United Kingdom (UK)

By staff - IndustriALL, June 16, 2022

On 7 June, the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), LO Norway and IndustriALL held a second workshop on wind technology as part of the Just Transition and the energy sector initiative. The initiative provides a platform for unions around the world to exchange information on energy transition technologies and the jobs, skills, markets, investments, and emissions related to them.

Workers want good jobs and just transition in the energy sector. This workshop looked at offshore and onshore wind technology, which employers and government see as a potential pathway for oil and gas companies to diversify their assets and bring down emissions. The information is not always easy to get but unions want to see how many jobs there are, when they will come, what kind of jobs they will be, what kinds of skills workers will need for these jobs, and the transition that workers will be faced with.

To get a better view of what the future holds, participants looked at the value chains of oil and gas, and onshore and offshore wind, breaking both value chains down to production, processing, distribution, and end-use (upstream, midstream, downstream).

By Anna Markova - Trades Union Caucus, June 10, 2022

As Egypt prepares to take over the COP27 presidency and countries gather for the Bonn Climate Conference, trade unions are calling for Egypt to end its repression of workers, trade unions and activists.

How is a just transition or safe climate future to be agreed in Sharm El-Sheikh in November while the Egyptian government imprisons thousands of trade unionists, journalists and civil society organisers? 

The TUC is calling on the UK government and specifically the outgoing COP26 President Alok Sharma to use his influence to seek assurances for the freedom and safety of Egyptian trade unionists and human rights activists prior to COP27. This should involve immediate action to secure the release of British-Egyptian writer Alaa Abd el-Fattah, currently on hunger strike. 

Egypt has regularly ranked in the lowest categories of the ITUC’s Global Rights Index when it comes to trade union rights and freedoms. In the ITUC’s 2021 Global Rights Index Egypt was listed in the worst ten countries for workers.

By various - London Green Left Blog and Red Green Labor, June 10, 2022

This is the text of Ecosocialist Alliance leaflet which will be circulated on the TUC demo on Saturday18 June, 11am start, Portland Place, London, W1. Come along and support us if you can, look out for the banner pictured above. Ecosocialism not Extinction!

The media is full of headlines about crises: cost of living, energy prices, health and social care, pandemics - and, less frequently, climate collapse. Mainstream politicians see these as separate crises, while ecosocialists recognise these are interrelated crises of the capitalist system itself.

Insulate Britain activists have been jailed for trying to get the Westminster government to begin a massive programme to insulate homes and Just Stop Oil activists also face jail for their protests outside the Kingsbury oil depot.

Simple measures like insulation and renewable energy would take millions of people out of fuel poverty and would greatly reduce the numbers dying each year because they cannot afford to heat their homes. Britain has the worst record in Europe for this: in 2020, fuel poverty charities estimated such deaths as around 10,000 a year.

Government funded insulation programmes, combined with putting taxpayers' money into renewable energy, would greatly reduce our carbon emissions as well as create thousands of good green jobs.. In addition, our reliance on the profiteering and polluting fossilfuel giants – posting record profits, while continuing to drive the climate and ecological crises – would be massively reduced.

The Tories' record is appalling with millions of working families living below the poverty line. The hike in energy prices will see well over 25% of UK households – 15m people – in fuel poverty. Johnson and Sunak’s subsidies and rebates barely touch the sides.

The British government gives the fossil fuel industry £10 billion a year in tax breaks and subsidies.

The Tories finally bowed to pressure for a windfall tax on dirty fuel producers but we would go much further. All subsidies to oil and gas companies must end now and be switched to renewables. We must take energy companies and road and rail infrastructure into public ownership and rapidly de-carbonise the whole economy. We stand for a rapid ecosocialist transition led by, and in the interests of, working people.

Ecosocialist Alliance is a network of organisations and individuals. We campaign for ecosocialist and ecofeminist solutions to the multiple crises of the system. We are internationalist: the climate crisis will not be solved by any one country, but by collective global action.

We stand firmly with the global south in seeking ecological and social justice.

