Big step forward at TUC – Port Talbot and Grangemouth show how urgently needed this is

Photo: sarah d flickr.com/photos/tigerweet/

By Paul Atkin

Passing composite 18 (see below) recognising that we need a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown at this week’s TUC Congress was a big step forward for the trade union and climate movements. This motion was passed with no votes against, with the GMB and Prospect abstaining and support with reservations from UNITE and the General Council.

Composite 5 (also see below) which conflicts with this in its continued support for gas as part of the mixed energy mix and stance against the ban on new oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, by contrast, had been passed two days earlier with a scant majority on a card vote – 2,712,00 in favour, 2,457,000 against, even though it was supported by the General Council.

This shows that the whole movement is united for a just transition, but split down the middle on delaying the phase out of fossil fuels. The unions supporting this position will continue to campaign for it, but they can’t claim that the movement is wholeheartedly behind them – because it isn’t. 

Nevertheless, the reporting of this debate by the BBC and others has downplayed the implications of composite 18 as if it never happened, and instead played up voices that argue that the job losses at Port Talbot and Grangemouth this week have been down to a failure of just transition policy, not a failure to have one.

This suits a narrative that always poses our movement as reactive and defensive, trying to prolong outmoded fossil production as long as possible and reduced to settling for slightly improved redundancy terms when they go bust; as they will. Composite 18 takes us beyond that. 

The approach of composite 18 is for us to take this shift away from fossil fuels – required to be down by 25% by 2030 – head on, get ahead of it and force ourselves into the transition process as part of the solution; not leave it to the private sector or the government to come up with the plans. Because, after all, who would expect a just transition from Tata Steel or Ineos?

In the case of Grangemouth, Ineos is shutting the refinery because it’s not profitable. Full stop. It can’t compete with more modern and efficient “sites in Asia, Africa and the Middle East” (BBC). In the medium term that means importing refined products instead of crude and the workers in the refinery lose their jobs within a year. 

In the longer term, it projects no prospect of increased demand for its products because fossil fuels are on their way out. The company’s CEO was quoted by the BBC saying: “Demand for key fuels we produce at Grangemouth has already started to decline and, with a ban on new petrol and diesel cars due to come into force within the next decade, we foresee that the market for those fuels will shrink further.”  This has wider implications that the entire fossil fuel sector is standing on ice as thin as that in the Arctic now. As it shrinks, the oldest, least robust, least profitable sectors will go to the wall first. When colleagues argue that “we will need fossil fuels for many years to come” they are not wrong, but are trying to avoid having to confront the fact that we need to reduce that reliance as quickly as we possibly can to limit the damage caused by climate breakdown. Trying to prolong their role indefinitely has no future… if we want one.

It is the job of the government to anticipate this decline, and do so in detail, because private capital doesn’t. It will squeeze whatever it can out of a resource, and workforce, leverage in as much state subsidy as it can on whatever pretext it can find, then drop it all like a hot brick as soon as the losses start. Planning beyond this is off their agenda. “Unmanaged industrial transitions” are seen by them as simply how the system works; the natural way of things as far as they are concerned. It’s the functioning of the market that creates the cliff edges.

Planning for a just transition is necessarily a break with past practice and assumptions.

It is this that makes the demand for public ownership of key sectors such as energy, water, transport, mail, broadband, education, health, and social care and for  a national climate service to plan, coordinate and fund education and training for the workforce and a wide scale transformation to a decarbonised economy key campaigns to supplant private sector chaos with public sector planning.

The Scottish Just Transition Commission Report on Grangemouth from July this year stated “By the end of Q3 2024, we expect to see a draft plan to be agreed through social dialogue with workers and meaningful participation of the community and other stakeholders.”  The end of Q3 is basically now. The company’s closure announcement shows how much they care about that.

That is where the government needs to be acting. The previous government was content to let the market rip and preside over a chaotic transition; or no transition at all if that were to be more profitable. The new government claims a different approach, but the extent to which it is prepared to do anything more than nudge the private sector will be affected by what demands we put from the unions and the intensity for which we campaign for them in communities and across the country.

