United Kingdom (UK)

By staff - Morning Star, March 2023

A GROUNDBREAKING alliance of unions and campaigners have announced their commitment to stand with Extinction Rebellion as the climate group is set to take mass action next month.

Thousands are expected to descend on Parliament between April 21 and 24 for The Big One, a weekend of protest against the government’s ongoing failure to tackle the climate emergency.

PCS union, NEU Climate Change Network, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, Global Justice Now and Black Lives Matter (BLM) are among groups that have joined the alliance.

John Moloney, PCS assistant general secretary, said: “PCS members taking strike action understand the need to co-ordinate across our movements to win our demands for better pay and to safeguard jobs.

“The climate and nature emergency requires the same to win the future we desperately need in the face of multiple crises — this is why we are supporting XR’s action.”

The announcement falls on the day the latest UN intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) report is published, warning that drastic action is needed to meet its target of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5°C.

By Peder Ressem Østring - Just Transition Research Collaborative, February 24, 2023

The recycling of oil rigs can provide new jobs within the circular economy, particularly beneficial for oil-dependent regions. If we get it right, the process of cleaning up after the fossil economy can itself serve as a bridge from fossil dependency towards a just transition.

Globally, there are over 7000 offshore oil and gas platforms. Together with other structures and pipelines, these form an impressive built environment. If we are to have a fighting chance of keeping global warming well below 2°C however, virtually all of these installations would have to be shut down, dismantled and recycled. This process — known as offshore decommissioning — is already taking place, but will see a dramatic increase in the coming decade. It will be increasingly necessary to confront the ways in which decommissioned infrastructure is handled, both with regards to the environment and labour conditions.

A case study of the decommissioning of oil and gas infrastructure in the North Sea shows some of both the possibilities and challenges decommissioning presents in terms of a just transition.

While some oil companies would like to leave the oil platforms in the sea, eagerly promoting the idea of repurposing old rigs as artificial reefs, this is not allowed under current regulation. After the plans of Royal Dutch Shell of dumping the oil storage tanker Brent Spar in the North Sea in the 1990s was met with massive public scrutiny and campaigns from environmental organizations, regulations came in place that effectively banned the practice of abandoning manufactured structures in the North-East Atlantic.

Companies have since sought other ways of disposing of the problem with structures put out of commission. Another approach for cutting costs for the oil supermajors has been to send old floating rigs for breaking in the global South. This has taken place under horrendous conditions for both workers and the environment, as has been uncovered by the BBC.

Both these false solutions are in reality ways of externalizing costs of cleaning up after the fossil companies. Both approaches should be rejected, while insisting on the principle that the polluter should pay.

By Paul Atkin - Greener Jobs Alliance, February 15, 2023

This report from “Democracy Now” on the rail disaster in Ohio last week, in which a 150 car freight train carrying toxic chemicals derailed and a “controlled burn” by the company released “a fireball and mushroom cloud of smoke” into the environment, shows where the Tory “modernisation agenda” for the Railways ends up. 

All their key themes

• cuts to staffing 
• cuts to safety procedures
• restrictions on the right to strike

are all in place in the USA; which is a model for the government’s attempts to deregulate employers while tying up workers’ capacity to resist.

The interviews with Emily Wright, community organizer based near the site of the derailment; Ross Grooters, a locomotive engineer and co-chair of Railroad Workers United; and Julia Rock, an investigative reporter with The Lever tell a cautionary tale everyone in the UK should know about.

 Please think of this next time you hear a government minister chuntering on about “modernisation” and “outdated practices” and pass this on.

“Bomb Train” in Ohio Sickens Residents After Railroad Cutbacks, Corporate Greed Led to Toxic Disaster | Democracy Now!

Ellen Robottom, Tina Rothery, and Allan Todd - Climate Justice Alliance, February 8, 2023

By Chris Saltmarsh - The Ecologist, February 6, 2023

A review of Derailed: How to Fix Britain’s Railways, by Tom Haines-Doran, published by Manchester University Press.

As climate change intensifies, the imperative to shift our transport system away from polluting private cars to public transport – rail in particular – becomes increasingly urgent.

At the same time, amid an inflationary crisis, rail workers are at the forefront of a nationwide wave of strike action defending pay and conditions.

In Derailed: How to Fix Britain’s Broken Railways, Tom Haines-Doran puts the UK’s rail system in these political-economic contexts with a compelling account of its history, present conditions and future possibilities.

By staff - Earth Strike UK, February 1, 2023

The labour movement is facing a grave threat in the form of a raft of new and incredibly restrictive anti-union laws. These laws will make all-out strike action in several industries outright illegal and are designed to immobilise our movement.

Current anti union laws limit legal strike action to disputes between a specific group of workers and their employer over workplace issues, ruling out strikes over “political issues” or in support of other workers. The law also imposes a slow and bureaucratic balloting process and sets strict ballot thresholds. The new laws will also require unions in some sectors to break their own strikes and continue providing a minimum service level, set by the government.

In response to this threat Earth Strike UK and Free Our Unions organised a demonstration outside the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the government department responsible for both environmental and trade union policy. There was drumming, chanting, banners, and we heard from workers from across numerous industries who explained how current anti-union laws affected them and the threat posed by these new ones. Following the demo, we held a small assembly to discuss in more detail the challenges posed by all anti-union legislation and begin to develop a strategy of resistance. During the meeting we discussed 3 questions. Here are some of the outcomes of that discussion.

