TUC Climate debates – addendum
We have just published on the GJA website a blog by our editor Paul Atkin that identifies the choices facing the trade union movement as regards Just Transition, and how these choices manifested themselves in the Composite motions passed at TUC Conference 2024 (C5 and C18).
This blog will not repeat those arguments but presents clips from the debates at TUC to illustrate some of the points made. The TUC’s YouTube videos are each over three hours long, so this will enable you to more easily see the key highlights from a climate perspective.
First, this compilation of extracts from the C5 debate held on Monday 9th September:
This starts with the mover of the motion, representing UNITE, followed by contributions from UNISON, UCU and NEU. What is striking about the moving speech is how closely it adheres to the narrative promoted by GJA, CACCTU and the unions behind Motion C18 – UNISON, PCS, UCU. The exact same language is adopted – workers transition, guaranteed jobs, TU rights and protections etc. The ‘industrial strategy’ called for is, on the face of it, the same one we are all calling for.
So, what is the difference that motivated the opposition to this motion, and which underpins Motion C18? Well, first the mover refers to ‘accelerated transitions with little substance’, something which literally no one is calling for, and then to ‘Green jobs that never materialise’ – correct, that’s exactly what we’re all demanding. Yet these two points are then ‘contrasted’ with UNITE’s (and implicitly GMB’s) call for a ‘proper’ industrial strategy that has workers at its heart. So not really a contrast, then.
If those two criticisms are false flags, then again we can ask where the difference lies. We can see it in two words – ‘accelerated’ and ‘homegrown’.
In this context, ‘accelerated’ is a euphemism for the idea that climate campaigners just want fossil fuels to end tomorrow and don’t care about the consequences for workers. This in turn prompts a bizarre cheerleading every time the claim that ‘we will need fossil fuels for decades’ is made, as if that were a good thing.
No one in the climate movement thinks that fossil fuels will not continue to be needed over the course of the transition, albeit on a progressively declining scale as they give way to renewables. But from a trade union perspective, it is the plan that ensures all workers have a job that is important, NOT the time frame. If a transition plan is agreed that protects workers in all dimensions, including a jobs guarantee, and deals with the climate crisis on a whole economy basis, then five years or twenty five makes no difference. And given the scale of the climate crisis, once you have those protections, five years is infinitely preferable to twenty five.
The proposition that only the big two industrial unions recognise that we need fossil fuels beyond the end of next week is a falsehood that is driving an unnecessary wedge into the trade union movement. We need to overcome that as a matter of urgency. We assume the bit about burying our heads in the sand was irony.
On the second point about ‘homegrown’ energy, the clips from Sean Vernell (UCU) and Jenny Cooper (NEU) in this second segment speak more eloquently than we can about the need for an internationalist solution, bringing together workers globally to overcome environmental and economic injustice, and not allowing ourselves to go down the ‘Little Britain’ rabbit hole.
Finally, motion C18 is the progressive climate motion proposed by UNISON, seconded by PCS, and with a supportive contribution from UCU.
All can be viewed in full here.
Our one regret with C18 is that the compositing process resulted, not too surprisingly, in removing the headline statement ‘Conference agrees that climate change is a class issue and a trade union issue’. This had been placed upfront to bring the whole trade union movement together around a basic and inarguable principle, but the matter was side stepped somewhat by watering it down to climate being ‘a key trade union issue for us all’, a far less impactful statement.
While there was no opposition, there were two abstentions and some reservations expressed. In truth, these contained little of substance, but you can find those contributions if interested at around the 2hr 50min mark in the TUC YouTube video of the session for Wednesday 11th September (a.m.).