The SJUC Report is quite clear about where these risks are in the rest of the carbon heavy sector in Scotland arguing for “a series of rapidly developed just transition plans for Scotland’s highest emitting sites

• The Scottish Government should set out clear fair work and community involvement provisions for the closure of high carbon assets (clearly foreseeable given long term trends) and scale up of clean energy. 
• A sign of the just transition is anticipating the inevitable phase out of fossil fuels in ways that involve workers and communities so that closure and greening is shaped in a socially positive way (our emphasis). 
• The Scottish Government should now ensure that those with responsibility for each of the top 20 industrial emission sites in Scotland, including operations at Peterhead, Mossmorran, Dunbar, St Fergus, Markinch, Lockerbie, Shetland, Irvine, Alloa, Dalkeith, Stirling and Girvan, are required to consult, negotiate and publish a just transition plan to show how the social dimension of transition will be managed.
• This process should begin as a matter of urgency (our emphasis). We would underline the recommendation made by the first Just Transition Commission in its March 2021 report regarding planning for industrial emitters (our bullet points).

Current Government plans – agreed between Westminster and Holyrood – for Grangemouth are to invest in CCUS, Green Hydrogen and “Sustainable Aviation Fuel” on the site. Whatever the arguments about the limitations of each of these, the immediate problem is that these, and related, plans are at an early stage and the company’s decision to cut and run means that the redundancies will be happening before there are viable replacements on site. This underlines the urgency of the SJTC proposal to anticipate this happening elsewhere be taken on and implemented by government and for the trade union movement to campaign for that.

Composite 18 recognises that the problems are real and we have to build capacity to cope with them. This is a very solid agenda for the eight TUC just transition workers to get their teeth into, but also for all of us at every level in our unions.

At least Scotland has a just transition commission with trade union involvement. The problem is the extent to which the Scottish government takes it on board. The TUC is now committed to JT commissions in the rest of the country and to campaign for a national climate service to pull all this together from the demand in the motion for statutory just transition commissions for each nation to advise and direct on transition plans that will protect workers.

The extent to which the government can be pressured to do the right thing is immensely helped if there is an authoritative body laying out what that looks like. But if there is a failure to act on this at national level, or even if there isn’t, we have to campaign all the harder for just transition bodies at whatever level we can get them, workplace, combine, local authority. The demand in the motion for  negotiated transition plans that guarantee protection for all workers in all sectors of the economy including equality strands to cover jobs, wages, pensions, training and skills, and trade union rights also includes the negotiating agenda we will have to deploy in all unions in all sectors. The policy for unions to co-operate in negotiating industrial strategies for decarbonisation, including the building of combines within and across sectors, at the level of branches as well as nationally and globally, and engagement with community groups is the seed of such bodies.

The policy for a year of green trade union activity including engagement with community and climate justice groups is about all our unions building up capacity through actions and education to put organising for a just transition at the core of our union learning, make it run through our bargaining like the letters in a stick of rock, make it a dynamic part of community engagement and recruitment through regular dynamic actions building up through the year. Planning for that should start now. 

This can only grow in the building of it.

See below for the texts of the composites. We invite further contributions on this debate and the way forward.

Composite 18, Climate Change moved by UNISON seconded by PCS

Congress acknowledges that the climate emergency will affect all jobs and all workers adversely. This is a key trade union issue for us all.

The working class, locally and globally, are already being impacted by the consequences of climate change with it affecting the supply and cost of food, water and energy, harming people’s health and putting unacceptable additional strain on public services.

