GKN: Rank and file trade union delegation to Florence, are you interested?
Reel News are planning a rank and file trade union delegation from the UK to visit the GKN factory in Florence; not just to show solidarity to this important struggle, but also to spread the workers’ visionary ideas back here. And with thousands of jobs under threat at Port Talbot steel works (of which more below), and Grangemouth oil refinery due to close in 2025 with the loss of another 400 jobs, we can all learn a lot from what’s happening at GKN.
Many of us have been warning for years that if we don’t start planning a just transition away from fossil fuel production, it’ll be imposed on us – and thousands of workers will be thrown on the scrapheap. Now that’s starting to happen, it’s never been more urgent to fight for the alternative: a green future that would create literally millions of jobs globally as well as saving the ones currently under threat.
We’re still waiting to hear back from the GKN workers when would be a good time to visit, but at the moment we’re thinking maybe mid April, depending on how things develop. We want to time the visit for either a big mobilisation/demonstration, and/or if they actually start production under workers control. So the timing might well change. But for the moment, get in touch at info@reelnews.co.uk if someone from your workplace is interested in coming – and especially if you want to help with organising the trip too.
Obviously we’re looking at taking workers directly involved in fossil fuel industries, but every sector needs to make plans for a just transition (click here for a film detailing ideas that came out of a union workshop on a just transition for the hospitality sector for example), so please get in touch if you’re interested wherever you work.
The bosses have now agreed to delay the sackings until at least June 2024, after a NYE party packed out the factory with 7,000 people; and in the past month they’ve DOUBLED the money raised in popular shares to over 600,000 euros.
So now the workers have extended the share scheme until June – and are now very confident they can raise the full million euros. So if your trade union branch, organisation, or even a group of friends want to support this visionary project, there’s still plenty of time. Share packages start from 500 euros.
You can find details of how to take part here, and see the end of the video for more ways you can help. As the workers say, they can’t create an alternative model to capitalist fossil fuel production in just one factory – but they can create an example of what is possible.
For more on the GKN occupation and a link to the REELNews video check out this post.
On 9 July 2021, Melrose Industries announced the closure of its GKN Driveline (formerly FIAT) factory of car axles in Campi di Bisenzio, Florence, and the layoff of its workers (more than 400). While in many such cases the workers and unions settle for negotiating enhanced redundancy benefits, the GKN Factory Collective took over the plants and kick-started a long struggle against decommissioning. However, what makes the Ex GKN Florence dispute really unique is the strategy adopted by the workers, who sealed an alliance with the climate justice movement by drafting a conversion plan for sustainable, public transport and demanding its adoption. Such a strategy engendered a cycle of broad mobilisations – repeatedly bringing tens of thousands to the streets – so that the dispute is still open, and the permanent sit-in at the factory remains until today.
The workers were meant to be finally dismissed on 1 January 2024. The GKN Factory Collective had thus turned new year’s eve into a final call to action to defend their conversion plan. Such a pressure from below probably played a role in the labour court’s decision, announced on 27 December 2023, to overturn the layoffs for the second time. The 31 December 2023 concert in the factory and the subsequent nocturnal march across Campi Bisenzio’s industrial area became a mass mobilisation to relaunch the workers’ current plan to set up a cooperative for the production of cargo bikes and solar panels, as part of a broader vision for a worker-led ecological transition.
This project needs material solidarity now – over 600,000 euros have been collected by the popular shareholding campaign to launch the co-operative, moving closer and closer to the target of one million euros. All information on how to contribute, individually or as an organisation, can be found at the website www.insorgiamo.org.
The conference, organised by the Global Climate Jobs network, took place in Amsterdam over three days from the 7th of October. Two of us from Scot.E3 attended. These are my personal notes and reflections on the discussion that took place.
At the end of the conference
The Global Climate Jobs network brings together campaigning organisations from around the world. What glues them together is the idea that the necessary transition to a zero-carbon economy is both political and practical and requires a huge expansion in jobs that are central to the new economy – in energy production, transport etc. This idea centres campaigning on social justice, a worker led transition and building working class power.