We reject green capitalist “solutions”, which are unworkable under a capitalist system of infinite growth and accumulation. The planet will only be saved by disposing of this system and replacing it with ecosocialism.

By Samantha O’Brien - Rupture, June 9, 2022

“It’s not fair, living this shitty life, the workers said in meetings, in groups at the gates. All the stuff, all the wealth that we make is ours. Enough. We can’t stand it any more, we can’t just be stuff too, goods to be sold. Vogliamo tutto - We want everything”

- Nanni Balestrin

Labour Power

The four-day work week has captivated media headlines internationally, with different countries piloting programmes in the Global North. Seventeen companies have signed up to commit to a pilot programme in Ireland. Thirty companies in the UK are taking part in a new pilot. Workers will maintain one-hundred per cent productivity for eighty per cent of their time.[1] Belgium has given workers the right to request a four-day work week with no loss of pay, effectively condensing their five day work week into four days. This has rightfully attracted criticism, as working time has not reduced, but workers get to maximise their stress levels by working nine and a half hours per day.[2] The central theme of many global campaigns is that the implementation will look different in varying sectors, rosters and working arrangements. The campaign’s main aim is for a shorter working week with no loss of pay and challenging the dominant narrative that long hours equate with greater productivity.[3]

The key demand of socialists has long been a shorter working week with no loss of pay. Karl Marx in Capital describes how the hours that make up the working day mean different things to employees and employers. Workers put in their time to afford the basic necessities in life. Employers buy labour-power, and the value is determined by working time. Any labour-power beyond what is required to produce the necessities of life is surplus-value that employers get for free. It is not necessary for us to work long hours to produce what is needed, but instead employers maximise their profits by taking our surplus value. Marx notes that “the history of capitalist production, the determination of what is a working-day, presents itself as the result of a struggle, a struggle between collective capital, i.e., the class of capitalists, and collective labour, i.e., working-class.”[4]

There are many examples of struggles over shorter working hours throughout history. The eight-hour working day in the Global North was not granted because of benevolent employers or lobbying politicians, but fought for and won through struggle. In 1856, Australian Stonemasons who were working harsh ten hours days walked off their job and eventually won an eight-hour day.[5] The same story was echoed in struggles internationally, with workers taking a collective stand for their pay and conditions. Eleanor Marx, who was a founder of the GMB Union in 1889, fought and won an eight hour workday for gas workers. On May Day in 1890, she also played a crucial role in organising the Hyde Park protest in London. This protest gathered hundreds of thousands of people with the key demand of an eight-hour workday.[6]

By Simon Pirani - People and Nature, May 16, 2022

Two clouds darken the sky. A close-up one: gas and electricity bills have shot up since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and millions of families are struggling to pay. And a bigger, darker, higher one: the climate disaster, and politicians’ refusal to tackle it.

Ultimately, both these threats have a single cause: fossil fuels and the systems of wealth and power that depend on them. We need social movements to link the fight to protect families from unaffordable bills with the fight to move beyond fossil fuels, and in that way turn back global warming.

Here I suggest ways to develop such a movement in the UK, starting by demanding action on home heating.

By staff - Just Transition Partnership, April 22, 2022

The dramatic rise in the prices of oil and gas, compounded by the reductions in supplies as a result of the war in Ukraine, have demonstrated the failings of our broken energy system. The social and environmental damage it causes have underlined the case for a just transition to renewable sources of energy, giving people power over the energy system. This must be planned to create good and secure new jobs and to protect the living standards of the poorest, the wellbeing of all and the health of the planet.

Consequences of fuel price rises for citizens and corporations

Wholesale gas prices quadrupled in the last year, according to Ofgem’s statement¹ made on 3 February when it announced that the energy price cap (the maximum prices which energy retailers can charge) would rise by 54%. Further rises are anticipated in September.

On the same day , Shell announced profits of $19.3bn for 2021. In the last few months profits made by oil corporations have soared. “The largest oil and gas companies made a combined $174bn in profits in the first nine months of the year” reported the Guardian².