Conference notes that:

i. the international Energy Agency (IEA) states that to stay below the Paris Climate Agreement of 1.5˚C, we must reduce fossil fuel use by 25 per cent this decade

ii. the working class in the UK and globally are already being impacted by the consequences of climate change

iii.  we need a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown

iv. failing to take urgent measures puts jobs at risk from sudden climate events and their economic consequences

Congress calls on the General Council to campaign for:

a. negotiated transition plans that guarantee protection for all workers in all sectors of the economy including equality strands to cover jobs, wages, pensions, training and skills, and trade union rights

b. statutory just transition commissions for each nation to advise and direct on transition plans that will protect workers

c. public ownership of key sectors such as energy, water, transport, mail, broadband, education, health, and social care

d. a national climate service to plan, coordinate and fund education and training for the workforce and a wide scale transformation to a decarbonised economy

e. unions to co-operate in negotiating industrial strategies for decarbonisation, including the building of combines within and across sectors, at the level of branches as well as nationally and globally, and engagement with community groups

f. mandatory environmental impact assessments on all proposals and decisions

g. a year of green trade union activity including engagement with community and climate justice groups

 Composite 5 Industrial strategy, national security and a workers transition Moved by  Unite Seconded by GMB

Congress notes Labour’s commitment to create 650,000 green jobs by 2030.

Congress believes that serious state investment and industrial planning on a scale not seen in decades, will be required to deliver on that objective.

Congress believes that the new Labour government can end over a decade of delay and incoherence over our national industrial strategy.

As trade unions we have a unique insight into how codependent and mutually beneficial our industries are to economic growth and national security.

The steel, gas, chemicals, water and wider manufacturing industries have made the UK prosperous and stable; their decline threatens our national security. As one collapses, another becomes vulnerable.

The Tories dogmatic neoliberal approach has meant that rather than an industrial strategy we have exported jobs, offshored profits, and collapsed UK industry. The new government has the chance to put workers and communities at the heart of a new industrial strategy.

Labour is determined that they will create new high-quality jobs, working with business and trade unions, as they manage the transition. They have promised to rebuild supply chains at home and to export the technologies of the future.

Labour’s National Wealth Fund will directly invest in ports, hydrogen and industrial clusters in every corner of the country, and to secure the future of Britain’s automotive and steel industries.

They will reward clean energy developers with a British Jobs Bonus, allocating up to £500m per year from 2026, to incentivise firms who offer good jobs, terms and conditions and build their manufacturing supply chains in our industrial heartlands, coastal areas, and energy communities.

Congress agrees that climate change poses a systemic risk to working class communities, but at a time of rising geopolitical tension does not believe that we can abandon fossil fuels until we know how the jobs and communities from the North Sea fields will be protected.

Congress notes with dismay that the new government has adopted a target to stop drilling in the North Sea before any plan for jobs has been agreed.

Decarbonisation must be led by the workers, industries and communities involved.

Congress notes that:

i. national security is dependent on an economy with industry at its heart that works for all.

ii. gas remains vital to powering UK manufacturing, from food and beverages to steel, as well as 22 million home boilers

iii. over 30,000 offshore North Sea oil and gas jobs, plus seven to eight times that number in the supply chain, are under threat

iv. creating 35,000 new green energy jobs in Scotland by 2030 requires additional funding of £1.1bn per year, a fraction of the oil profits made in recent years

v. over 90 per cent of goods arrive and depart the UK by sea, making resilient supply chains dependent on a strong UK Merchant Navy to safeguard the supply of food, fuel, and other vital goods

Congress agrees to do everything in its power to prevent oil and gas workers becoming the miners of net zero. We will not let them suffer the equivalent of the coal closures, which broke the back of mining towns across the UK.

Congress commits to working with the UK government to ensure:

a. an industrial strategy policy that maximises our domestic energy strengths for national security, with all assets and options part of the solution: nuclear, renewables and oil and gas production

b. procurement policy which prioritises domestic supply chains, unionised jobs and workers’ voices

c. that any company that receives government funding or bonus’s (taxpayers’ money) to incentivise companies to offer good jobs, must have a union recognition agreement that supports collective bargaining, with an independent trade union

d. public ownership of energy companies to end profiteering, reduce household bills and strengthen national security

e. backing the build of Sizewell C and supporting small modular reactors

f. an industrial strategy that supports the growth of our domestic maritime industryorth Sea workers is agreed.

g. no ban on new licences for drilling, before a fully funded workers’ plan guaranteeing

commensurate jobs for all North Sea workers is agreed.