The global reach of the network was underlined by the diversity of the attendance – including groups from Columbia, Mexico, USA, South Africa, Tanzania, England, Scotland, Norway, the Nederlands, Germany, France, Belgium, Luxemburg, Portugal, Spain, Austria, Italy, Turkey and the Philippines.
The venue for the conference was split between two spaces – a social centre, once a church, squatted more than two decades ago and now legalised and a wonderful building ‘De Burcht’ that was once the headquarters of the Amsterdam diamond workers union. The picture shows something of the beauty of the building but its history is also inspirational. In the 19th century there were around 10,000 diamond workers. They were divided by gender and religion. However, after a major strike which brought the entire workforce together a single union was created and commissioned the building.
De Brucht – image by Pete Cannell CC0
Here are some of my highlights from the plenary sessions.
Leonor, from the Portuguese group Climaximo, talked about how the cost-of-living crisis runs side by side with the intensifying climate crisis. She argued that building a mass movement to stop climate collapse requires an organisational culture of a different kind – flexible, learning and always thinking about the next steps. Bringing the labour and climate movements together is key. All of this needs a high level of ambition and a clear focus on building social power to stop climate change. We need to be ready to take risks and accelerate our learning cycles. We’ll make mistakes but we must not repeat mistakes. We have seen mass movements rise very fast and we have seen dominant ideas change very quickly – we need to envisage this and think of strategies that can make it happen.
Working people are struggling daily to get by – a programme to tackle the climate crisis is a programme to improve lives and livelihoods. We need to dare to win power – these ideas need to explode in society and go mainstream.
Sean Sweeney from Trade Unions for Energy Democracy (TUED) noted that trade unions in the north wanted/want to get a seat at the table of the transition. TUED argues that being at the table is not fine. While renewables have expanded so has the use of fossil fuel. Radical restructuring is needed. The problem is a capitalist system that burns fossil fuels for profit. We need a programme/pathway – a plan of action and crucially we need public ownership of energy. It’s evident that all the countries who say they have targets for net zero will not achieve them. The solutions we need are not compatible with a system of growth and accumulation. Public ownership and control is essential.
Plenary Notes
Jonathan Neale started his contribution by saying that the evidence for climate change is increasing fast. Most people think something must be done. He argued that the climate movement must change – we have to go for concrete solutions. Stop fossil fuels. Make them illegal. Cover the world with renewable energy. Governments need to do this. Every worker in old industries gets a new job with the climate service. Once we win it in one country it’s easier to spread. It requires a mass grass roots campaign that must go everywhere. It’s serious project and not about having a good policy, we have to persuade a mass movement to fight for it. We need to persuade the climate movement. People say we must not divide the movement, but he asserted that there is no other solution on offer. The just transition is the only transition on the table. It requires winning majorities – not diluting politics – persuading people that on this we are right. We need action – direct action. Every time workers are losing their jobs, we need action/occupations etc. to insist that they must have climate jobs. Occupation for demands that we can win. We need our own shock doctrine – organising at the grass roots for the things that people need in heat waves, floods – we have to march and protest in the teeth of disaster – no one left behind. Fund raising events when catastrophes are elsewhere. The time for dishonest promises is past. This is a long struggle – explosive growth sometimes – slow at others. We can’t afford to wait to see that their promises are lies in 2040 – we have to start now on the scale that is necessary. Winning once makes it easier elsewhere. In global south renewable energy is needed to grow to meet their needs. From here to this vision is a huge jump but it must be done.
The theme of public ownership was reinforced by a speaker from Colombia. She started by saying that it is the capitalist system (imperialism) that is to blame and we need to be clear about this. With a progressive government in office Columbia is for the first time looking at the possibility of change. The country is highly indebted. Renewable energy has increased but is almost entirely in the hands of private companies that are propped up and subsidised by public resources. Carbon emissions are principally from land use and deforestation – Columbia is a producer of primary raw materials. Transition requires public ownership and social control. Just transition is a question of rethinking the role of the state and the working class. She argued that large scale utilities are essential – things like roof top solar contribute but can’t be the answer on the scale that’s needed. In Latin America – this is a moment when it is necessary fight for public power.
