Strike Action and the Green New Deal
How do workers ensure fair treatment while advocating climate action?
Walking down the street as a child is easy to forget; often you are in a world of your own without the need nor want to care where you are going. As a young boy being brought to my first May Day, I marched alongside union workers and comrades celebrating International Workers Day but all I really remember that day was feeling hard-done-by and overtired.
I felt so small, my head was barely above most people’s kneecaps, and it was clear to me how much easier it was for the adults around to walk the same journey – of course, the irony was lost on me at the time. In our current economic system, it is workers going home hard-done-by and overtired, working in an economy that perpetually fails to deliver their essential needs and erodes their human rights.
An issue many take with our current system is the lack of protections in place. Workers are protected from basic levels of discrimination, but if you speak to someone in low paid work or have done it yourself – the objectification of workers is surface level. Every year around Christmas a social media post will make the rounds, in which, a minimum wage worker will be told sickness over the Christmas period is a sackable offence.
A contrarian would claim that anecdotes like these are taking an argument to its most extreme to prove a point and are disingenuous, however, workers’ rights being on the fringe of being infringed is commonplace. In fact, the 2020/21 period showed an increase of 13% in outstanding workplace tribunals, a situation only excaserbated by Covid-19.
Trade unions in Britain have a long history, with much of it being oppression at the hands of those in power. During WW1, roughly 38% of Britain’s pre-war male labour force were enlisted to the military. Following on from the war, the British government were faced with a radical working class that were trained in military tactics and making demands for universal suffrage and parliamentary democracy- very quickly, concessions began to be made to Britain’s workers.
By 1920, the working class had seen improvements to health, education, suffrage, and anti-discrimination laws through new legislation. These small concessions made by the ruling class have allowed working people to demand further improved conditions over the last century and brought about changes to society that go unnoticed.
The Green New Deal has been a huge focus of the mainstream media for several years and has become the go-to term used for over-arching green policy decisions. The 2019 EU elections were won under the banner of a ‘European Green Deal’ and have so far introduced measures to halt the introduction of any emission-producing cars by 2035. The EU have similarly made commitments regarding the reduction of reliance on fossil fuels- however there has been little action dedicated to social justice for low-paid workers in EU countries.
Although still far from perfect, the Scottish government’s decision making on the environment and the Green New Deal includes radical reform. There has been a focus on transport and housing with ScotRail set to become nationalised in the first half of 2022. Despite the large strides Scotland has made in these areas, there are huge problems left in unsolved.
In the weeks leading up to COP26, Glasgow was facing strike action in key industries – cleansing and railway. Under the COSLA umbrella, SNP-run Glasgow City Council’s cleansing workers went on strike for over a week to secure a review of salaries for workers on the lowest pay grade- 10,000 workers earning less than £20,000 per year. Unions are looking to ensure that Scottish ‘key workers’ are being handed fair pay and conditions for the key work they have done during the pandemic.
Jennifer McCarey, Chair of Glasgow Trades Council, Regional Organiser Unison (Education), she said: “Initially when people think about a Green New Deal from a Trade Union perspective, they’re thinking in terms of a ‘just transition’ with their jobs, so transitioning from oil and gas and how we do that and how we look after people in those industries. I think now, our learning has become far more developed on that, and we are far more focused on a transition for all of us, in all our lives. In the past a trade union demand would have been about a just transition for workers in industries that are considered to be of the past or industries that are large contributors to the environmental problem.
“Transport and housing are some other things we are focused on with the Green New Deal. Transport is something that causes a huge amount of emissions in the city centre in Glasgow at the moment. We also need improved access to and mobility when it comes to transport- this is inherently a class issue; the majority of Glaswegians don’t have cars. Particularly, we have an issue with peripheral estates and housing schemes and access to public transport is a huge issue in these communities – they rely massively on bus services that are privatised and cost a huge amount of money to the lowest earners in our cities.
“The flexibility that is needed to get a job in today’s working environment, you need access to get flexibly across cities, to get from Parkhead to Braehead for example, that is the reality of the interconnection our public transport system is lacking. Publicly owned public transport is the only way to provide a system that delivers not just a cut down in emissions but also a reduction in fares. Bus travel usage is going down in Scotland and it’s going down in Glasgow- that is an absolute failure. The one place that bus travel is going up is Lothian which is a publicly owned bus company – they have low fares, and they serve the people better.
“I would go as far as to say that we need to transition to free public transport, that should be our ambition and we should build strategies and plans around that. Free transport for under 22’s and over 60’s is a good starting point, but I think that an overall free system of public transport should be the goal.
“Another key demand is housing- having efficient heating systems that don’t cause emissions but also having houses that are insulated and secure and efficient in how they run. This is a massive issue of poverty in Scotland, and it is a huge contributor to emissions. We need a retrofit of houses domestic heating systems in this country which would result in a public works strategy.”
The lowest earners in Scotland are suffering, there’s an environmental crisis hanging over heads, a job market that is only set to get more competitive and an economic system that ensures their marginalisation from society. There is no way to fix the problems facing this country and this planet by using the same methods that got us here in the first place. There has been no time in history demanding more radical change from our governments, the time is now to guarantee workers a safety net from Green New Deal and that begins with improvements to the lives they lead in the houses they live.