USYD ENVIRONMENTAL COLLECTIVE // COMBUST 2020
What is a ‘just transition’? The organised working class is crucial to achieving the economic changes that are necessary to handle current environmental concerns stemming from carbon emissions. Historically, workers have had the ability to shut down workplaces and disrupt the economy. Hence, the labour movement is responsible for many of the workplace rights we enjoy — from the 8-hour-day to sick leave. Beyond this, they can be thanked for public education, transport and healthcare systems, along with having given support to issues like Indigenous land rights, ending Apartheid in South Africa and ending the war in Vietnam. Over the last 15 years, Australian politics has proven that the market alone will not be sufficient to force the changes that we need. The coal and gas industry has a stranglehold on federal and state politics that will not be broken by cheaper renewables. Large scale economic planning and public investment in renewable energy is needed in order to shift our energy
system. This must be demanded by a grassroots movement of millions of ordinary people, which the union movement can provide. There is a legacy of hostility between the environment movement and the labour movement, propelled by conservative politicians who position the need for environmental action against the need for job creation. This is evident in the Hunter Valley, where unemployment is high and many local people are in favour of new coal mines, while opposition is strongest in inner-city Sydney and Melbourne. These issues are complex — workers in coal communities accept the reality of climate change, but many see no alternative source of livelihood. The coal industry is a major source of employment; it absorbs not only those who directly work in the mines, but those who work in supporting industries like transport, mechanics, and other general services. Alongside concern for livelihoods is a concern that climate action would increase power prices, thereby
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increasing cost of living pressures for poor and working class households. This is mere subterfuge invented by Tony Abbott and the coal industry — it is actually the privatisation of the energy system over the past 25 years which is responsible for the increases in our energy bills. The environment movement is not blameless in this division either. In 2014 when Hazelwood power station in Victoria closed down, 750 miners were left jobless — many of whom had never worked outside of the industry. There was no plan in place for their job transition. As environmental groups were celebrating, one worker described the experience of hanging his hat on a memorial to the mine as “gut-wrenching” — on this memorial hung a banner reading ‘God hates greenies’. This lack of consideration for workers alienated those whose livelihoods depended on the project, playing into perceptions that the movement is a middle-class inner city project which cares little about working people.
