United Kingdom (UK)

By Joel Jager, et. al. - World Resources Institute, International Trade Union Confederation, and The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, October 2021

As part of their COVID-19 recovery efforts, many governments continue to fund unsustainable infrastructure, even though this ignores the urgency of addressing climate change and will not secure longterm stability for workers.

Our analysis of studies from around the world finds that green investments generally create more jobs per US$1 million than unsustainable investments. We compare near-term job effects from clean energy versus fossil fuels, public transportation versus roads, electric vehicles versus internal combustion engine vehicles, and nature-based solutions versus fossil fuels.

Green investments can create quality jobs, but this is not guaranteed. In developing countries, green jobs can provide avenues out of poverty, but too many are informal and temporary, limiting access to work security, safety, or social protections. In developed countries, new green jobs may have wages and benefits that aren’t as high as those in traditional sectors where, in many cases, workers have been able to fight for job quality through decades of collective action.

Government investment should come with conditions that ensure fair wages and benefits, work security, safe working conditions, opportunities for training and advancement, the right to organize, and accessibility to all.

Read the text (PDF).

By Dr Anna Valero, et. al. - London School of Economics, October 2021

As governments worldwide are increasing their commitments to tackling climate change, efforts are growing to quantify and characterise the ‘green economy’, and to identify opportunities to be seized and challenges to be overcome in the transition to the net-zero economy of the future. The aim of this report and accompanying policy brief is to shed light on the quantity and quality of current green labour markets, to inform policy action and future research for the net-zero transition.

Main messages

• Research on green jobs often uses a narrow definition of the green economy that does not cover all the jobs that will be important for driving forward the net-zero transition.
• In contrast, the authors apply a broad approach to the UK and European economies.
• They find that around 20% of jobs in the UK and 14 European economies can be considered directly and indirectly green, taking a broad, occupation-level definition of the ‘greenness’ of jobs.
• They find some evidence that greener jobs tend to be ‘better’ jobs.
• Workers in some types of green jobs, particularly those that are new occupations related to greening the economy, are likely to be educated to a higher level and be on permanent contracts, though there are differences in these relationships across countries, sectors and regions.
• For the UK, the authors also find that greener jobs tend to pay higher wages, and are more resilient to automation.
• Greener jobs tend to be occupied by older workers and men. Policymakers will need to ensure equitable access to green, future-fit jobs. Educational and training requirements of ‘green’ jobs will need to be met with new education and skills policies, including improved incentives for firms and individuals to train.

Read the text (link).

By Frank Duffy - The Guardian, September 20, 2021

More than 500 workers, myself included, at the GKN Automotive factory in Birmingham have voted for strike action to save both our plant and British manufacturing. It’s the last thing we ever wanted to do, but we feel we have been left with no choice.

Currently, we manufacture and assemble components for drivelines, the all-important section underneath your car for transferring power from the engine and transmission to the wheels. In 2019, 90% of GKN’s components went into traditional combustion engines, but that may halve by 2025, with electric vehicles (EVs) taking 15% of components, and hybrids about 40%. The move to electric will only continue, as UK factories unveil their new vehicle plans before purely internal combustion engines are banned in 2030.

In order to future-proof our jobs and the British automotive industry, we need to transition to producing components for EVs, including new propulsion systems and e-drives. GKN has developed a new e-drive with UK government funding at its Oxfordshire research facility, but sadly we won’t see this innovation creating new green jobs for British workers. Melrose, the owners of GKN, have decided to close our plant in 2022 and move jobs overseas.

We realised that if we want to see a green future for the UK car industry and save our skilled jobs, we couldn’t leave it to our bosses and had to take matters into our own hands. We put together a 90-page alternative plan detailing how we could reorganise production to save money and make these new components.

Ours is the first transition plan for an automotive plant proposed by union stewards in the UK, and an echo of the 1976 Lucas Plan, when shop stewards at Lucas Aerospace, also in Birmingham, proposed converting their plant to socially useful products.

Now, as then, our alternative plan proposed saving jobs in Birmingham while transitioning the plant into an asset to support the wider UK industry. That’s a win for the workforce, the industry and the environment. If that isn’t what’s meant by the phrase “just transition”, I don’t know what is.

By Gabriel Levy - People and Nature, September 2, 2020

Leeds Trades Union Council has issued a call for large-scale investment to insulate homes and install electric heat pumps, to cut carbon emissions and help tackle global warming.

Such a drive to retrofit and electrify homes would be an alternative to a multi-billion-pound scheme, supported by oil and gas companies, to turn the gas network over to hydrogen.

That scheme, Northern Gas Networks’ H21 project, could tie up billions of pounds of

government money in risky carbon capture and storage technology, which is not proven to work at the scale required – but would help to prolong the oil and gas industry’s life by decades.

This is a test for social and labour movements all over the UK.

The demand for retrofitting and electrification should be taken up, and fossil-fuel-linked technofixes rejected. Otherwise, talk of “climate and ecological emergency” is empty words.