Some of the contributions reflected significant rethinking in the climate movement. A contributor from XR in the Nederlands talked about how the focus of direct action has changed in recent months. There has been action against a private jet terminal and action at a big steel plant. This shift stems from frustration that labour and climate movements are not working together against common enemy while NGOs talk about capitalism but not about class struggle so much. There has been progress in building a climate justice network in the Nederland’s largest trade union. A contribution from Friends of the Earth (Nederlands) remarked on an ongoing shift from consumerist demands to more concrete demands and demands on big polluting companies. But most of these actions have been from the outside – with the consequence that workers see this as attacks on them. And may have increased their resistance to climate transition agenda. Workers were arguing against CCS and for hydrogen and electricity – but climate movement more impatient – no dialogue – need to engage more directly with the workers and not with the trade union bureaucracy. This point was echoed by another contributor who had been involved in producing the Platform report on the views of offshore workers in the UK sector of the North Sea. Platform worked with the offshore unions to reach the workers who contributed to the report. The findings of the report were powerful but mostly the unions have done nothing with them. She argued that it will often be necessary to bypass union officials to speak directly to workers.
On the second day of the conference, I helped present and facilitate a workshop on the strike wave in Britain put on by the socialist group rs21. We explored the scale of the movement and attempts to align it with the environmental movement. This provoked a lively discussion and people gave examples from 7-8 different countries of experiments in aligning the workers and environmental movement, including pushing for the wider ecosocialist political struggle. As part of the workshop, we hosted a representative from the Italian GKN Collective. GKN is a British owned company in the automotive and aerospace sector. Faced with a decision to close the factory the Italian workers occupied in 2021 and have stayed in occupation ever since. They are now fighting to control it; they’ve retooled the machinery and aim to convert it to renewable transport production led by workers. It’s quite shameful that this occupation has not received more support and solidarity in the UK. Coverage in English is very limited but you can read more here.
Workshop notes
I’ve tried to focus on the main themes of the conference but there was much more and much deserving of separate and more detailed reports. The accounts of social movement trade unionism in France were impressive. German delegates spoke about their public transport campaign #wirfahrenzusammen – we’re driving together. Joint activity bringing the youth strike movement together with public transport strikers and public transport users. Safe Landing ran a workshop on workers assemblies. There was intensive discussion of what we mean by just transition and workshops on global debt, the East African Crude Oil pipeline (EACOP), the upcoming European elections, political strikes and how to build on them and how to understand and make an impact on local and global supply chains.
You can find the recordings of all the panels and a selection of workshop sessions here:
Paul Atkin replies to an interview with the GMB union’s General Secretary Gary Smith in the Spectator.
In agreeing to be interviewed by the Spectator under the title “the folly of Net Zero” GMB General Secretary Gary Smith lets his members down; not least because remarks like these from a leading trade unionist help give Rishi Sunak encouragement to accelerate his retreat from the government’s already inadequate climate targets.
The phrase “the folly of Net Zero” makes as much sense as “the folly of getting into the lifeboats when the ship is sinking”.
Difficulties in making a transition to sustainability does not mean that making it isn’t essential, and the faster we move the less damage is done. We can see that damage all around us even now.
Gary doesn’t seem to get this, any more than Rishi Sunak does, and he latches on to some of the same lines as the PM does, albeit with a more pungent turn of phrase. To go through these point by point, quotes are either directly from Gary Smith or the Spectator.
Image from pixabay.com CC0
Auctions for offshore wind power
“Now there will be no bids for the next round of licences because the wind industry can’t afford to put up the projects”
The article starts with an odd bit of misdirection, that echoes the entire right-wing press, on the results of the latest round Contracts for Difference auction for new electricity generation. This focusses on the absence of offshore wind bids at the strike price of £44 per Megawatt hour. The way the Spectator puts it is “The government and the renewables lobby hoped that a successful auction would show that wind power could compete with fossil fuels”. The fact is that it already does. There were no bids from fossil fuel sources at this price either; and the successful bids were all from renewable sources.
24 onshore wind projects
1 Remote Island wind project
56 Solar projects
3 Geothermal projects
11 Tidal stream projects.
These are slated to produce 3.7GW of power. So, renewables 95: Fossil Fuels 0. It’s quite clear which source is heading for the relegation zone. And the International Energy Agency has just reported that electricity generation from fossil fuel sources declined by 7.4% in the whole OECD in the year to September, so this is happening in every developed country.
