Forestry workers in Chile: Agents of change or collateral damage in the green transition?

This article analyses the effects of corporate environmental strategies on industrial forestry workers and their implications for a Just Transition. Drawing on a qualitative case study of a leading forestry company in Chile, the analysis combines a review of corporate sustainability reports with semi-structured interviews with trade union leaders and key informants. The findings show that corporate sustainability strategies have been primarily centred on technological upgrading and voluntary certification. While these measures have favoured some improvements in occupational safety, they have also intensified managerial control, contributed to job displacement, work intensification and shifted environmental responsibilities onto workers. At the same time, workers and their representatives have been largely excluded from decision-making processes, resulting in low levels of procedural justice. The article further shows that forestry unions display a condition of “union perplexity”, characterised by environmental awareness combined with limited capacity to influence corporate strategies. These findings underline the need for forest policy frameworks that incorporate labour relations and social dialogue as core dimensions of sustainable forest management, and for more empirically grounded, context-sensitive research on green transitions in the Global South, where labour protections and institutional support are often weaker. More broadly, the article argues that placing workers at the centre of forest governance debates is essential for advancing socially just and environmentally sustainable transitions.