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 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.

A just transition is not only a necessary part of action on climate change, but without strong working-class climate politics, we are unlikely to see any meaningful action at all.

The Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU) and Australian Workers’ Union (AWU) are currently committed to the planned expansion of coal and gas in Australia. These projects expand from the Galilee Basin to the Upper Hunter and Gunnedah coalfields to the Beetaloo gas basin in the Northern Territory. There is a widespread attitude among members of these unions that a transition to renewables will leave their members high and dry. In some ways, this is not totally unfounded — the renewables projects that we have seen have terrible safety standards and low wages. There are currently no apprenticeships on offer in renewable energy in

Andy Mason USyd Enviro Officer, 2018

NSW. Shifting these unions towards a progressive climate policy will require a forwardthinking positive vision for the world we want to create, one which looks after both workers and the environment. There are some examples of transitions being done well — for example, after Hazelwood’s closure the CFMEU managed to negotiate a retraining and early retirement scheme for hundreds of workers formerly employed in the power station. Germany has also had a large scale transition away from coal, which has ensured retraining of coal workers, while the UK and US concepts of a ‘Green New Deal’ put forward a positive vision for expansive economic change. We should look to examples like this for guidance. We also have a home-grown legacy of workers and the environment movement working together. The ‘Green’ in ‘green politics’ was first used to describe the Green Bans, a 1970s movement in which construction workers in Sydney refused to work on projects that were environmentally or socially damaging. These actions saved large areas of working class housing, urban bushland and inner-city parklands. The secretary of the union, Jack Mundey, argued that workers should not only be concerned with improving our pay and conditions at work, but also about the end result of our labour. We need to revive this vision of a labour movement willing to stand up for not only workers rights but for environmental and social justice issues more broadly. A major barrier is that the union movement is currently relatively weak, with about 15% union density, in contrast to 50% in the 1970s and 80s. The reasons for this decline are complicated, but young workers today need to remember how to rebuild the union movement and how to throw our power as workers behind the important movements in this country such as climate change and Indigenous rights. This is difficult but not impossible — we’ve done it before.