Greener Jobs Alliance

National Emergency Briefing Film – What about the workers?

Photo by Ashley Gorringe on Unsplash

Review by Mick Holder

I attended a showing of the campaign film National Emergency Briefing in St John’s Church, Leytonstone recently. Whilst I have issues with its focus on parliamentary action and failure to address work and trade unions I’d still recommend everyone tries to attend a showing, even if you have no knowledge or plenty. It presents a very honest but equally bleak picture and the campaign around the showing of the film locally is to try and get more action on the issue of climate change, which is no bad thing.

In case you don’t know already, the film is based on an event held in Westminster Central Hall last year where experts gave their stark opinion on how far we’re in the shit already climate wise and what the future looks like. At the time we said to them their focus missed out work, workers, the role of unions etc. and we were told they were too far down the line to change, although we were welcome to join in from the floor. They subsequently haven’t picked up on the issue in the film and today’s event wouldn’t have said anything about that if I hadn’t said my piece towards the end – FBU, wildfires and floods, Unite bus workers strike over impossibly hot cab conditions etc. 

And maybe that’s where we are. Showing this film seems to have momentum so perhaps it’s down to us to attend and do our usual “What about the workers?” call. And a warning – celebrities are involved!

Today’s screening was attended by 200+, mainly a mix of people in their thirties upwards and it was reported there have been 4,000 screenings nationally so far. It is not currently available to watch online, deliberately trying to create events involving local communities rather than individuals watching in isolation at home or on their phones. Today’s session was kinda TU Ed style, watch film, break into small groups, report back etc. although I felt the activities were too touchy feely and not enough get active, and too reliant on parliament alone.

The campaign would benefit from a bit of history, not just Greenpeace and FoE but the trade union led Lucas Plan of the 70s calling for a move away from manufacturing for war to making renewable energy sources to end our reliance on fossil fuels, the 1972 book The Limits To Growth which warned us all of the problems we might face if we don’t act and which is still relevant now. I’m sure you can think of more examples. And details of how governments have used growth and de-regulation as an excuse not to act or to act in a way that weakens or removes worker and environmental protections (Grenfell, WHO air standards, many other exposure limits, shitty water etc.). And how global industry spends billions of their profits on making sure governments’ and regulators don’t do what they all know they really should all in the pursuit of profit.

Maybe the film wants to avoid the blame game. I don’t. We should call these fuckers out for what they truly are and ensure they are held to account. We also need to show the personal side of what their actions or inactions mean to us, our families and friends and people around the world, many who will probably suffer far more than we will, at least in the near future.

I think the film is being made available to local groups for free and would encourage people to consider this. Just make sure there’s someone on the panel who knows their stuff about work, trade unions and a bit of analysis too.

A further contribution we can make at any local showings is to complement the focus on lobbying MPs with organising – set up a local campaigning network where none exists, help coordinate existing groups where they do. To create a just transition we need organised forces pushing for it on the ground, as well as pressuring MPs to make the right decisions.

The Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union group has produced an excellent 13 minute version specifically to be shown in union branches. GJA strongly urges all supporters to get this shown in their union branch, to coincide with the COP in November if possible, but any time soon if not. A link to this is here.

We also have this draft motion that could help focus discussion. 

The individual sections of the National emergency briefing are available here

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NEU sets a Just Transition framework for workplace organising, campaigning and bargaining

The NEU has just done a massive service to the whole climate movement.

Its Model Just Transition Framework for Schools is not simply a statement of principles but an organising tool for union Reps and activists to use in their workplace.

Schools are a particular kind of workplace, but the approach could be used more widely by other unions if recast appropriately for each sector.

In setting out a checklist of actions that schools can take – under three headings, leadership, workplace, impact and opportunities –  it establishes a baseline for what is already being done, and a set of demands for further action where a school falls short.

It helps that the proposals in the checklists are often backed by the existing DFE “Net Zero Strategy”, introduced under pressure from the mass student strikes before COVID  very positive proposals like every school having a climate action plan, a sustainability lead and the option of joining up into the National Education Nature Park. However, all of this was left to schools discretion which, in the context of a climate emergency is a bit like setting off the fire alarm and saying that leaving the building is voluntary. 