“Our most important and urgent action is to halt the flow of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere”, says a draft document that the Leeds TUC published last week. “This means radical changes to the way we use energy for work, travel and to heat our homes.”

In setting out a plan for Leeds, the TUC there hopes to “offer a model that will be taken up by other towns, cities and regions”, where it can form the basis for collaboration between local authorities, and a focus for trade unions and community campaigners.

By Lydia Sullivan - Yes to Life, No to Mining, September 2021

This report from Yes to Life, No to Mining Network (YLNM) explores how and why many nations – and the mining industry – are re-framing mining as a solution to climate change in order to facilitate domestic extraction of so-called ‘strategic’, ‘critical’ and ‘transition’ minerals required for renewable energy, military and digital technologies. 

This analysis of geological and permitting data shows that a staggering 27% of the Republic of Ireland and 25% of Northern Ireland are now under concession for mining.

YLNM’s new research examines state and corporate claims that mining in Europe represents a gold standard of regulation and corporate practice that justifies creating new mining sacrifice zones in the name of climate action.

Without exception, the authors – in all nations – report a vast gap between this rhetoric and the realities of mining at Europe’s new extractive frontiers, highlighting systemic rights violations and ecological harm.

Read the text (PDF).

By Staff - Earth Strike UK, July 30, 2021

Earth Strike is a grassroots movement for workers, youth, and community organisers to challenge the root causes of the climate crisis. Our mission is to disrupt the capitalist system that is causing the climate crisis and to fight for a better future for the global working class.

We extend our solidarity to, and practical support in, your struggle for pay rises of at least 15%. We will support you on any potential picket lines. Workers fighting for decent pay and to protect the standards of our healthcare system should be able to take direct action in pursuit of these demands at a time and in a manner of their own choosing. We therefore oppose all legal restrictions on the right to strike.

We are environmentalists supporting and seeking to mobilise for your struggle, and we want to see other environmentalists do the same. Our struggles are much closer than many might imagine. Healthcare jobs are climate jobs, and the refusal to fund and support healthcare properly is a damning indictment of this system’s response to climate breakdown. As air pollution chokes children in the streets of London, disproportionately in working-class and black and brown communities, the hospitals which should mitigate the damage are underfunded, with workers in them underpaid and overworked. As the effects of climate breakdown worsen, it will be healthcare systems having to deal with the impact. Meanwhile, we do not forget the vast wealth inequalities that exist between this country and others, particularly where climate destruction is already felt hardest.

As climate activists, we particularly oppose the ban on strikes over so-called “political” issues, and the ban on strikes in solidarity with other workers. Those laws prevent workers from striking directly to demand radical action on climate change, to oppose NHS privatisation and cuts, and to directly support your demands – as miners, postal workers, dockers, print workers, and others did in the 1980s. Our new “Empower the Unions” initiative aims to highlight the injustice of these restrictive laws, and mobilise both climate and trade union activists against them.

So we say: all power to the NHS workers! Your fight for 15% is a key part of the wider struggle for a genuinely socialised healthcare system, free at the point of use and run by workers and service users, which in turn is part of the struggle for a different kind of society – one in which human and environmental need, rather than the needs of profit, comes first.

An injury to one is an injury to all – solidarity!

By Wendy Smith - The Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union group, July 25, 2021

People have been shocked at the recent news of deaths from extreme heat and flooding across the globe. Three of the world’s wealthiest men have been racing into space in an effort to find new sources of profit. Meanwhile our government here seems determined to rush the UK into a return to pre-pandemic business as usual. There has never been a more urgent need to fight for effective action in the face of climate catastrophe. The COP26 talks in Glasgow in November present our world leaders with a vital and timely opportunity to deliver more than vague targets and future promises.

The Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union group (CaCCTU) will be launching this autumn the eagerly-awaited update to their groundbreaking pamphlet, “One Million Climate Jobs”, first published in 2004. At the heart of this new report is a core model for a new public service – a National Climate Service – that can get the job done by seeing to the integration of training, redeployment, planning and the interface between sectors (e.g., between industries and energy, or the complex planning needed to integrate and balance public transport).

The Climate Jobs campaign argues we need a sustainable transformation of construction, transport and power among other sectors. Several unions organise workers in these industries and, in order to win the changes we need, these unions should get behind these demands, building support for a transition of the economy and for massive investment in well paid jobs which tackle the climate emergency. In particular, Unite, one of the biggest unions in the Britain, can play a crucial role. Unite is in the process of electing a new General Secretary.

Up to now there has been a tendency amongst many within the Unite leadership to take a defensive position regarding climate change activism. Instead of embracing the possibilities for millions of new jobs in the public transport, buildings retrofitting and renewable energy trades, Unite leaders have opted to present the need to defend the status quo of existing jobs in the aviation, nuclear and private vehicle industries.

Many in the climate movement see some of the proposals put forward by various members of the Unite hierarchy as false solutions. Carbon capture and storage (CCS), nuclear power generation, electric vehicles without addressing car dependency, maintaining current levels of aviation: these are all contributing to the problems of carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases. Many climate activists are also Unite members and feel that their voices are not being heard in the higher echelons of the union.

