Abstract: This research proposal explores the transformative power of cooperation towards sustainable work in two sectors of the economy both of which provide mobility services and infrastructures: automotive supplier industry and digital transportation platforms. Although work and employment are deeply entangled with the climate crisis, the relationship between ecologically sustainable transformations and the provision of socially sustainable (decent) work is rarely systematically examined, let alone from an interdisciplinary perspective focusing on cooperative employment relations as a potential basis for both. Drawing on the hypothesis that the function and understanding of sustainable work vary across scientific disciplines and societal fields, our research proposal focusses on the following research questions:

1. What does sustainable work mean in different disciplinary and societal contexts?
2. Under what conditions, why and how do cooperative employment relations facilitate or prevent the creation of sustainable work?
3. How do the power dynamics and subjective dispositions of employment relations actors affect their stance and behaviour towards sustainable work?

The empirical focus lies on Austria that exhibits a deeply entrenched legacy of cooperative relationships between and among business, labour and the state that have also provided a blueprint for newer forms of cooperation outside of traditional representative structures. We draw on a mixed methods approach and combine established sociological and legal methods including interviews, content analysis and a novel form of focus group discussion. For the latter we recruit business, labour and state representatives who occupy distinct positions to reveal those forces that facilitate or hinder cooperation towards sustainable work.