Unions, Government and climate change

Dr Carla Lipsig-Mummi

Governments and unions must work together to meet the global warming challenge.
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In the European Union, 11 countries are studying the impact of climate change on future employment and training needs. Their strategies for new climate policy focus on "employment transitions", government investment and social partnership — with the unions as essential partners.

They believe that jobs growth will take place principally in the clean energy industries, but will only occur if there is significant government investment in training and employment transition programs for displaced workers.

Unions in Argentina, Belgium, Britain and Spain are incorporating environmental responsibility into collective bargaining and legislation to train workers as environment representatives, revising employment protection laws to recognise these responsibilities.

As Tony Maher of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union said in his address to the United Nations Climate Change Convention in Bali last year: "We are here to help. You need our help."

In Canada, two very different unions are embarking on changing the energy culture in their sectors. The railway workers of the United Transportation Union obtained government funding to train environmental stewards to spread environmental know-how throughout their membership, but the funding was put on hold when the Conservatives came to power. And in 2007 the Canadian Union of Public Employees endorsed a national policy of workplace energy auditing by its members: a bottom-up engagement.

In contrast to the EU, Canadian unions do not make social partnership a centrepiece of their strategy. But like the European and Latin American unions, Canadian re-examination of the workplace energy culture involves ordinary workers in large numbers.
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And it makes sense to turn to the trade unions. As the largest membership-based, public interest organisations, they are already examining the impact of warming on work, both in terms of the jobs of their members and in the public interest.

If we begin now to ask these questions as a society, and involve the public actively in finding answers, we have a fighting chance of constructing a fairer work world in the near future.

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