that if you have too many systems it can be distracting for the driver – so how do we manage this?

“In terms of health, they talked about improvements in noise and air pollution but on the other hand there were concerns about stress that may increase due to changes in systems and also the possibility of surveillance through more advanced IT systems. So, it’s a mixed picture.”

Job security concerns

The decarbonisation process is also inevitably intertwined with technological advances and increased automation, Strambo explains, which brings its own issues for workers.

“Job security, of course, is a big concern. Workers see that a lot of the technology seems to be aiming to cut out the driver or reduce their role to cut costs, but they also highlighted that there are plenty of tasks that machines can’t do,” she states.

“There are also questions around quality of life, and changes in required skills, and whether that’s going to change access to the profession, with the upskilling required to integrate IT and so on?

“There are [further] questions of identity, preserving the kind of craftsmanship that transport workers have, and how that may affect pride and sense of autonomy in their work.”

Strambo stresses that this isn’t just “a matter of ethics” but will also impact on how effectively the industry can move towards a sustainable future.

“We saw during Covid how important transport workers are to the economy, and we need them to be as effective as possible.
“These employees have so much knowledge and experience that can really help make new technologies and sustainability policies more effective and safe,” she stresses.

JUSTIT’s work continues, and Strambo says they’ll soon be looking to “make recommendations to businesses, unions and the government”.

And while she recognises that the Swedish economy may be atypical with “a tradition of finding consensus with relatively little interference from government”, the fundamental goal – to understand what the drive towards decarbonisation means for employees and society in general – is one everyone needs to back.

Newsletter image: Lund city centre in the fog, Sweden; credit: Shutterstock.