ILPC 2027

Environmentalists have generally presented the decarbonisation of the electricity grid as an opportunity to promote and expand the market for ‘green jobs’ in the context of a ‘just transition’. In the UK, the ‘One Million Climate Jobs’ (2014) report from the Campaign against Climate Change, a trade union coalition, extolls the virtues of wind generation and its job creation role.

The UK trade unionists most closely associated electricity generation, Unite and GMB, the Engineering Construction arm of the UK construction trade unions, have observed that renewable projects operate in distinctly different ways from traditional power station construction and maintenance and will require new ways of organising if these ‘green jobs’ are to be unionised.

The UK government is pledged to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 80% by 2050.  Electricity generation is responsible for 25% of UK GHG emissions (Oxburgh, 2016) and since coal and oil have the highest carbon content of fossil fuels, power generation is moving to gas and nuclear with long-term plans for renewables to fill any resulting gap in the market. Renewables range from domestic photovoltaics and solar hot water, through to on-shore and off-shore wind farms. In contrast to centralised large-scale megawatt power stations, the smaller scale and localised nature of renewables changes the context of the labour process.

There are fundamental differences between the construction and maintenance of a traditional power station and the installation and maintenance for distributed generation. For wind farms these differences include the use of factory assembled, pre-wired wind turbines, where the construction process is essentially one of erection and connection. In contrast, power stations are constructed by a welders, electricians, scaffolders, insulators, steel erecters, etc. The on-site fabrication of components, along with on-going maintenance, is supported by a ‘working rule agreement’ covering qualifications, hours and wages. Whilst carbon capture and storage (CCS) has been proposed for carbon-intensive fuels, there has been little advancement in its roll out. Working CCS plants remain the exception with most projects at the research and development stage or, as in the UK, cancelled for lack of funding (DECC, 2015).  Whilst oil and coal-fired power stations are closing the move from large-scale projects with sizable workforces that guarantee collective bargaining will entail new strategies to adapt to changing demands if a just transition is to be achieved.

The research methodology employed is based on interviews with trade unionists and employers in both the traditional and renewables sectors informed by a literature review of future scenarios and their potential transition pathways (Hampton, 2014). The paper explores the impact of renewables on the labour process.

References

Campaign against Climate Change Trade Union Group (2014) One million climate Jobs - Tackling the Environmental and Economic Crises.

DECC (2015) HM Government Statement to Markets Regarding Carbon Capture and Storage Competition. Online: http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/news/market-news/market-news-detail/other/12597443.html Accessed 21/10/2016

Hampton, P. (2014) Workers and Trade Unions for Climate Solidarity: Tackling Climate Change in a Neoliberal World. Routledge, Abingdon.

Oxberg, R. (2016) Lowest cost decarbonisation for the UK: the critical role of CCS. Report to the Secretary of State for BEIS.