“Starmer’s 2030 deadline is impossible, I don’t even worry about it”
With 5GW of potential offshore wind projects not coming online, due to rising raw material and interest rate charges increasing costs beyond the auction price, you have to wonder if the government set this up to fail. With the current wholesale electricity price set at over £80 per Kilowatt hour, there was a lot of room to set a price (perhaps around £60 per KWH as suggested by the industry) that could have brought this on stream, and still cut the cost of electricity for customers. This will have a knock-on effect on bills and supply chain jobs – which have been projected on the basis of a tripling of UK offshore wind by 2030 – and choke them off unless the momentum is restored at the next auction. Anyone concerned about jobs in the supply chain will be campaigning between now and then to make sure this is the case.
The stop-go market driven model embodied in the CfD system makes a consistent plan for energy transition vulnerable and chaotic. To take this process by the scruff of the neck and drive it through at the scale and pace that we need requires, as UNITE successfully argued at the TUC, public ownership of energy.
Undersea cables
“The National Grid can’t get undersea cables, There are 4 suppliers of cables in the globe, they’re all booked out to 2030”
If you are concerned with cutting carbon emissions and growing jobs, this is an argument for campaigning for more investment in cable laying and the jobs that go with them, not accepting current limited capacity as an insuperable obstacle. A very good use for some of that £28 billion Labour is pledged to ramp up to.
North Sea drilling
“There will be more drilling in the North Sea”
Senior figures in the unions can’t afford to ignorethe scientific reports on this matter. They are not ambiguous. NO new oil and gas exploration is compatible with Net Zero. 60% of existing reserves have to be kept in the ground to avoid catastrophic consequences. Weaning ourselves off fossil fuels requires unions to fight for a just transition as rapidly as possible for their members in the oil and gas sector. Spinning a delusion that everything can carry on as it is, will speed us to a point at which sustaining jobs will be the least of our problems.
Renewables lobby
“The renewables lobby is very wealthy and powerful. I think people on the left, for good intentions, have got hoodwinked into a lot of this”
This is a breathtaking inversion of reality. How “wealthy and powerful” is the “renewables lobby” compared to the fossil fuel companies? Octopus compared to Shell? Vesta compared to BP, or Aramco, or Exxon? According to the IMF, last year total fossil fuel subsidies were $7 Trillion. 7.1% of global GDP. That’s power. That’s wealth. We should note that this is $3 Trillion more than the total that would be needed globally to get us on track for sustainable development. Shell is now casually projecting that Net Zero will only be possible sometime in the 22nd century if they have their way, with no accounting at all for the social, economic and political consequences of that. Gary sees these companies as “people who we can work with” without reflecting that, since they have known about climate change for fifty years and tried to cover it up, with no “good intentions” at all, that hoodwinking is a large part of what they do.
UK net zero targets
“We’ve cut carbon emissions by decimating working class communities
Who does he mean by “we”? A better word would be “they”. The succession of Tory governments, in all their various guises, since 2010 have been bad for climate breakdown and the working class. They have put business imperatives (profit) above sustainability, and dumped costs of transition downwards onto those least able to afford it. Two examples. Insulation and solar energy installation fell off a cliff when the Tories “cut the green crap”, leading to thousands of lost jobs and higher bills as a result.
Green levies
“Green levies are a modern-day poll tax”
It’s also the case that, because it was the Tories, the schemes they had were skewed to subsiding the sort of consumers who could afford the upfront investment; while dumping the costs on everyone else’s bills. Hence Gary’s complaint that this was ‘disproportionately paid for by the poorest’. Quite so, but the answer to that is not to scrap insulation and solar panel installation altogether, but to approach it as a social mission to upgrade the “leaky, freezing council house(s)” that need it most first, and do it through Direct Labour run by Local Authorities; thereby creating jobs, cutting fuel poverty and improving health, as well as cutting energy demand and therefore emissions. Win, win, win.
Green Jobs
“It’s usually a man in a rowing boat sweeping up the dead birds”
Given that there were 19,600 jobs directly in offshore wind in 2022, and another 11,500 in the supply chain, that’s quite a lot of rowing boats. 30% of these are in Scotland. 15% in Yorkshire and Humber. If considering bird fatalities, Gary might note that in this study from the US, “for every one bird killed by a wind turbine, nuclear and fossil fuel powered plants killed 2,118 “. If we go for nuclear and stick with fossil fuels, we’re going to need a bigger boat.
