- Conference
- 2024 National Delegate Conference
- Date
- 19 February 2024
- Decision
- Carried as Amended
Trade unions are indebted to the young people across the globe whose campaigning has brought this vital issue to the top of our political and bargaining agendas.
The legally binding commitment to get public services to Net Zero by 2050 is essential but inevitably comes with increased pressures on all services to make the necessary changes – some of which are already being implemented. This will mean that, in the public sector, climate change adaptations and mitigations will increasingly form part of our organising and bargaining agendas.
That more than 2500 civil society organisations including Public Services International (PSI), the first global trade union movement to do so, 700 parliamentarians, 101 Nobel Laureates and 100 sub-national governments and cities around the world have endorsed the call for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty (FFNPT), and that a bloc of 12 countries, including major coal producing nation Colombia, are seeking a negotiating mandate for FFNPT.
Climate change policy in public services is inextricably linked to policies on public health, the cost-of-living crisis, education and skills and almost all other areas of public policy.
Conference notes that the:
1)The UN Secretary General has said we are in a new era of global boiling with unprecedented extreme weather impacting every part of the globe with increasing frequency;
2)The International Energy Agency (IEA) states that to stay below the Paris Climate Agreement of 1.5 degrees celsius fossil fuel use must reduce by 25 % this decade and we cannot develop any new fossil fuel sites;
3)Working class in the UK and globally are already being impacted by the terrible consequences of climate change, through loss of lives, livelihoods, food, access to water, housing and accommodation, forced migration, unbearable working conditions and an intolerable burden on emergency services;
4)The Tory government has done little to safeguard workers or people from the impacts of climate change and, far from it, is advancing a narrative that seeks to make a virtue of weakening its commitments;
5)The Labour party began an election year pledging to spend £28billion a year on green investment. However, by February this had been reduced to £15billion, with Keir Starmer saying that “fiscal rules come first”. However, there are no fiscal rules on a dead planet.
Conference recognises that UNISON has members across all public services and that all are affected directly or indirectly by climate change and that this impact will only increase over the coming years. Examples of direct service group related impacts include:
a)Our Care Sector members – Our Care workforce is having to adapt to mitigations on transport that they can ill-afford as well as an increased workload in managing the increased health impacts on the people they care for;
b)Our Schools and Further Education members;
c)The costs of heating and cooling ancient school buildings is impacting on all budgets whilst in FE, climate change was a central part of this last year’s pay claim precisely because our members there are facing a huge overhaul of service delivery to meet the necessary skills training the government needs to mitigate climate change;
d)Our members in the in the health service are having to manage the increasing workload from the health impacts of excess heat or pollution as well as large scale transition planning to greener ways of working;
e)Our Energy members – National climate commitments to reduce reliance on fossil fuels will inevitably mean a transition to renewable energy sources. Our members in energy are rightly demanding a central seat in all discussions about the impacts of that transition away from fossil fuels. UNISON is clear that the transition must be fair, and our energy members need to be represented at every stage of any transition arrangements that will affect their jobs and skills;
f)Our members in Environment Protection – responsible for responding to the floods and droughts and other direct environmental impacts that erupt up and down the nations on an increasing frequent basis with reduced funding – they are absolutely at the frontline of what this means in the UK.
These are just some examples of areas affected with similar changes planned for cleaning our water, greening transport and environmentally sustainable housing as further examples of how necessary climate change related mitigations are affecting areas of our membership.
Conference also understands that climate change affects the most disadvantaged people and communities the most and that those that are most harmed are also those with the least voice and the least power to change the situation. That is true globally but also within the UK.
Impact on Women – women still take on a disproportionate burden of care giving –feeding, housing, and warming their families – all of which is becoming unaffordable directly linked to the global impacts of the climate crisis.
Impact on Disabled Members – Disabled people rely on cars more than other groups, this raises issues of affordability and accessibility for the transition to greener transport. Charging points for electric vehicles are being built that are unusable by Disabled drivers and create obstacles for Disabled pedestrians. Disabled people are less able to evacuate safely when an environment related disaster strikes such as flooding or fire and many health conditions are exacerbated by extreme temperatures or pollution.
Impact on Black members – As has been demonstrated by the ULEZ debates, Black members, and people in poorer urban areas, are disproportionately made chronically unwell from climate change related harms such as air pollution.
