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Leading Off: A Transition Authority In Oz—Principles

We noted last year the creation of a taskforce in Australia that would eventually lead to the setting up of a Just Transition scheme. Importantly, the nationwide labor federation, the Australian Council of Trade Union (ACTU) was, and is, playing a key role in setting the framework.

We thought, upon re-reading, the ACTU principles were concise and valuable as a thought-provoking set of goals and a check-list to measure a nation’s approach to “high bar” Just Transition:

a) No worker or community left behind

A just transition means the risks and benefits of the transition are shared equitably across Australian society. For
affected energy workers and communities, that means guaranteeing access to secure jobs and ensuring regions don’t fall victim to economic stagnation.

b) Good jobs

New jobs created in energy regions, including in clean energy and sustainable manufacturing, must be good, secure union jobs, with fair wages and safe working conditions.

c) Safe climate

A just transition must reduce Australia’s emissions in accordance with the Paris Agreement in order to preserve a safe
climate and safeguard workers and communities on the frontlines of the climate crisis.

d) Fair warning

Energy facilities must be required to announce closures with enough forewarning to allow adequate
preparation and planning.

e) First Nations justice

Per the principles of the First Nations Clean Energy Network, First Nations communities must be full participants in
the clean energy transition, with ready access to jobs and investment, and the ability to secure equitable arrangements
for large scale renewable projects on their lands.

f) Seize the opportunity

A just transition must identify, invest in, and expand opportunities to realise Australia’s potential as renewable energy
and clean exports superpower, with a particular focus on directing funds to develop new industries and deliver training to workers toward regions most affected by the energy transition.

g) Listen to workers and their communities

Worker and union voices are essential to executing a just transition, and must be centrally incorporated in every stage and
scale of the process.

h) Diversify the workforce

Prioritise diversifying the workforce in the creation of new industries in energy regions, with a particular focus on
increasing access to quality jobs for women and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers.

i) Invest in training and skills

A just transition requires long-term investment in the programs and institutions that will prepare workers for participation in the clean energy economy.

j) Bottom-up and top-down

To succeed, transition coordination must combine place-based economic planning driven by local and regional stakeholders
with federal oversight, regulation, funding, coordination, and expertise.

k) Proactive not reactive

Plans for worker support, retraining, and economic diversification must be developed and initiated well in advance of facility closures, not in response to them.

l) Long-term leadership

The federal government and all stakeholders must commit to engaging in a coordinated process of structural adjustment that will last for the next several decades.

m) Social dialogue

Governments, employers, workers, and their unions must engage iteratively at all stages and scales of the process to achieve a just outcome.

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Spotlight: Did You Forget Something?

This is a very short observation on a truism: often what is left out in a policy is more instructive than what is included.

We read the entire 2024 analysis of the International Energy Association. To be sure, the IEA has a specific focus on the energy trends globally. But, it boasts: “We provide authoritative analysis, data, policy recommendations and solutions to ensure energy security and help the world transition to clean energy”.

Yet, in the entire 170-page document the question of how the transition to clean energy will effect workers is not mentioned. Not once.

It’s not possible to project the path of the energy mix, in any country, without incorporating the labor element because, perhaps obviously, how countries transition their energy uses isn’t simply a technology or neutral market issue. At every step of the way, governments will have to react to societal needs and pressures. Thus, folding in labor as an element of a long-term project is a must—not just morally but economically, if you pretend to be authoritative.

Do better, IEA.

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Ideas: Unions Are The Key To A Good Climate Policy

When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency teed up a set of rules to juice electric vehicle sales ten-fold, it wasn’t a bad step. However, we also note that the fine print mentioned in passing [the underlined emphasis has been added], and it tells us a lot about the divergence between political rhetoric versus sound policy:

The transformation could also spell economic dislocation for American autoworkers, as electric vehicles require fewer than half as many laborers to build as gasoline-powered cars.

“We’ve dealt with the loss of jobs before through technology, but when you talk about the speed of this, it’s hard to fathom that we won’t lose jobs,” Mark DePaoli, a leader of United Auto Workers Local 600, said in a recent interview at the union headquarters near the Ford Rouge manufacturing plant in Dearborn, Mich.