According to Prof Sir Jim McDonald, president of the Royal Academy of Engineering, 30,000 new skilled workers would be required to retrofit buildings, while 60,000 technicians would have to be on hand to go one step further and install energy efficient heating systems in homes, offices and factories, with intensive training required. This is an extremely conservative estimate given that it can take four skilled workers six months to do a thorough retrofit on a house. In their latest Climate Jobs Report the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group argues that two million jobs will be required to deal with all 27 million homes and public buildings that need retrofitting if it were to be addressed seriously with the level of investment that’s needed.
That’s an awful lot of new jobs. Were the GMB to campaign for this, positively and proactively, some of these new workers might join.
Nuclear energy
“Smith is broadly positive about the future of green energy and sees Hinckley Point as a success story”
The argument that new nuclear is the core of future “green energy” is not consistent with any concern for impact on energy bills. The strike price for electricity generated by Hinckley Point is £93.50 per KWh. More than double the price at the last CFD auction and a third more than Offshore wind companies were pitching. This will go onto electricity bills and hit the poorest hardest. Small Modular Reactors are projected to be even more costly. So, whatever the green merits or otherwise of nuclear, it is not compatible with the concern for costs to customers that is foregrounded in his argument against “green levies”.
Hydrogen
Gary also argues for hydrogen, in general terms in this article. Elsewhere the GMB has pushed hard for hydrogen to be used as a mass replacement for natural gas for domestic cooking and heating. This is a complete non-starter on grounds of cost, emissions and safety. Unless the hydrogen is produced by renewable energy, the carbon emissions produced in making it are greater than if you just use natural gas in the first place. To produce sufficient hydrogen for mass domestic use using renewable energy would need far more wind farms than Gary is prepared to contemplate as a realistic possibility. Hydrogen has a role in some hard to decarbonise industrial sectors, so any green hydrogen we produce should be kept for that. It will be an expensive and precious resource that we should use accordingly. You have to add to that the concerns about how flammable the stuff is in a domestic context. As hydrogen is much lighter and more flammable than natural gas, the possibility of leaks and fires is much greater, so the existing infrastructure would need significant upgrading. A recent government report concluded that hydrogen in the home would be four times more dangerous than natural gas. A job creation scheme for the Fire Brigade perhaps, but probably one they’d rather not have. That’s why people selected to trial it as a cooking and heating tool in Ellesmere Port rebelled against the prospect of a domestic Hindenburg disaster* in their kitchen, leading to the pilot project having to be scrapped. Many gas fitters are less than happy at the prospect of working with hydrogen for domestic heating or cooking for the same reason.
China and supply chains
“We’ve become increasingly dependent on China because we can’t secure our energy future”
Gary’s position on trade and supply chains is contradictory. The GMB has argued for a “Great British Supply Chain”, with an almost autarkic vision of everything from widgets to jackets to turbines being built here, and for the CFD auctions to be stopped until one is established. At the same time, he quite rightly says he is “not a protectionist”, because workers lose out. But also, that the UK can’t do what the US is doing with the Inflation Reduction Act because it does not have a major reserve currency; which does not quite add up. He objects to the Tory approach for its “ideological bent” to neo liberal globalisation and buying the goods from the cheapest source, but also objects to imports from China as a “non-market economy” that “distorts the world economy”.
Gary seems to accept that China’s “non market economy” is more efficient at producing the necessary goods than the UK neo liberal economy is. In the case of energy, this is probably because they are investing more than twice as much in renewable energy generation than the EU and USA combined, and the UK lags behind both of these. Whether you agree with China’s definition of itself as “Socialist with Chinese characteristics”, or argue that it is a form of “state capitalism”, there’s no doubt that their state directed investment and coordination of state companies, academia and the private sector is beginning to produce the necessary goods at the necessary speed and scale. Just as well, because getting their dependence on coal down fast is crucial for all of us and, again according to theInternational Energy Agency, both possible and happening.
