A Report on our meeting: “Trade Unions and the climate crisis: green jobs and just transitions”
The Trades Council organised this meeting in order to give local Trade Unionists an opportunity to consider issues arising out of global warming – whether this relate to national strategy or to the impact on activities that currently pay our wages, like cement making or aerospace.
If it is possible to talk about such a thing as world policy, it can be described as asserting that unless we engage with “decarbonisation” we will rapidly find ourselves facing dramatic environmental challenges to our living standards and conditions, alongside eye-watering bills to mitigate the expected impacts of changes to the Earth’s climate.
Our three speakers looked at different aspects of the situation. In a way that participants later said fitted together well.
Jason Hunter, from UNISON, gave us some background as to how his union had been working to establish a body of personnel and guidance to address work on climate issues. The Union had produced a “Green Bargaining Guide” – unison.org.uk/content/uploads/2024/09/Bargaining-on-green-issues-in-the-workplace-Sept-2024-1.pdf – , it had a North West regional Environmental Committee, and Branches were being encouraged to elect “Green Reps”.
He noted that work tended to fall into three strands.
At one level, there was campaigning around climate issues, which involved getting the message across to members and seeking to influence policy.
At a second level, there was an ambition to ensure that every workplace and activity involving UNISON members was done leaving as light a carbon footprint as possible. This could involve local “Green Reps”, for instance, undertaking audits and encouraging good practice.
Finally, there was a recognition that challenges were presented in responding to how occupational changes would affect workers. He pointed out that having to try to “manage” change was nothing new for Trade Unions. Many industries had their glory days followed by a period of decline. Nor was it a new thing for us to argue that we should have a say over what new types of production could replace the old. But this was one of the most difficult tasks. It was one that could not be acceptably delivered by market forces alone. We needed a plan that committed to replacing the obsolete with activities that were both new and sustainable, rather than with a proliferation of precarious work.
Both Jason, and Michael Agboh-Davison, from UNITE, warned that we should not under-estimate the influence on workers of hostility to climate science, which forms part of the right-wing mindset that encourages individuals to think that they can “see through all that crap”.
Whilst some environmentalists see “climate sceptics” as being fuelled by the “dark money” of corporations intent on protecting their fossil fuel and deforestation interests (see, as an example: Revealed: US Oil Billionaire Charles Koch Funds UK Anti-Environment Spiked Network – DeSmog), global warming itself is presented in some quarters as largely a deliberate fabrication put about by the world elite as a means of consolidating its control over our lives (see: The Goal Is Power: The Global Warming Conspiracy). Quite why the elite would need this string to its bow when it is going along quite nicely, thank you, is somewhat obscure; though you can understand why people become suspicious if they see capital shifting to jobs where workers are less well organised and terms and conditions poor. One would still have to marvel at the inferred ability of the elite to suborn innumerable scientists into some form of universal confirmation bias. Yes, there are historical examples of scientists all barking up the wrong tree – phlogiston, for example. And yes, science is about being critical and it is possible to be critical without being ‘anti-science’ or a ‘climate denier’. The science is always under review, with some people looking at the potential influence of other factors in addition to industrial emissions. But what is suggested by some anti-net zero campaigners is a quite monumental feat of deliberate manipulation – cunningly contrived to fit the observed evidence. (It seems more plausible that even at the level of the global elite there is a mix of competing influences that resolves itself in a generalised sense of needing to adapt, but without exactly rushing at the fences. And they’ll take the chance to earn a buck or two out of whatever circumstances they are in whenever they get the chance).
Strong scepticism is marginal, but no so insignificant that it cannot affect policy and possibly lead to inaction where intervention is required. All our speakers emphasised that attention to practical matters about their careers and conditions was most likely to motivate workers to support specific campaigns.
Ben Crawford .(Research Officer, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment) outlined a variety of ways in which climate issues could be embedded in collective bargaining scenarios.
Where an enterprise is committed to workplace or process decarbonisation there is an argument for harnessing the skills and knowlege of the workforce.
A throw-away attitude towards resources often sits alongside a throw-away attitude towards workers. Rapid and improvident exploitation is often reflected in harsh working conditions. Our arguments for climate sustainability need to link to arguments for decent and dependable work.
The key difficulty was that of achieving a strategic approach that could place local actions in a supporting context. A problem at the moment was the setting of targets divorced from much sympathy for how sectors might have a capacity to develop, whether through existing employers or in new areas. The risk was that this would lead simply to local de-industrialisation. Local firms may have ideas about product development, re-tooling or training, but success or failure could depend on what external support was available. In traiing and research, especially, capacity would, in the nature of things, often lie outside of specific firms and rely upon the state having the confidence and foresight to invest. This presented the neo-liberal economic model with a problem beyond its ability to solve.
Michael Agboh-Davison spoke to us about UNITE’s work in strategic sectors where workers already faced life-changing circumstances. UNITE for a Workers’ Economy was a result of UNITE choosing not to spend all of its Political Fund on party affiliations and donations. Instead, it wanted to engage directly in things like involving communities in campaigns, lobbying for policies, and mobilising social pressure to synchronise with industrial goals.
In the steel industry change was being driven directly by global warming prescriptions. Steel workers at Port Talbot and elsewhere knew that changes in production techniques were inevitable, but they wanted to move forwards along a different track – one that maintained a national capacity to produce steel from ore, alongside Electric Arc re-cycling – and that was supported by domestic procurement guarantees to protect the industry from international “dumping”, so that, for instance, steel used in HS2 was British-made. The employer in Wales – Tata – had shown in its dealings with other governments that it would go along with such industrial strategies ao long as there was something in it for them. In the Netherlands, for instance, Tata was delivering pretty much what UNITE had been pressing for in Britain, because the plan there had the backing of the Dutch government. The recent announcements relating to the blast furnace shut-down at Port Talbot had contained some welcome improvements – but the British government still had a chance to do much better by the industry overall.
In the North Sea Oil and Gas industries, the “No Ban without a Plan” slogan was more about putting emphasis on the “plan” side of the equation. Here, job losses were not, in fact, being primarily driven by climate policies. The issue of new oil and gas licences will have a marginal impact on future jobs. By 2030 at least 30,000 more jobs in the North Sea will be gone, and it is the natural decline of North Sea stocks that is playing a crucial role, as around 180 of the UK’s 284 oil and gas fields are due to close down by 2030. Whilst Scotland will be most affected up to a third of the people in the industry commute from across Britain.
Here the relevance of “just transition” was that you had, on the one hand, workers who faced job losses whilst on the other there are expected to be new demands, such as for wind turbine construction and maintenance, for the delivery of which the workers facing displacement would be ideal candidates, with a degree of appropriate re-skilling. “Just transition” here would involve bringing these two realities into a constructive relationship – transferring the skills of workers in “old” energy sectors into the new opportunities. It would be a challenge and a test for the Government as to whether it could work with Unions and employers to produce a Plan for this change, helping individuals through redeployment and re-training and taking the opportunity to develop the next generation of the energy industry.
Here is a link to the UNITE campaign petition: Tell Labour to make the right choice for oil and gas workers.
Perhaps the key take-away from the meeting was that how change is managed can make a big difference, and that the vital variables are the degree of Union involvement through collective bargaining, especially at a sectoral level, and active state intervention.