A just transition As we move towards a Zero Carbon Britain, how can we ensure that livelihoods are protected and communities thrive? Tanya Hawkes explores lessons from history.
The ex-mining town of Treherbert in south Wales, where the Skyline forestry project aims to support the creation of up to 200 long-term, low carbon jobs.
I
n 1982 my dad walked out of the gates of the Gloucester Iron and Steel Foundry for the last time. He and hundreds of other men and their families were left searching for scarce ‘low skilled’ work to replace lost livelihoods. Families fared differently according to personal circumstances. Mine, because
my parents were raising a severely disabled child and were already only just coping with the tiredness and stress, was hit hard. My dad suffered a severe stroke in his mid-forties and couldn’t work properly again. The poverty caused during that time is still affecting my family two generations later, in complex ways. We became part of the statistics of what is now familiarly known as ‘deindustrialisation’, and I witnessed firsthand the devastation caused by abrupt economic changes to an industry with no transition plan for the affected people and communities. This isn’t a misery memoir, but rather a cautionary economic tale. My family's experience was replicated across communities all over the UK. From the mining towns of Wales and Durham to the steel works of Sheffield, mass unemployment, outward migration of young people and lack of alternative job creation created pockets of persistent poverty and economic repercussions across whole regions. Coal production employed a million people at its peak. Current agricultural employment is less easy to quantify, but the Annual Population Survey suggests 346,000 permanent workers, and DEFRA
calculates another 64,000 seasonal, gang and migrant workers on top of this. The iron and steel industry employed 323,000 people in 1971 and now employs less than a tenth of that at 31,900. Aviation and other transport accounts for hundreds of thousands of jobs all around the UK. The human cost of what happens when some industries decline while others prosper is a key issue for those of us working towards a zero carbon society.
Protecting workers and communities
Achieving a zero carbon Britain will involve changes to industries that people and communities rely on to survive, such as the aviation industry, North Sea oil and gas, transport, construction and agriculture. Certain workers in those industries will be more affected than others. Some transport jobs are already low carbon and can easily transition further. A large proportion of their workers are well unionised and protected. Other industries are more vulnerable to market competition, non- unionised and not easily transitioned to low carbon alternatives – aviation and oil for example – and would require government intervention to support and retrain
Clean Slate 25
