The term
“Just Transition” is becoming increasingly prevalent in discussions involving
workers, climate change, and post carbon energy economics. Wikipedia describes
Just Transition as, “a framework that has been developed by the trade union
movement to encompass a range of social interventions needed to secure workers’
jobs and livelihoods when economies are shifting to sustainable production,
including avoiding climate change, protecting biodiversity, among other
challenges.”
This is
particularly timely given the fact that humanity faces a deepening crises due
to global warming, brought on by capitalist economic activity centered on a
fossil-fuel based economy. In order to prevent the absolute worst case
scenarios of what will almost undoubtedly a warming world, at least 80% of the known
fossil fuel reserves will need to remain unextracted, and humanity will need to
transition to a renewable energy based post-carbon economy. Such a shift will
inevitably require a massive transformation of the means of production, likely
affecting much of the working class.
Already we’re
witnessing the beginnings of major upheaval simply due to the innate
characteristics of chaotic capitalist market activity, as 100,000s of workers
jobs are imperiled by collapsing coal, oil, and commodities markets worldwide,
combined with just the beginnings of a major shift as disruptive technologies such
as wind and solar achieve greater and greater share of the mix of energy
sources now available.
Furthermore,
climate justice and/or environmental activists know—at least intuitively—that
the fossil fuel based economy, including all parts of its supply chain must be
shut down as rapidly as possible and replaced by ecologically sustainable
alternatives, and all attempts at expansion of the fossil fuel based activity must
be opposed, by any means necessary, including (but not limited to) direct action.
In this
context, the issue of jobs and just transition has become a major topic.
Obviously, shutting down any project cold (even if possible) would result in
the loss of jobs performed by the workers, who’re not responsible for the
activities of their employers (and quite likely do not entirely agree with
their employers’ motives). Even limiting such projects can potentially
negatively affect the workers’ livelihoods.
Given such a
threat, it’s understandable that these workers would oppose efforts by climate
justice and environmental activists to disrupt fossil fuel supply chains.
It’s not a
new concept.
In 1976
workers at the Lucas Aerospace Company in Britain set out to defeat the bosses’
plans to axe jobs. They produced their own alternative “Corporate Plan” for the
company’s future. In doing so they attacked some of the underlying priorities
of capitalism. Their proposals were radical, arguing for an end to the wasteful
production of military goods and for people’s needs to be put before the
owners’ profits.
One time OCAW
vice president, and later secretary-treasurer, Tony Mazzocchi first used the
term in the 1980s. According to Labor Network for Sustainability co-director,
Jeremy Brecher,
To provide a just transition for
workers harmed by environmental policies, Mazzocchi proposed the idea of a
“Superfund for workers.” The fund would provide financial support and
opportunities for higher education for workers displaced by environmental
protection policies. As Mazzocchi put it in 1993, “There is a Superfund for
dirt. There ought to be one for workers.” He argued that “Paying people to make
the transition from one kind of economy—from one kind of job—to another is not
welfare. Those who work with toxic materials on a daily basis ... in order to
provide the world with the energy and the materials it needs deserve a helping
hand to make a new start in life.”
Even before
that, IWW and Earth First! organizer Judi Bari—who successfully forged the
beginnings of alliances between radical Earth First! activists and dissident
timber workers against capitalist timber practices in north western
California—spoke the language of Just Transition, even though she didn’t use
the term. For example, when people raised the issue of timber workers’ jobs and
livelihoods as a potentially sticky issue that might arise as a result of
preserving the now protected Headwaters Forest old-growth redwood grove in
Humboldt County, Bari (in coordination with her timber worker allies) devised
the following set of demands that people (including timber workers) could
demand of the Maxxam controlled Pacific Lumber Company4 and the State of
California:
“(Estimating
that preserving Headwaters Forest would cost 200 jobs total)…the rehabilitation
of the Headwaters Complex forest lands…will only create about 100 jobs, based
on the estimates of people currently engaged in restoration work. Therefore, we
need to offer a way for displaced workers to opt out of the timber job market.
We propose a voluntary option plan for Pacific Lumber workers that includes the
following choices:
·
Priority
hiring for Headwaters restoration jobs, at logger wages.
·
Incentives
for early retirement.
·
Monetary
assistance for relocation and job search.
·
Scholarships
and monetary support for school or retraining.
· Low
interest loans for starting small businesses.
· Or,
if none of the other options are exercised, a lump sum severance payment.
These options
would be offered by seniority, with more value being placed on those options that
provide re-employment opportunities and less on the lump sum payment. By offering
this option package, the number of people competing for the restoration jobs
will be reduced to something in the neighborhood of the 100 jobs available.