Job losses in the auto industry could have political consequences for Mr. Biden, who will need voters in industrialized states like Michigan and Ohio if he chooses to run for a second term. As they have worked on the new regulation, administration officials have held weekly telephone calls with union leaders to try to reassure them.

Mr. Biden, a self-described “car guy” who campaigned as “the most pro-union guy you’ve ever seen,” has repeatedly tried to present the transition as an economic opportunity, emphasizing that it will create new jobs in a clean energy economy.

“We’re going to build a different future with one — one with clean energy, good-paying jobs,” Mr. Biden said in a speech last summer. “We have to keep retaining and recruiting building trades and union electricians for jobs in wind, solar, hydrogen, nuclear, creating even more and better jobs.”

Mr. Biden has worked to ensure that only American-made electric vehicles would qualify for tax incentives provided by the Inflation Reduction Act — although a requirement that they be assembled by union workers was dropped.

Because the idea of “good-paying jobs” appeared to be slotted to build industries *without* a firm embrace of unions, it is a curious, to put it mildly, juxtaposition. Roughly two-thirds to 70 percent of the U.S. economy (as well as most other advanced economies) is dependent on consumer spending. That would require that people have enough money to make ends meet and pay their bills—and every statistic will show you that only a union-wage job has any prayer of providing that income to the average worker.

Perhaps this policy should be assessed in the context of the successful strike by the U.S. United Auto Workers, which, among other advances, pulled in under the master contract the electric battery joint ventures stood up between the Big Three and non-union entities. It perhaps is a further sign that successful Just Transition can only be done with unions in a collective bargaining arena, not public policy that ebbs and flows.

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Opinion: The High Road Just Transition Is Possible

By Jonathan Tasini

One of the hardest tasks we all grapple with in life is seeing the links between the challenge right in front of us, then, understanding how we found ourselves with the specific challenge and, finally, how the hell we get out of the pickle.

The challenge facing workers throughout the world is quite simple: how to change an economic system that has robbed workers of their labor for more than a century and create a new paradigm on a livable planet? This is certainly no easy task given the imbalance of power between capital and labor, and, especially, as unions struggle to maintain a foothold in many countries. It is also curious and, to put it quite mildly, self-defeating that captains of industry and politicians laud the concept of economic “growth” but hold back the wages to make economic growth a reality for the vast sea of workers in every corner of the globe.

How did we get here? Well, in short, it’s the Wal-Mart model embedded in most economies, buttressed by the growth of global supply chains and so-called “free trade” agreements. That model is, in fact, the organizing principle for the large majority of businesses globally: pay low wages with very few benefits, if any. As well, core to the Wal-Mart model is a determined, aggressive, well-funded anti-union philosophy.

An honest viewpoint would admit that getting out of this morass, and rejecting the Just Transition low road, is not an easy task given the weakness of unions around the world.

But, there are small levers to be pushed when the opportunity arises in the conversation about the “green jobs” of the future. Here is one:

Walmart Inc plans to have its own network of electric vehicle charging stations by 2030 to tap into the growing adoption of EVs in the United States.

The new fast-charging stations will be placed at thousands of Walmart and Sam’s Club stores, alongside nearly 1,300 it already offers as part of a deal with Volkswagen unit Electrify America, one of the country’s largest open public EV networks.

And [the emphasis in bold is added]:

Kapadia said Walmart would start deploying chargers independently and consider applying for federal funding later.

In the past, we have noted that Volkswagen has a very strong unionized workforce in Germany but, it assumes a harsh anti-union posture when doing business in the U.S. similar to all the other so-called “transplant” automakers (including Mercedes-Benz and Nissan).

So, let’s draw this story tightly together and make clear: there should not be any public funding or tax benefits for the Wal-Mart project, either directly or through Volkswagen, unless there is an iron-clad, enforceable commitment to allow workers to freely choose a union.

Tying public funding to defanging anti-union companies may not qualify as an earth-shaking example of Archimedes and the Law of the Lever. But, no option, narrow as it might seem, should be passed on in the effort to inscribe a fair future for workers.

Tasini is the founder and executive director of Just Transition For All

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Links

Stand Up Tesla: a site for Tesla workers to sign an Authorization Card to join the UAW.