And that brings us to the paradox of Gary’s position. To develop a comparable supply chain here would require investment on that scale. But he claims that investment even on the smaller scale being carried out in the US is beyond the UK’s capacity. To deploy the £28 billion that Labour projects that it will ramp up to (which will be comparable to the US and EU, so therefore about half the Chinese level) would either require direct state investment through newly created nationalised industries, or you have to bribe a multinational, which at the moment is “free money” that comes with no government stake or even a say for the workforce or affected communities. Tata is doing rather well out of this at the moment, with half a billion for an electric arc steel furnace in Port Talbot and another 600 million for their EV plant in Swindon. Gary’s complaint that the redundancies that come with this deal at Port Talbot shows that Just Transition is “fantasy land” undercuts the position that his members would expect him to take alongside the other affected unions – for a say in the transition, for investment in a wider range of viable technologies to sustain volume steel making and the jobs that go with it. If this is a “fantasy” then so is any prospect of defending those jobs.
The reality is that “British” manufacturing is, for the most part, owned by multinationals and might be better understood as “production in Britain”. It also shows that companies like these and the Fossil Fuel majors in the North Sea about whom Gary argues “we’ve got to stop seeing them as the enemy and we’ve got to start seeing them as people who we can work with”, do not return the favour, and shut the unions out whenever they can.
More positively, it should be noted that high quality locally produced goods are not solely dependent on the national market and can also be exported, and companies based here, whoever owns them, do that too. In 2017, according to the Renewables UK Export Nation Reportthis included “an extraordinarily wide variety of goods and services, including supplying, installing and maintaining onshore wind turbines and components, designing gearboxes, manufacturing offshore wind turbine blades and steelwork, supplying and laying underwater power cables, installing, inspecting and maintaining offshore wind farms, providing helicopters, crew and vessels, developing wave and tidal energy projects and providing components for the marine energy industry, as well as designing software, conducting geological surveys, monitoring wildlife, and providing financial and legal services”. With properly targeted and coordinated R&D producing patents as part of a proper industrial strategy, there is a lot of room for growth in all of this, which matters for the sector because most of the growth in it will be “in Asia”.
“Failing to prepare is preparing to fail.” Benjamin Franklin
Transition and jobs growth will only happen if there is investment at scale and speed. Seeking to “moderate” Labour’s policy so that the investment doesn’t happen, means there will be no growth in jobs either. Without plans, and without union engagement in making them, we will stagnate at best. That is what we should be concentrating on now, so that mobilising people for transitions in their communities and workplaces that will cut their bills, boost jobs and cut our carbon emissions fast becomes part of the election campaign to drive the Tories out of office and cement Labour in government into actions that drive that forward.
*I was once told at a SERA meeting by a representative of the Hydrogen industry that the reason the Hindenburg burned so fiercely was not because of the highly flammable gas that it was filled with, but because of the lacquer that was painted on the outside of the dirigible. He did this with a straight face.
Thanks to REEL News for this report and access to video from Friday’s direct action in Glasgow
Friday 13th Scottish Construction Rank and File take direct action in Glasgow
UNITE Scottish Construction rank and file and the Blacklist Support Group were celebrating a very significant victory after a campaign of direct action forced Scottish energy giant SSE to reinstate Greig McArthur, branch secretary of the biggest construction branch in Scotland, and two of his colleagues. They were disgracefully sacked two days before Christmas for seeking trade union recognition, despite being only weeks away from an agreement. Now that recognition agreement appears to be imminent – as well as full compensation for loss of earnings.
This is a particularly important victory as it is in the high voltage sector, a key sector in moving away from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
Here’s a video clip of Greig McArthur talking about the importance of the high voltage sector to the transition to a sustainable economy
Now Greig’s branch are organising a combine to not only push for recognition and proper wages and conditions across all renewable energy sectors, but to fight for proper wages and conditions in every single electrical and mechanical sector. They are also calling on the Scottish Government to put some teeth into their “Fair Work Convention” which calls for much better employment conditions, and to put guarantees of stable, well paid direct employment into their at present very weak Just Transition policy.