Question 1. What are the most important ways in which existing anti-union laws hinder workers’ struggles and the Labour movement? How will the proposed new laws do so?

By staff - Safe Landing, January 31, 2023

Today, the UK High Court has ruled that the expansion of Bristol Airport will be allowed to go ahead, in the latest twist in a rollercoaster legal campaign featuring tough local opposition and environmental scrutiny.

In 2018, Bristol Airport submitted plans to expand from 10 to 12 million passengers per year. This would result in an extra 23,800 flights, including an extra 4,000 night flights.

After North Somerset Council declared a climate emergency in 2019, planning permission for expanding the airport was refused in February 2020. Later that year, Bristol Airport announced that it would be appealing this decision and requested an inquiry, led by a planning inspector.

Bristol Airport Action Network (BAAN) was formed as a coalition of local groups and individuals working to oppose Bristol Airport’s expansion plans. BAAN became a Rule 6 party and was a significant contributor to the 10-week Public Inquiry which ended in October 2021.

They enlisted Safe Landing Co-Founder, Finlay Asher, to provide expert evidence during the inquiry.

By staff - Unite the Union, January 17, 2023

Britishvolt, which was planning to build a giga-battery factory in Northumberland, has today (Tuesday) announced that it is going into administration.

Unite national officer for the automotive sector Steve Bush said: “This is a grim day for the North East and for the just transition to the electrification of the nation’s automotive sector.

“The complete lack of a competent industrial strategy by the government to protect jobs in the UK automotive sector is becoming potentially more catastrophic by the day.

“It is extraordinary that despite the UK automotive sector being required to move to the production of electric vehicles, there are still no UK stand-alone factories making the batteries that are required. The demise of Britishvolt means there are not even any in the pipeline.

“The government’s strategy seems to be to cross their fingers and hope that everything will be ok. The workers in the automotive sector are frankly enraged at this dreadful and total abdication of leadership”

By Marcus Barnett - Labor Notes, November 18, 2022

In Britain today, anyone asking a worker about the direction the country is headed will be unlikely to receive a printable answer.

Stumbling from crisis to crisis, the country is on its third prime minister of the year. Energy bills have skyrocketed by 96 percent since last winter, and rent has shot up by as much as 20 percent, while inflation—which currently stands at 12.3 percent—has been predicted to rise as high as 18 percent by the first few months of 2023.

This is happening in a country which was the first in Western Europe to register 200,000 deaths from the coronavirus and has already been subject to brutal austerity measures that have wrecked the social fabric. An analysis by the Trades Unions Congress (TUC, the British equivalent of the AFL-CIO) released earlier this year found that British workers earned £60 ($70) less per month in real wages in 2021 than at the start of the financial crisis in 2008—the longest wage slump since the Napoleonic Era.

Where employers have offered any wage increases to combat inflation, they have still represented significant pay cuts in real terms. Not that the same rules apply to them; while pay offers to workers have generally veered between 2 and 6 percent, the average pay of an FTSE 100 chief executive shot up 23 percent this year, with record bonuses being dished out. (The FTSE 100 is made up of the largest companies on the London Stock Exchange).

One such recipient was Philip Jansen, the CEO of BT Group, Britain’s largest provider of internet and phone services. BT reported £1.3 billion in profits this year, while Jansen netted a £3.5 million pay package—a 32 percent increase. He now makes 86 times more than the average BT employee.

Yet after six brief meetings with representatives of the Communication Workers Union (CWU), Jansen called off discussions and unilaterally imposed an insulting £1,500 ($1,770) increase to annual base salaries—which amounts to a pay cut in real terms for the company’s 40,000 call center workers and field technicians. The call center workforce is paid so poorly that some have become increasingly reliant on workplace food banks.

Another was Simon Thompson, CEO of Royal Mail Group, the UK postal service (which was privatized a decade ago under the Conservative-Liberal coalition government). In June, Thompson—who earns £62,750 a month—awarded himself a “short-term” bonus of £142,000. Shortly afterwards, the company informed its 115,000 workers it would be unilaterally raising wages by just 2 percent—a drastic pay cut in the context of the country’s cost-of-living crisis. That’s despite Royal Mail workers generating record annual profits of £758 million for the company.

By staff - Labor Network for Sustainability, October 30, 2022

Hundreds of thousands people marched and rallied October 1 in over 50 towns and cities across the UK on a National Day of Action protesting the soaring cost of living and inaction on the climate crisis. The actions were called by Enough is Enough, a 700,000 member campaign supported by the trade union movement and community groups including tenant unions and foodbanks. Its five demands are:

1. A real pay raise
2. Slash energy bills
3. End food poverty
4. Decent homes for all
5. Tax the rich

Climate campaigners brought London’s famed Westminster Bridge to a standstill. Don’t Pay UK encouraged householders to stop paying their bills if the government does not offer further support to families. 50,000 workers from four postal and railroad unions struck for wage increases to make up for inflation.

On October 16, 140,000 people marched through Paris protesting the rising cost of living and government inaction against climate change. They demanded massive investment in climate action, higher wages, an emergency freeze on the prices of groceries, rent, and energy, and greater taxation of windfall profits of corporations. A leader of the action called on protesters to “not allow themselves to be divided by their skin color, their religion, political affiliation or indifference.” Some of the demonstrators wore yellow vests, the symbol of disruptive actions that started in 2018 by protesting against government climate protection policies. The recent demonstration dovetailed with a strike by refinery workers, an impending strike by transportation workers, and a call for a general strike by France’s largest trade unions.