just transition

By staff - International Trade Union Confederation, November 21, 2022

Governments from the global south finally achieved a long fought for agreement to establish a fund to compensate “loss and damage” from climate change related events in developing countries.. The challenge is now to provide the necessary finance for the fund and to make it operational by COP28.

The trade union movement welcomes the establishment of a work program on just transition. The “Sharm el-Sheikh Implementation Plan” asserts that Just Transition is founded on Social Dialogue.

Sharan Burrow, outgoing ITUC General Secretary, said: “Workers must have a place at the table for a transition that stabilises the planet, economies and our societies. Transition plans need to include both climate and employment plans. That requires unions to be involved and own the process, otherwise we risk stoking the fear of those who feel left behind and left out of decision making.”

Inclusion of social protection a major step forward

Eric Manzi, ITUC-Africa Deputy General Secretary, said: “To build resilience for workers, families and communities, comprehensive and universal social protection systems are needed. We need to see the funds to ensure those systems can deliver unemployment benefits and fundamental health services.

“In Africa, funds are desperately needed for transition skills training and ensuring informal jobs become formalised decent jobs with social protection. This is the way to deliver for workers in poor and rich countries alike.”

Unions regret the absence of commitments by countries to respect labour rights and human rights. The right to free trade unions, collective bargaining and occupational health and safety are essential to ensure a Just Transition.

The reluctance of countries to specifically guarantee the respect of human rights is a major concern for the labour movement. Ambitious climate policies can only be successful if there is trust that rights are respected for everyone.

On climate mitigation the result is very disappointing. Countries are backtracking on their commitment at COP26 in Scotland to phase down coal. The door is opened for “low-emission” energy instead of focussing fully on renewable energy.

Sharan Burrow said: “On market mechanisms we see the continuing undermining of the objectives of the Paris Agreement by proposals that allow double counting and unsustainable removal technologies. Stepping up mitigation ambition must be a major priority for COP28. The challenge will be how the incoming UAE COP28 Presidency will deal with that.”

By staff - International Transport Workers' Federation, November 15, 2022

Aviation workers are facing the twin threats of the climate emergency and the global jobs crisis. Criticism of aviation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions has created job-loss fears for many aviation workers. Although it is understood that decarbonisation will involve many changes, and that some jobs and functions may change, it is important to mitigate this as far as possible with long-term planning. Recent experience demonstrates how harmful short-term thinking can be. An average of 40 percent of aviation workers lost their jobs during the Covid-19 pandemic. As the industry recovers, it is now facing critical labour shortages with vast amounts of expertise being lost to the industry forever. Employment security for all workers can be built around a long-term employment road map.

An aviation jobs plan that assesses the industry’s long-term employment requirements must be completed as a matter of priority. It must model the mix of skills and number of workers required to implement decarbonisation measures. On workforce numbers, it should take into account retirement rates and also additional workforce demands that could create future employment opportunities, for example from proposed climate measures such as reducing flight distances and slower cruising speeds. The assessment must also include quantifiable equality measures that consider the specific needs of women and young workers, such as equal opportunities for career development, quality entry-level jobs and training pathways.

The assessment will also provide the basis for employment security, skills upgrading, and career development. Every effort must be taken to retain workers in their existing roles. Where this is not possible, the assessment must provide a road map for retraining workers for different roles within the industry. Where redeployment is necessary, it must come with equal levels of pay, skill levels, and trade union representation.

The results of the long-term employment assessment must be built into all industry road maps for decarbonisation. This is vital that the industry can retain the necessary skills and expertise and avoid short-term job cuts that will harm the industry’s ability to conduct the transition most effectively.

Download a copy of this publication here (PDF).

By various - International Transport Workers Federation, November 8, 2022

By Lopa Pal, Elizabeth Bast, Nnimmo Bassey, Colin Rees, and Rebecca Solnit - Oil Change International, November 7, 2022

By Carolyn Fortuna - Clean Technica, November 2, 2022

Big Oil is trying to get climate liability lawsuits moved from state to federal courts, where they believe they’d be more likely to prevail against efforts to make them pay for damaging the environment. Key communities are laying out explicit steps to help move their economies away from coal. Debates are taking place in the tech sector that analyze the social and political changes inevitable to implement renewable energy at scale. These are all dilemmas within what’s called a just transition, and it’s at the core of renewable energy activism.

In its original incarnation, a just transition pointed to workers’ rights, but, over the past few years, the concept expanded into relevance for fields beyond the labor market. A just transition is a future-oriented concept, guided by principles of sustainability and climate justice.

Unfortunately, these concepts don’t always work in concert.

What is a Just Transition, Anyway?