This framework can be used by Reps, but most effectively done where school union members discuss and agree it in a union group, and where there is a drive by union Districts to coordinate use of the framework across a whole Local Authority area and through Multi Academy Trusts, with a Committee member responsible for driving it.

The emphasis on having “an inclusive, formally recognised, just transition group that gives voice to staff from all areas and roles” and “an active student eco club/group or nature club/group for

younger children and the opportunity for student voice to develop green policies” and schools using their “role as a community educator to drive change and climate awareness and action in its local community and with local businesses and stakeholders” makes this a tool for the wider social mobilisation we need.

A Just Transition will not be handed to us on a plate. We will have to fight for it. Where there is a national Jobs Transition Commission, as in Scotland or the North of Ireland, Just Transition work at the grassroots will add heft to their recommendations. Where there isn’t, as in England and Wales it will point up the need for them, as well as building the full scale social mobilisation we will need to make it a reality.

This is particularly the case because success in reducing a school’s carbon footprint, as with any other workplace, will depend on investment; for example to replace gas heating systems and Air Con with reversible heat pumps. So that can’t help but become a campaign for resourcing from central government, so each mobilisation at local level has to feed into a coordinated national campaign for that investment.

This framework is a terrific lever to that end.

Paul Atkin NEU Climate Change Network

 

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Scotland launches its Third Just Transition Commission – England waits for its First

Stephen Smellie, UNISON, is one of two trade union members of the third Just Transition Commission to be set up by the Scottish government. The other is Richard Hardy of Prospect. Co-Chaired by Dave Reay formerly of Edinburgh University and Satwat Rehman of One Parent Families Scotland,  it has 15 members from Academia, Business, Unions and NGOs. Set up to advise the Scottish government on what it needs to do it will have to build on the stinging critique made by the outgoing Second Commission.

Our assessment is that progress has fallen short of what is needed. Unless we renew our ambition and redouble our efforts, the enormous opportunity – both for meaningful climate action and for building a fairer and more prosperous country – will be lost.

And follow up on its outgoing recommendations.

• Progress has fallen short of what is needed. Instead of planning for success, we are reacting to crises.
• Deliver anticipatory place-based planning for at-risk sites and regions and progress sectoral plans. There is no just path to Net Zero through deindustrialisation.
• A just transition is still possible but requires courageous action across sectors. To maintain the social license for climate action, the Scottish Government must now use all levers at its disposal.
• Investment for the just transition must be mobilised through financial leadership and market-shaping interventions. This includes incentive structures, conditionalities and community wealth building measures.
• Communities and local authorities need capacity and resource to keep pace with developments, shape the transition and influence major decisions affecting their area.
• Improve delivery with more meticulous monitoring and evaluation, applying data effectively in partnerships at local and regional level.

A similar Just Transition Commission has been set up in Northern Ireland. The work done in consulting, organising, mobilising and advising is invaluable, and we need the same thing in England, and the English regions, and Wales.

Stephen’s article is the first of what we hope will be a series, so the movement in the rest of the UK can learn from the Scottish experience – what to copy – what to avoid – while we push for similar bodies here.

Scottish Just Transition Commission re-launched

The third Scottish Just Transition Commission has now been launched. This follows the commitment given by First Minister John Swinney that a Just Transition remains one of his government’s priorities.

Scotland was the first nation to establish a JTC to advise the government on the necessary steps to take to achieve a Just Transition. Others have followed, such as Northern Ireland, but not England. The JTC brings together representatives from the environment and trade union movements, industry, academia, health, economists and anti-poverty activists who work to a plane related to government planning and their own identified priorities.

The second JTC published its final report ahead of the Scottish Parliamentary election. Its title, No Time to Lose, summed up its message, not enough had been done to deliver on Just Transition. During its term it had reported on the closure of Grangemouth, the continuing loss of jobs in the North Sea, the failure to develop supply chains for the renewable sector and therefore a disappointing record on new jobs, and the continuing failure to deliver the potential community wealth that public or shared ownership of renewables could have meant for communities.

This latest Commission therefore starts from a position critical of past action or inaction.

The Government have proposed that the Commission look at Adaptation and Climate Resilience alongside a range of issues from skills and jobs to how a Just Transition can impact on the Government priorities of health and eradicating child poverty.