Although displaced Pacific Lumber workers will have priority for hiring, some
non-Pacific Lumber workers with special skills in restoration work may also be
hired if necessary.”
Those with
union experience (like Bari) will immediately recognize the sort of language
that unions use in negotiations with employers over union contract language
and/or changing job conditions. It was Bari’s experience as a rank and file
union militant that gave her the insights and standing necessary to help Earth First!
(in northwestern California, at any rate) develop a class struggle perspective,
something that most environmental organizations and movements (including the
radical tendencies) have (until recently) sorely lacked.
As
capitalism’s ability to continue to “manufacture consent” (using the terminology
of Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky) has begun to erode, and as the stark reality
that capitalism and ecology cannot be reconciled has become much more readily
apparent to the 99%, there has been a growing class consciousness among at
least some climate justice and environmental activists (though there’s a long
way to go, of course).
Many such
activists now have begun to recognize that blocking individual pipelines, or
opposing the expansion of individual existing fossil fuel projects does not
address the root of the problem, and a systemic change is required to succeed.
Likewise, in doing so, they recognize the need for a mass based,
intersectional, class conscious movement that includes the support of (among
others) the very workers engaged in the frontline labor involved in the
targeted projects. They also have begun to understand that the employers deliberately
pit the workers against the activists, often by lying to these workers,
claiming that the environmentalists objectives—no matter how well intentioned—threaten
these workers’ very livelihoods (though, of course, these same employers shed
not a single tear when they lay off, furlough, automate, outsource, or downsize
their workforces in far greater numbers than would result from any
environmentalists’ activity).
More and
more, environmental and/or climate justice activists raise the call for “clean”
(or “green”) jobs to replace the dirty fossil fuel related work. They sometimes
(rightfully) point out that renewable energy (primarily wind and solar) supply
chains employ far more workers’ than the fossil fuel supply chain, and as
renewable energy usage increases (and fossil fuels, as well as nuclear fission
power are phased out), these differences will only become more stratified. Furthermore,
many of the skills possessed by workers employed in the fossil fuel / nuclear
power supply chain are entirely or almost entirely transferrable to renewable
energy jobs (for example, off shore oil platform workers could easily perform
the very similar jobs of maintaining offshore wind turbines. The workboat
pilots and deckhands could simply shift from transporting oil workers to wind
power workers to and from job sites. Building trades workers will likely
perform more or less the same duties no matter what it was they are building).
If entire
companies can be repurposed (as was the case of Toyota, which once primarily
manufactured weaving looms and now makes cars), workers can be “repurposed” as
well.
The problem
is that this, by itself, does not represent a “just transition” for the
following reasons:
(1) There is
no guarantee that the newly created green jobs will be made available to the
workers losing their dirty jobs;
(2) Even if
these jobs are available to said workers, there is no guarantee these workers
will be hired in order of their previous seniority, retain the same level of
benefits, or receive comparable and commensurate wages;
(3) Even if
the conditions in the previous point are met, since the solar and wind sectors
are new, these jobs tend to be nonunion;
(4)
Furthermore, since these new sectors are dominated by for-profit capitalist
businesses, newly emerging markets, the stability of these jobs is by no means
assured;
(5) It should
also be noted that the production, installation, and maintenance of these
“green job” creating facilities and infrastructure may not be entirely green
themselves. For example, the supply chain needed to produce this new technology
isn’t free of pollution or toxic byproducts (though such problems are generally
much, much less severe than is the case with conventional, “dirty” job
sectors), including that which can adversely affect the workers;
(6) Likewise,
there is no guarantee that these “green jobs” may still happen in an unjust
context, for example, the construction of a wind farm on indigenous land
without the consent of the peoples there may result in green energy and jobs,
but not justice;
(7) These new
jobs may also require relocation and uprooting of the workers’ and their
families from their existing communities.
A “Just
Transition” must address all of these challenges, following the example
suggested by Judi Bari, above. Furthermore, these efforts must include
representatives (or delegates) of the workers effected by such a transition, otherwise
the endeavor will no doubt be seen as outside agitation (and such fears will be
stoked by the employers who’ve every incentive to oppose the transition).
Several
groups, both ecological and labor, have attempted to address this problem
directly, including the following:
And several
unions called for “Just Transition”, including the United Steelworkers
(USW)—into which Mazzocchi’s OCAW merged, AFSCME, HERE, IBEW, IWW, ILWU,
National Nurses United, SEIU, Unifor (in Canada), and others—though such calls
have been inconsistent.