The transition to a clean energy economy is escalating, yet it takes thoughtful planning and robust resources. There are several dimensions to a just transition to move economies and regions away from fossil fuels and towards creating sustainable value and solving issues of climate injustice.

An opposition point of view claims that the shift to clean energy will spur gaps in well paying jobs with good benefits, loss of health insurance, reduced property values, gaps in local tax revenues, unfunded liabilities for environmental cleanup, and uncertainty around future community economic development.

Include social and political participation of affected groups: A just transition is about focusing on support for communities that bear a disproportionate burden of industrial and fossil fuel pollution. These citizens suffer tremendous health effects and are denied commensurate economic benefits. Locations where deep pockets of industrial fossil fuel pollution occur are known as “sacrifice zones,” where toxic air inflicts health problems such as asthma and high rates of cancer. They’re also typically where low income communities of color live and where institutional barriers have afflicted generations of citizens.

Assist workers in unsustainable sectors whose jobs will get lost in the economic reorganization: For many advocates, a just transition encompasses not only support for displaced fossil fuel workers and front-line communities but also a tectonic shift in the design of the economy. For example, workers who engage with toxic materials face the likelihood of illness and death, yet these provide the world with the energy and the materials it needs to recreate energy systems.

Recognize where benefits are accumulated by only a small part of relevant stakeholders: A just transition considers less wealthy countries that depend on fossil fuels for a major part of their GNI. Many advocates are calling upon wealthier nations to help countries with less total domestic and foreign input to switch to clean energy.

Create reskilling and new opportunities for workers whose jobs are lost due to restructuring: A just transition means taking an extractive economy — one that exploits workers and resources — and transforming it into a regenerative economy — one that relies on renewable resources and puts people’s well-being before profit. Just transition initiatives shift the economy from climate polluting fossil fuels to energy democracy. No longer do highways receive mass federal funding; instead, an emphasis on public transit takes place. Costs for discarding waste in landfills skyrockets as do incentives to compost and purchase compostable packaging. Ecosystem destruction halts and ecosystem restoration becomes a huge focus. All of these will create new job opportunities.

By Steve Morse - Labor Rise for Climate, Jobs, Justice, and Peace, November 2022

We who work and have worked with our hands, bodies and minds to build, manufacture and repair are committed to our own well-being and that of our families. Our unions have often fought successfully toward this goal, delivering on wages and pensions.

It’s time to face another commitment we owe our families and the next generation: to work for a healthy planet and for justice.

The Climate Crisis is now. We know about the melting glaciers, rising sea levels, droughts, floods, heat waves, fires and hurricanes. Youth, including our own children and grandchildren, are ready to fight for a livable planet, and many are already doing so. Our unions must stand with them.

By Raul Alfaro-Pelico, Charlie Bloch, Nick Pesta, and Madeline Tyson - Rocky Mountain Institute, November 2022

The switch to a carbon-free economy is the biggest economic opportunity of our era. The International Energy Agency and other analysts have predicted that this wave of market-driven innovation will create two to six “green jobs” for each fossil fuel job lost. The promised jobs are already arriving — the 2022 Annual Review by the International Labour Organization and the International Renewable Energy Agency reported that renewables alone had created more than 12 million jobs as of 2021.

But as well-researched and credible as such studies are, unfulfilled promises of prosperity have left many people skeptical about clean energy job claims, a skepticism that is commonly accompanied by the belief that the future holds less opportunity than the past. Even before COVID-19, two out of three people felt pessimistic that the gap between the rich and poor in their own country would ever improve. In fact, the U.N.’s World Social Report 2020 identifies four megatrends that are contributing to growing inequality for more than 70 percent of the global population: climate change, technological innovation, urbanization, and international migration. As a result, narrowly framing job numbers as a direct tradeoff between fossil fuel jobs lost and clean energy jobs gained risks undermining political and popular support for the clean energy transition.

A clean energy focus also misses the bigger picture of our rapidly changing global economy, obscuring the “hidden” costs and risks within our current economic system as well as the nascent opportunities embedded in a shift to a more sustainable economy. Compounding forces — pandemics and supply chain fragilities, new technologies and networked intelligence, and climate change and environmental degradation — are creating unprecedented rates of change in the global economy. Workers, communities, and companies cannot afford to ignore the big picture of what the future holds.

Read the report (Link).

By Johanna Bozuwa, Sarita Turner, Ann Pratt, Joe Recchie, and Eli Moore - Othering and Belonging Institute, October 25, 2022

By David Gobé - International Transport Workers’ Federation, October 22, 2022

By by Luke Gannon and Reggie Rucker - Institute for Local Self-Reliance, October 20, 2022