Working for a just transition


At the international climate change (COP 24) conference in Poland at the end of last year, UK prime minister Theresa May, along with the heads of more than 40 countries, signed up to the just transition declaration. 


This recognises that in moving to a low carbon economy in order to avoid catastrophic global warming, the future livelihoods of workers and communities affected by the transition must be secured (see box bottom of page 14). However, unions say the government’s industrial and environmental strategies are falling woefully short of what is needed to make just transition a reality. 


There are major challenges involved in “decarbonising” an economy that is still highly dependent on fossil fuels, as the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) explains in its trade union guide, Involving trade unions in climate action to build a just transition. 


It describes the need for “wide-reaching industrial transformations and technological shifts, the development of new energy patterns, new business models and more circularity in ways of producing and consuming”. 


This transition will “profoundly reshape the labour market in ways that creates both new risks and new opportunities for workers”. 


Union policies

Although there will be new jobs there will also be, in some cases, “destruction of jobs, replacement of some existing occupations by new ones, along with the need for new competencies and skills”. Sectors and regions dependent on carbon-intensive industries are likely to be particularly affected, so there are inevitable tensions within the UK union movement concerning climate change and just transition. 


“The unions with the most ambitious policies on climate change and just transition tend not to be those organising in energy-intensive industries,” Scottish TUC (STUC) policy officer Francis Stuart told Labour Research. “There are obviously profound challenges for unions with members in heavy fossil-fuel industries.”


The PCS civil service union is calling for a “transformative just transition”. In its 2017 pamphlet, Just transition and energy democracy, it argues for public ownership and the democratic control of energy, together with the creation of a National Climate Service. This would, it says, provide an opportunity to cut greenhouse gas emissions while “re-visioning” and rebuilding public services for people not profit. The National Climate Service would ensure the creation of jobs needed to lower greenhouse gas emissions.


The union’s 2018 publication, There is an alternative to fracking — building a climate jobs plan for Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre, points to a study that estimated an average 420 jobs were possible in fracking, compared to an average of 4,500 new jobs over 20 years by investing in climate jobs — 10 times as many.


Last year’s PCS conference called for a Just Transition Act and for the core principles within such an Act to underpin a planned economic transition. 


This is “more than a floor of social protections” and is “a proactive policy for social justice”. 


The PCS, along with unions including the TSSA transport, UCU lecturers and UNISON public services unions, is also campaigning for pension schemes to divest from fossil fuel companies. 


While Stuart says there are tensions, there are also areas of agreement where unions in Scotland are working together to develop policy on climate change and just transition. 


These include the need for public ownership of energy production and a critique of how industrial policy has been done in the past, as well as examining where there are job opportunities — mapping the areas that could benefit and looking at how unions might organise in response.


Just Transition Partnership

The PCS, UCU, UNISON Scotland along with the CWU communications and Unite Scotland general unions are all members of the Just Transition Partnership (JTP) founded by the STUC and environmental group Friends of the Earth. 


Having lobbied for a Just Transition Commission, the JTP welcomed the recent Scottish government announcement that it will set up such a commission to advise ministers on how to apply just transition principles to Scotland. The STUC wants to see a balance of interests on the commission, including trade union representation. And it says that to fit in with targets set out in the 2008 Climate Change Act, which requires that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are significantly reduced by 2050, the commission should be a long-term endeavour, rather than the proposed two-year initiative. 


TUC Yorkshire and Humberside Low Carbon Task Force

Unions are also working together on just transition as part of the TUC Yorkshire and Humberside Low Carbon Task Force, a project that is “blazing the trail” and developing a model that could be rolled out across the TUC’s regions. The task force is continuing work started as part of an ETUC just transition project.


The TUC says Yorkshire and the Humber is “a region in transition but without a plan”. It has the highest concentrations of foundation industries — steel, cement works, chemicals, food manufacturing and glass — and coal and gas power stations in the UK. No region has a bigger carbon footprint. And, says the TUC, there is no bigger question to answer than: “How to protect and develop high carbon industries and skilled jobs in the transition to a low-carbon economy?”