Impact on Retired members – Older people are less able to cope with the extremes of temperature caused by climate change and the inherent energy costs of trying to manage them.
Impact on Young members – Young people are not only victims of climate change, bearing the brunt of an uncertain and precarious future, they are also valuable contributors to climate action.
And LGBT+ members are not immune – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), is clear that all socially marginalised groups are disproportionately impacted.
Conference believes:
i)We need a rapid transition away from oil and gas to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown;
ii)Failing to take urgent measures to transition away from fossil fuels puts jobs at risk from sudden climate events or their economic consequences and foregoes opportunities to build in a timely way the larger skilled workforce needed across the whole economy without which decarbonisation cannot happen;
iii)Inequality and declining standards of living for working class people are explicitly locked into a fossil-fuelled market economy and austerity policies;
iv)The costs of transition to a decarbonised economy and society must not fall on those least able to pay;
v)Transition policies must be generated by state investment;
vi)A truly Just Transition leaves no one behind and includes vital recognition that public sector jobs are an integral part of a green future and must be invested in to raise pay and conditions to be seen as attractive employment opportunities in a zero-carbon economy.
vii)We must resist attempts aimed at using climate to divide working people; this only serves elites and distracts us from our common interest in jobs and a secure future;
viii) Political posturing on net zero policies does not help our class and we must fight for policies that address climate change and environmental degradation rooted in economic and social justice;
ix)Trade unions and workers in all sectors are central to transition plans;
x) Workers in other countries are our allies.
In recognition of the climate emergency, the role of trade unions, and the impact on members, conference agrees that UNISON should continue to play a key role in:
A)The social dialogue and workplace negotiations needed to deliver just transition across all workplaces – including supporting our own members and activists to engage on these issues locally;
B)The international and national policy debates about the best and fairest way of achieving decarbonisation;
C)The civil society movements that will keep leaders and governments on track.
Conference therefore calls on the National Executive Council to:
I)Recognise and embed Climate Change as part of its wider organising strategy;
II)Continue to work with service users, community, NGO and green alliances on public sector workplace climate policies as they are developed and announced, calling for greater public investment to secure a Just Transition;
III)Support each service group and sector committee to development a green bargaining and negotiating agenda at every level of the union;
IV)Update the Code of Good Branch practice to include the new Environment Officer role;
V)Support each Region to co-ordinate regional branch Environmental Officer network meetings and activities;
VI)Continue to pursue all outstanding, or ongoing, actions from the 2022 National Delegate Conference motion 93;
VII)Work with the Labour Link to campaign for the reinstatement by Labour of the pledge to spend £28billion each year on green investment;
VIII)Work with appropriate bodies to build combines within and across sectors, at the level of branches as well as nationally and globally, to develop common industrial strategies that contribute to a ‘whole economy’ approach to decarbonisation, including engagement with community and climate justice groups;
IX)Agree a UNISON year of Climate Activism by no later than 2026 with all appropriate organising and operational support to highlight and amplify UNISON’s response to the climate emergency and the role of the Environment Officer within branches;
X)Continue to work internationally to support the Global South and to ensure that a just transition for all is achieved for the public good and not private profit;
XI)To endorse the call for a FFNPT and engage with the Labour Party, via Labour Link, and other political parties to highlight UNISON’s support for the next UK Government to endorse the call for a FFNPT.
And to campaign for:
a)Policies to address climate change and environmental degradation that are in the interests of workers and communities, and a plan for the forms of bargaining and industrial action to achieve them;
b)Negotiated transition plans that guarantee protection for all workers in all sectors of the economy including across all equality strands, and as a minimum should cover jobs, wages, pensions, training and skills and trade union rights;
c)Public ownership of key sectors such as energy, water, transport, mail, broadband, education, health and social care;
d)A fair and progressive taxation system, accessing the wealth of one of the world’s richest countries without asking working people to pay for a crisis they did not create;
e)A National Climate Service to plan, coordinate, fund and ensure education/ training for the workforce necessary to undertake the rapid and wide scale transformation to a decarbonised economy;
f)Workers and their unions being directly and immediately engaged with government in designing and defining what the decarbonised industries and their workforces of the future look like;
g)Solutions to the climate crisis that are in the interests of workers and communities, not capital.
