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The paper explores the role of social partnership for facilitating processes to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Europe. Social partnership can help to facilitate the transition to lower emissions by negotiating the costs and benefits of climate reducing policies with the workers affected. At the same time, social partnership is stronger in sectors, which have high emissions and might be tempted to reduce the speed of phasing out high emission production processes. The paper uses data from the Structure of Earnings Survey to examine the relationship between bargaining coverage, unionization, wages and industry emissions in EU member states. It analyses these relationships in the context of different growth trajectories towards the knowledge economy. It finds that high-emitting industries tend to have higher profits, wages and lower wage inequality than others. Brown jobs, however, are not better jobs, but benefit from collective bargaining. At the same time, there are significant differences between the member states of the European Union. The paper concludes by discussing how social partnership deals with the dilemma of being rooted in fossil fuel industries while negotiating change.