In addition they calling for UNITE Scotland to step up and start organising properly with the rank and file, something which has been sadly lacking. So the rank and file also visited another site to protest the excessive use of agency staff, and to start a campaign for an above inflation pay rise which should have been started by the union months ago. This is the start of a major campaign by the branch – and the next step is to elect officers to the new combine at a meeting on Saturday January 28th, which will also be a chance to come together to share ideas about winning on all the issues mentioned above. If you’re a construction worker in Scotland and you’re not already a member of the branch, this is the time to join (details at the end of the video) – and build a powerful combine to win.
Here are a couple of the videos from the Global Climate Jobs conference that took place at the weekend. All of the plenary sessions are available on the network’s YouTube channel.
We know that the points of convergence between the labor and the climate movements are immense, but that several challenges lie ahead of us. It is nevertheless of extreme importance and urgency to cut emissions and do so by drawing on plans that are created by the workers and communities and in regard to their interests and needs.
Often, we do know what work needs to be carried out in order to cut emissions, but workers are being left out of the discussion and climate science is being disregarded. We need to build a movement that not only is capable of setting its own program, but that has the power to implement it.
As so, we are bringing together people from all around the world, and bringing together the labor and climate movements to discuss how we win a program that can allow us to stop climate collapse. Join us for two days of thematic sessions about the strategies, technical and social perspectives, and challenges we face in building Climate Jobs Campaigns.
Invited speakers:
Negrai Adve;
Max Ajl;
Chris Baugh;
Jeremy Brecher;
Leonor Canadas;
Claire Cohen;
Rehad Desai;
Patricia De Marco;
Suzanne Jeffries;
Paul Le Blanc;
Josua Mata;
Suda Sim Meriç;
Jonathan Neale;
Andreas Yetterstad
Schedule
All the sessions will be recorded and available online. Sessions will be 1 hour and 30 minutes and will be composed of a introduction by the invited speakers and a workshop space between the participants.
Saturday, September 17
12:00 GMT [5 pm ET] – General Session: Strategic Orientation
14:00 GMT [7 pm ET] – Special Sessions
1) Building Climate Jobs Movements
2) Food and Farming
16.00 GMT [11 pm ET] – Special Sessions
1) Ecofeminism
2) Racism and Refugees
Sunday, September 18
12.00 GMT [5 pm ET] – General Session: Workers in the Fossil Fuel industry
14.00 GMT [7 pm ET] – Special Sessions
1) Cutting Emissions
2) Resilience
16.00 GMT [11 pm ET] – General Session: Summing Up
The Global Climate Jobs Network is organising an online international conference Friday June 3 to Sunday June 5, 2022. This will be online to make it easy for activists and organisations to participate from all over the world.
Themes
The theme is Climate Jobs, Climate Crisis and Green New Deals. But we are open to sessions on related topics linked to community, union and other climate justice struggles. If you are not sure if your topic would fit, send it anyway and we can chat it over.
Who
Our Global Climate Jobs Network will be coordinating the conference. But we want organisations to propose and present your own sessions.
We are looking for sessions from different organisations, from national unions to local branches, from international networks to national campaigns. From environmental and climate justice community campaigns to local Fridays for the Future groups, student unions, social movements, feminist and LGBT groups, faith groups, farmers and fisherfolk organisations and Green New Deal campaigns and from groups of scientists and engineers.
We especially want to provide a platform for those fighting for climate justice now and we particularly want to hear about the struggles of the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
How
You can run a session based on your own organisation or you can put forward speakers and we will link them up with speakers from other organisations on similar themes or from the same country.
We also want to encourage artistic sessions using, music, film, and anything that tells your story and makes the event more like an online festival of resistance, ideas and solidarity.
You can propose sessions in any language, and you can propose two sessions in different languages.
We will timetable all the sessions and try to arrange them so you can follow different themes.
Sessions will last 75 minutes. We suggest no more than three speakers, and at least half of the time is taken up by contributions from the audience and in breakout groups. If you have three speakers, please have at least one be a woman. If you cannot find an appropriate woman speaker, please write to us and we will try to put you in touch with someone.