As Net-Zero no longer has a political consensus of support and the faith in delivering a Just  Transition amongst many workers is much diminished there is a need to restore public trust that the move to a low carbon economy will be fair, that alternative industries will provide quality work and that communities will benefit through sharing in the profits being made by companies and, mostly, foreign corporations.

That is a job for governments, not the Commission, but they have a part to play in identifying the actions that government ministers and industry must deliver on.

No Time to Lose: Final Report of the 2nd Just Transition Commission (2026) – Just Transition Commission

 

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For workers, the climate crisis is here: TUC Congress 2026 report

Photo: Hert Niks on unsplash

By Tahir Latif GJA Secretary

If the heatwaves, wildfires and the coming El Niño-generated floods in the U.K. have achieved anything, it’s to focus the trade union movement less on a ‘future’ threat to our communities and more on the need to take action right now, without equivocation.  Despite the government’s decisions on Rosebank, Jackdaw and Heathrow still hanging in the balance, there was little of the ‘jobs at all cost’ support for these developments on display; instead, we had some powerful words and a deep commitment from many unions, led by NEU, UCU, UNISON and FBU, on the form immediate action should take.

On the Sunday evening, a climate fringe, The Climate Crisis Is Here: Trade Unions’ Time To Act, hosted by Campaign Against Climate Change Trade Union Group, Greener Jobs Alliance and PCS, included a rousing contribution from Asad Rehman, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth, while Debra Beale, NEU Joint President, spoke eloquently about the impact of the heatwaves in schools for both teachers and pupils, and the urgent need for investment to upgrade school buildings.

The tone for the week was set by FBU General Secretary Steve Wright, who related the difficulties of meeting the wildfire threat with an inadequate number of workers.  He acknowledged the heroic work of members in dealing with the huge number of calls when resources are stretched thin:

As firefighters, we’re getting quite impatient at politicians talking about the role that firefighters take in these incidents and the craziness across the summer, with no real direction about how they’re going to fix it.

This topic was the central theme of Motion C14, Climate Heat Emergency, heard in the Tuesday morning session.  As well as demands arising specifically from the impacts of the heatwaves, notably a call for a legally enforceable maximum working temperature of 26C, an increase in firefighters and a National Wildfire summit, the motion also reinforced key climate demands such as rights for Green reps, funding for solar panels and implementation of the Green New Deal.

The motion was moved by NEU General Secretary Daniel Kebede, who cut to the heart of the issue, I.e. societal breakdown under neoliberalism: it is, he said, ‘not simply a failure of policy…or a failure of imagination.  It’s the failure of an economic system that has made profit god and treated the living world as sacrifice…an economy organised around extraction, exploitation and endless accumulation.’  FBU’s Dwight Williams underlined the urgent need to reverse 15 years of cuts, provision of proper PPE equipment, better land management and a U.K.-wide wildfire strategy.

On an agenda packed with worthy motions, of particular note here were:

Motion 75, moved by UCU, supporting the Wages not Weapons campaign, and promoting ‘a trade union vision of security based on decent work, quality public services, equality, climate action, democracy and peace’, a welcome and widely supported riposte to the idea that unions should passively ‘chase the money’ if it’s going into weapons manufacture and thereby reinforce the drive to militarism.

Motion C8 (BFAWU) called on the TUC to campaign for ‘the right to food to be enshrined in U.K. law’, ending food poverty and implementing a food and nutrition strategy while ensuring secure unionised jobs to replace unpaid labour.

Motion 55 (ASLEF) and 56 (TSSA) both addressed aspects of the much needed transformation of the rail industry.  Motion 55 won support for ASLEF’s Own Our Trains campaign, which calls for public ownership not only of U.K. rail operations but the rolling stock itself.  Motion 56 demanded guaranteed job protection for workers as they transition to Great British Rail, exactly the base demand that should be at the forefront of the energy unions approach, as well as every other sector of the economy.

In all, if Congress is more about checking the temperature of individual union commitments to action on different subjects than in placing actions on TUC itself, then this was a hugely successful year, showing that the Year of Trade Union Climate Action has had an effect, and that the now very real urgency of meeting the climate crisis is building the kind of cross sectoral action and solidarity that is desperately needed.

Link to TUC Congress 2026 home page, where you’ll find the agenda, motions and all other information:

And a direct link to the YouTube videos of proceedings.  The debate on Motion C14 can be found 1hr 25 mins into the Tuesday morning session. 

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