We need to see a greater involvement by rank and file trade unionists and non-unionised workers in shaping their own futures. We recognize that workers have the skills and expertise to play a role in their own just transition to green jobs. Wouldn’t it be a refreshing change to see the leadership candidates putting forward the sort of radical ideas that could make that happen? Whoever wins the election, will the next Unite General Secretary embrace and promote the ideas presented in the new CaCCTU report?

By Elizabeth Perry - Work and Climate Change Report, July 21, 2021

On July 14, the Independent Green Jobs Taskforce delivered its report to the government of the United Kingdom, making fifteen recommendations on how best to deliver the green jobs and skills of the future. A summary of the report and steps taken to date appear in the government’s press release. The full Report is here, with an Annex called Sectoral Transitions to Net Zero, profiling specific sectors and occupations.

The U.K. Trades Union Congress (TUC), which participated in the Taskforce, reacted with a blog post titled, A greener economy can be positive for workers too, highlighting key recommendations – and pointing out real-world examples of best practice, including the example of collaboration between EDF and Unite, Prospect and GMB in the successful creation of transition pathways for workers at Cottam coal power station before it closed. The Senior Deputy General Secretary of the Prospect union was also member of the Green Jobs Taskforce, and summarized her thoughts in this blog: “It’s time the government moved from lofty climate change ambitions to action”, saying “ I am pleased that the Green Jobs Taskforce not only uses the language of Just Transition, but recommends the establishment of a new national body to help shape this change and ensure that no worker or community is left behind in the race for net zero. That recommendation is one of many that we on the task force have made to the government, including establishing a ‘green careers launchpad’, making sure that the curriculum reflects the green skills we will need in the future, and publishing a comprehensive net zero strategy ahead of November’s COP26 summit.”

The government will not endorse any of the Report’s recommendations immediately but they are promised to feed into the development of the U.K.’s Net Zero Strategy; in the meantime, “ a cross-cutting delivery group” has been established “to oversee the development and delivery of the government’s plans for green jobs and skills. This group will maintain the momentum generated by the Taskforce and drive meaningful action across the green skills agenda.”

The Green Jobs Taskforce was established in November 2020 , and included labour representatives from the TUC and Prospect union, along with academics, business representatives and the training sector, including Construction Industry Training Board, Engineering Construction Industry Training Board, East London Institute for Technology, Retrofit Works, Edinburgh University and National Grid.

Related reports: Unionlearn (part of the TUC) published a labour education document, Cutting Carbon, Growing Skills: Green Skills for a Just Transition in March 2020, providing discussion and case studies.

By Isobel Tarr - DeSmog, July 16, 2021

Last December, a cross-party council planning committee unanimously rejected what could very well be the last opencast coal application in the UK, proposed at Dewley Hill, an area of greenbelt outside Newcastle.

The developer has just declared it will not be appealing the decision, while its latest financial statement indicates the company, Banks Group, does not expect to get permission for any new mines, because of a lack of “political will”. So after 80 years, we cautiously celebrate an end to the ecologically ruinous method of opencast coal extraction.

The mining technique was originally introduced in the 1940s as an extreme wartime measure, with minimal labour needed and maximum pace. It involves ripping up huge areas of land, replacing diverse ecology and vital habitats with a vast pit, and industrialising the countryside. It expanded under Margaret Thatcher, and some of the first people to contest new opencasts were coal miners, since it was seen to hasten job losses at traditional pit mines and ruined the places miners lived in.

Over the past 20 years, as awareness of climate change has grown and word of the local injustices from opencast coal mining spread, thousands of people across the country and beyond have travelled to support the battles to stop opencast coal.

These campaigns had been quietly fought for decades, in isolated pockets in the Welsh Valleys, the Pennines, the Scottish Highlands, by people who don’t identify as activists.

Since 2008, at least 23 applications to stop opencast coal in the UK have been stopped by grassroots campaigns, with many more going unrecorded. Currently, only two opencast mines operate in the UK thanks to the resistance of ordinary people standing up for their local environment and climate justice.

The people behind these victories are not NIMBYs (Not-In-My-Back-Yard). The campaigns have succeeded because coalfield communities supported each other to take down an entire industry, rather than shift the problem from place to place. The planning system deliberately assists planners and is inaccessible to most people who have no experience of navigating it. So knowledge-sharing and solidarity between communities have been vital.

By Brendan Montague - The Ecologist, July 7, 2021

Renewable energy projects already in the pipeline will create 625,000 jobs across the UK - potentially replacing 90 percent of the losses from the Covid-19 crisis, according to a new report commissioned by the European Climate Foundation.

A total of 13,000 projects identified globally are expected to create 10 million jobs across 47 different countries, with US$2 trillion of investment building one Terawatt of renewable generation capacity.

A spokesperson said: "In the UK, green energy offers enormous potential for sustained job creation and economic growth, especially in Northern England and Scotland."