TUC regional secretary for Yorkshire and the Humber Bill Adams said: “There are 28,000 good jobs at risk over the next 30 years and the unions need to be involved in doing something about that.” 


The ITUC says transition to a green economy will inevitably cause job losses in certain sectors as carbon- and resource-intensive industries are scaled down. But the TUC says those already employed must not pay the price of tackling climate change.


“Indeed, there are great prospects for retraining, with new advanced skilled jobs, to accompany the transition in all workplaces across the region,” Adams added. “We are looking to increase the number of highly-skilled, well-paid jobs for current and future workers.”


The task force involves a wide range of partners including unions, employers, local authorities and local enterprise partnerships. It focuses on raising awareness about climate change and just transition and is “organising from the workplace upwards”, said Adams.


“Trade unions will of course lead the negotiations,” he told Labour Research. Our role is about equipping shop stewards to think about how they can get involved, working together and building up expertise and putting just transition on the collective bargaining agenda.”


The unions involved include UNISON, Unite, the PCS and the UCU as well as the food workers’ BFAWU, GMB general and Prospect specialists’ unions. 


Activists and regional organisers from the unions attended a training course on just transition last November and there are plans to run a second course this month.


Demanding a just transition for energy workers

Unions are also in agreement that the government needs to do far more to make just transition a reality. In December 2018, the four big energy unions — GMB, Prospect, UNISON and Unite — launched a 10-point blueprint to secure 200,000 energy jobs in a low-carbon economy and called for talks with business secretary Greg Clark “to chart a constructive way forward in the decade ahead”. 


Their report, Demanding a just transition for energy workers, calls for a balanced low-carbon energy mix, investment in skills and infrastructure and protecting and creating high-quality jobs and employment. And it says no community must be left behind. 


The unions say that 10 years on from the Climate Change Act, the UK still doesn’t have a plan that puts workers, future skills and affected communities at the heart of energy policy. 


“Energy has to be at the cornerstone of industrial policy as it affects jobs far beyond the energy sector,” GMB policy officer Charlotte Nichols told Labour Research. “It’s vital we get it right.”


She points to tyre manufacturing in Wolverhampton as an example of the consequences of getting it wrong. 


The industry is now more or less non-existent as high energy costs have driven jobs abroad. The union is concerned the same could happen in other energy-intensive sectors, like ceramics manufacturing, if decarbonisation is badly managed. 


Workers’ experiences of previous industrial transitions have not been good, as STUC deputy general secretary Dave Moxham points out in a recent blog. 


Moxham says the 1980s closures of coal mines and heavy industry, and the privatisation of key utilities, led to the loss of quality jobs and the destruction of communities. 


The transition to the “knowledge economy” has seen a rise in low-wage, precarious jobs. And in the energy sector, the transition to low carbon has so far seen “thousands of high quality jobs destroyed and far too few created”, with decently-paid, unionised jobs lost and not replaced. 


Domestic emissions reductions have been the result of offshoring, he says, while a “much-heralded jobs bonanza” in renewables has not materialised. 


Trade unionists and environmentalists alike are concerned that government action to date has been based on a market approach — including carbon taxes and incentives for renewables, for example — that has not delivered the necessary scale of change, environmentally or socially. 


What’s required is “a wider vision of the changes needed”, Stuart said. “Just transition requires more than market incentives for renewables or carbon capture and storage. It needs to consider job creation in supply chains and manufacturing, including discussions about investment and ownership.” 


He points to a political and environmental crisis that requires massive public investment, direction and planning and a different type of ownership to the current model in the UK, which has privatised energy companies and decarbonised by offshoring emissions to south east Asia. 


“Just transition is a big challenge, but also a big opportunity to create clean, green jobs in former industrial areas,” TUC policy officer Tim Page told Labour Research. “The challenge is how to move forward to make tangible, concrete progress providing new unionised jobs that are as high-skill and high-value as those that currently exist.”