Recently, the
rank and file railroad worker in the organization, Railroad Workers United - http://railroadworkersunited.org adopted the following resolution specifically
calling for “Just Transition”:
Whereas, the
continued extraction and combustion of fossil fuels such as coal and oil has
been scientifically proven to represent a threat to the environment and the
future of the planet; and whereas, there is a mass movement domestically and
globally to radically reduce the continued use of such fuels to power economic
development; and whereas, other alternative energy sources – wind, solar,
geothermal, hydroelectric–are developing rapidly and appear to be the wave of
the future; and whereas, railroad corporations have traditionally hauled large
amounts of fossil fuel– especially coal–but the future of this traffic appears
uncertain or possibly even non-existent within a few decades; and whereas, the
burden of shifting from an economy based on fossil fuels to one based upon
renewal energy should not be unfairly born by workers, including railroad
workers; and whereas, to ensure that such a transition to alternative energy
does not create an economy of low paid jobs for working people-including
railroad workers-whose jobs could conceivably be threatened by such a
transition;
Therefore, Be
it Resolved that RWU supports a “Just Transition” to an economy based upon
renewal and clean energy; and Be it further Resolved that RWU demand workers
who are displaced from environmentally destructive industries be provided
living wage income and benefits through public sector jobs or a universal basic
income; and Be it Further Resolved that RWU demand that workers who are
displaced from environmentally destructive industries be provided with
commensurate rates of pay and benefits while retraining; and Be it Further
Resolved that RWU demands that fossil fuel extraction dependent regions such as
Appalachia be locations where investments of alternative energy are made to
offset the economic dislocations that workers and communities would face from
such a transition; and Be it Finally Resolved that RWU call upon the rail
industry and the rail unions to work together to move away from unsustainable
practices - specifically the hauling of environmentally destructive
commodities--and work towards expanding the railroads’ business prospects in
areas such as mail, passengers, trailers and containers, renewal energy
components, etc.
(Adopted by
vote on April 1, 2016 at convention)
Almost
simultaneously, a group of current and former Canadian tar sands workers
publically announced a new effort, called Iron and Earth -
http://www.ironandearth.org/, (whose logo graces the top of this document) which
calls for a just transition to a renewable energy economy.
The “green
jobs” envisioned under most Just Transition scenarios not only include
renewable energy workers, but other “green” jobs, including (increased) public
transportation workers, (increased) recycling and reuse workers, ecological
habitat restoration workers, urban and organic farm workers, and the like.
A further
challenge remains, however, and that is that, barring systemic change, even
these “green” jobs would still take place under an exploitative and
ecologically unsustainable capitalist system.
Climate
Justice activists, Eco-socialists, and/or Green Syndicalists must, or course,
be sure to request clarification on the specific definition of just transition.
Any transition that simply attempts to replace exploitative jobs under fossil fuel
capitalism with wage slavery under an allegedly “green” capitalism will neither
be just, nor will it likely be much of an actual transition (and, given
capitalism’s innate tendency to externalize negative consequences and its “grow
or die” imperative, ecological capitalism is inherently impossible).
It’s true
that there are more jobs to be had under a renewable energy based economy than
there are under a fossil fuel based economy, but capitalism cannot tolerate
full employment (it depends on a “reserve army of labor to depress wages).
And while
many studies demonstrate the feasibility of a 100% or near 100% renewable
energy (and motive power) based economy within the next half century (or sooner
under some more optimistic scenarios), such energy (and motive power) systems
will be far more decentralized and distributed. Capitalism tends towards
centralization of resources into fewer and fewer hands, however, and therefore
the capitalist class will resist attempts at decentralization of economic (and
energy) power into the hands of the many.
In fact, this
is already taking places as Investor Owned Utilities have pushed back against
feed-in-tariffs and other programs designed to encourage the spread of
distributed energy systems.
Lastly, it
cannot be forgotten that everyone deserves a right livelihood and access to the
means of production; one cannot simply limit their focus to the workers
directly affected by climate justice demands, but must also include all of the
non-capitalist class, because, surely, capitalism affects all. Likewise, Just Transition
in one isolated incidence does not address the need for universal systemic
change and workers’ control of the means of production. Just Transition can be
a start, but by itself, it’s not sufficient to be the finish.
Therefore,
there can be no truly “just” transition unless it involves the dismantling of
capitalism in favour of ecologically sustainable economic democracy. Such a
transformation would have to be deep and radical and necessitate a transition
to one form of ecosocialism or another. Capitalism and Just Transition are ultimately
incompatible with each other.
