Welcome progress on climate change was made at this year's TUC Congress. The latest Greener Jobs Alliance Newsletter for October 2017 LINK contains the following reports.
CACC speakers: Chris Baugh, Sarah Woolley, Suzanne Jeffrey, Diana
Holland
Unions
want power sector back!
This
year’s TUC Congress in Brighton unanimously agreed new, far reaching policies
demanding the democratic control of energy and a modern low carbon industrial
strategy. An ambitious motion from the Bakers’ Union brings the trade union
movement much closer to the vision set out in Labour’s election manifesto. It
also brought a dozen delegates to the rostrum, urging the TUC to campaign for
the UK’s rigged energy system to return to democratic control, and to work with
unions on a cross-sector industrial strategy to tackle ‘the irrefutable
evidence that dangerous climate change is driving unprecedented changes to our
environment’
Addressing TUC Congress: Sarah Woolley, Bakers, Food and Allied Workers
Union
The TUC
motion LINK
proposed in a speech by Sarah Woolley from the Bakers,
Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU – see picture), has five key demands for
the TUC to:
•
Campaign to bring the UK’s rigged
energy system under democratic control.
•
Back a mass programme of homes
insulation
•
Demand rights for workplace
environmental reps
•
Demand that Just Transition in
integral to industrial strategy
•
Consult with unions on a
cross-sector industrial strategy focused on our internationally agreed carbon
emission reduction targets.
Sarah Woolley argued that the breakdown of the
planet’s climate is a core issue for her union, with its global impacts on food
production and distribution. Agriculture and food manufacture, processing and
transport accounted for a tenth of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Meanwhile, hurricanes were devastating the Caribbean, while floods in India had
caused massive damage to its infrastructure. And the UK’s rigged energy market
would not deliver secure, low carbon and affordable energy for all. ‘We need an
industrial strategy to confront the realities of climate change. All sectors
need their just transition strategies,’ Sarah argued.
See
the full text of the TUC motion on page 7
Best
ever green fringe at TUC?
At one
of the best attended green fringe meetings at this year’s TUC, Suzanne Jeffrey,
chair of the Campaign Against Climate Change, announced that her organisation
was planning a national conference on Climate and Jobs - another world is
possible on 10 March 2018 (note date in your diary!). She said the new TUC
commitments provided an opportunity for progressive new policies for the labour
movement.
The
Campaign Against Climate Change meeting was backed by the Greener Jobs
Alliance. Here’s how union leaders spoke of the need to tackle climate change:
•
Sarah Woolley, BFAWU regional
secretary: ‘We need to know much more about the impacts of climate change and
explain it to our members. We need to be at the forefront, getting our members
trained as environmental reps in the workplace.’ Tackling fuel poverty and
bringing energy back into our ownership were two key priorities.
•
Diana Holland, Unite’s Assistant
General Secretary: ‘Jobs and a safe climate...We have to deal with both...we
have to make those words Just Transition really mean something for union
members.’ We cannot protect transport workers’ jobs without acknowledging the
impacts of transport on the environment. For example, Unite is tackling diesel
emissions as a workplace health and safety issue through its Diesel Emissions
Exposure register LINK ‘Because we work in so-called environmentally damaging industries,
doesn’t mean we aren’t in the game,’ she
said. The union is taking various steps to raise awareness among union members
and engaging them in consultations with employers.
•
Chris Baugh, Assistant General
Secretary PCS:
‘We have come a long way in the past year, by focussing on the
core issues of just transition and energy democracy.’ In PCS, in Lancashire,
PCS members are challenging claims that fracking will create a jobs bonanza,
when there are abundant opportunities in other sectors. And at Heathrow, a PCS
study on jobs in aviation LINK has helped inform the debate on the real economic benefits of expanding
aviation capacity.
•
Graham Petersen said the online
environmental education courses provided by the Greener Jobs Alliance,
including a new unit on air quality, was filling a gap in mainstream trade union
education programmes.
•
Sean Sweeney from Trade Unions for
Energy Democracy said that there’s a growing community of unions pushing for
public ownership and control of energy as a means of controlling climate
breakdown LINK