What’s Next
To propose a session or a speaker, to ask a question or talk to someone on the organising committee, please write to: Climatejobs2022@aol.com
Sponsoring Groups (list in formation):
Global Climate Jobs Network
Climaximo (Portugal)
ScotE3 (Employment, Energy and Environment – trade union and environmental activists in Scotland)
Review of African Political Economy
AIDC (Alternative Information and Development Centre – South Africa)
Million Climate Jobs Campaign (South Africa)
Pittsburgh Green New Deal (USA)
SENTRO (Sentro ng mga Nagkakaisa at Progresibong Manggagawa – labour federation in Philippines)
Friends of the Earth Scotland and Platform are launching a campaign for an Offshore Training Passport.
Here’s their rationale for the campaign:
What’s the issue?
Offshore oil and gas workers regularly pay thousands of pounds from their own pocket for their training and safety qualifications. Despite huge overlap, workers need to go through separate training for the oil and gas industry and the wind industry.
A Just Transition must include creating clear pathways for workers in high-carbon industries to bring their skills and experience into renewables.
The duplication of training is a major barrier to workers being able to bring their skills and experience from fossil fuels into renewable energy.
How can we fix it?
An Offshore Training Passport scheme would standardise training accreditation across the offshore oil and gas and offshore renewables industries where possible, reducing costs for workers by reducing the need for duplication of certificates and allowing workers to shift more easily between oil and gas and renewables.
A Just Transition must be shaped by the workers and communities who will be affected as we move from fossil fuels to renewables – the offshore workforce wants training barriers removed.
When surveyed, 94% of offshore workers supported an Offshore Training Passport
To find out how to support the campaign download the campaign toolkit which includes sample letters that can be sent to MSPs and MPs and material for social media.
A new pamphlet, and accompanying technical resources, from the Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group is indispensable reading for every trade unionist and climate activist.
It’s now 13 years since the One Million Climate Jobs pamphlet was published. The pamphlet’s proposition is a simple one – solving the climate crisis requires a rapid transition to a zero-carbon economy – transition involves ending economic activity in areas that create greenhouse gas emissions and hugely expanding the number of new jobs that are essential to a decarbonised economy – these jobs are what the pamphlet describes as ‘climate jobs’.
A focus on climate jobs is practical and political. It’s practical because an energy transition is simply impossible unless the jobs are created. So, the extent to which jobs are being created is a measure of progress. If there’s no evidence of jobs, then all the rhetoric about a climate emergency from politicians is just hot air and greenwashing. Scotland is a good example of this – we’re told that the Scottish Government has world leading policies – but there is no evidence of a growth in climate jobs, or of the planning and infrastructure required to support growth in climate of numbers. And while there is no evidence, it’s very hard to convince working class people that plans for dealing with the climate crisis will not have the same impact as past transitions. Many parts of Scotland are still deeply scarred by the transition from coal in the 1980s. So, to build the kind of powerful mass movement we need to drive an effective and socially just transition a sharp focus on climate jobs and the positive effects that transition would have on employment and quality of life is essential. It’s important to stress, however, that a socially just transition – system change in short – should also mean a re-evaluation of employment across the board. Social justice requires climate jobs, but it also requires that there are more jobs in health, care and education and these jobs that support social reproduction are valued much more highly.
Since the publication of ‘One Million Climate Jobs’ other studies have taken a similar approach to analysing what needs to be done to reach Zero Carbon. It’s striking that although methodologies have varied estimates of the number of climate jobs required for the UK and for regions of the UK are remarkably similar. The Green European Foundation’s regional focus is very helpful at understanding more localised impact. It provides data that enables estimates of the numbers of jobs in different sectors in Scotland to be made. Sea Changedemonstrates that phasing out North Sea oil could result in significantly more skilled jobs in renewables.
Nevertheless, ‘Climate Jobs – Building a Workforce for the Climate Emergency’ is a hugely valuable addition to the evidence base for organising and campaigning. It looks though a UK wide lens – and of course there will be regional variations – but the data and analysis on Energy Production, Housing, Transport and Decarbonising industrial processes provides a clear and accessible guide to what can be done using existing technology. The pamphlet also demolished the most common ‘false solutions’ (or greenwashing) that characterise so much of current government and industry priorities.
This pamphlet deserves to be used and shared widely. We will have copies on ScotE3 stalls, and you can order hard copies, download a PDF and access the back-up technical resources from the CACC TU website.
Employment, Energy and Environment 