National Energy Action said that in the UK the number of households in fuel poverty is expected to go up from four million in October 2021, to 6.5 million after April’s price rise³. That would go up again to 8.5 million in October this year, if the typical bill increases to £3,000.

As Unite general secretary Sharon Graham said on 3 February:“The energy price cap rise will turn the cost-of-living crisis into a catastrophe for millions of people. This will plunge at least one in four families in Britain into fuel poverty”.⁴ With rates of inflation higher than wage increases and benefit upgrade, living standards are under threat.

The consequences for employment of rising prices and falling incomes have been predicted to be negative across the economy as a whole. In the energy sector there may be some stronger recruitment where production can be increased in the short-term in response to higher wholesale prices but in a volatile market the longer-term consequences are probably going to be determined mainly by the direction of government policies on both energy efficiency and fossil fuel licensing , with the prospect of largest employment rises in energy efficiency.

By collective - Earth Strike UK, April 10, 2022

Recently, P&O Ferries laid off 800 members of staff without a moment’s notice over a video call. While this has been widely condemned as both immoral and illegal, P&O have continued to refuse to reinstate the sacked workers. This is the latest in a string of brutal mass sackings and fire and rehire schemes, which will become increasingly common unless organised labour are able to resist it here and now.

For a company that saw its revenue reach more than $10 billion in 2021, there is no reason why 800 members of staff should be cast aside only to be replaced by contract workers who will be paid next to nothing. Capitalists don’t see ferries as an essential public service but as a means to accumulate profit. They don’t see workers as people who deserve dignity, respect and the means to live a good life, but as parts in a profit making machine. It is this same philosophy that is driving the destruction of the environment. Companies like DP World (P&O’s parent company) are among the richest in the world, incorporating ever-larger supply chains and workforces, while at the same time causing more and more damage to the environment (while shareholders receive greater and greater profits).

The way forward is for workers to utilise our power through collective action. Corporations will try relentlessly to divide us, to undermine our unions, to cut our pay and worsen our working conditions, all in the pursuit of power and profit. But workers are the ones with real power. We keep the wheels of industry turning and we can pull the brakes. This is especially the case for seafarers and dockworkers who can shut down world trade, hitting the capitalists where it really hurts.

We have already seen powerful acts of solidarity in support of the P&O seafarers: dockworkers in the UK and the Netherlands refusing to handle P&O ships stopping them from sailing, agency workers refusing to replace their fellow workers, and thousands of supporters protesting at the ports and corporate offices. We have also seen brave acts of defiance from the seafarers themselves – who initially refused to leave their ships when instructed by handcuff equipped security. Some were forcefully removed.

Earth Strike UK extends our solidarity to the P&O workers. We support the P&O boycott and call on all workers to continue to support the struggle however they can. Join the pickets, join the protests, join the boycott. Justice for the P&O seafarers!

By staff - Extinction Rebellion, April 8, 2022

Extinction Rebellion UK stands in solidarity with the 100 or more workers at Fawley Oil Refinery who will be taking strike action on 8th April. The strike is in response to the offer of a “pathetic” 2.5 per cent pay offer and a lack of company sick pay, despite Exxon’s profits in 2021 topping an eye-watering £6.75 billion.

Exxon’s business model is not built to benefit the workers who without which, they wouldn’t be able to make record profits. XR UK recognises that Exxon’s business practices not only destroy the planet but oppress and marginalize the workers that enable their activities. They choose to underpay workers and maintain the fossil fuel economy, rather than seeking to facilitate a just transition, which our own Office for Budget Responsibility says is affordable and would create thousands of jobs and save billions of pounds for the UK public.

Solidarity with workers at Fawley Oil Refinery on strike today.@exxonmobil destroy our planet, oppress their workers & prevent a #JustTransition

Today @xr_TradeUnions will visit the picket line to show our support #ClimateJustice = #SocialJustice
https://t.co/EuRhBX0Vgv

— Extinction Rebellion UK (@XRebellionUK) April 8, 2022