Transport workers must take responsibility for tackling climate change, participants at a historic meeting said yesterday. The call came at the ITF’s first-ever climate change conference, held in Mexico City on the eve of Congress, in which speakers urged the ITF to develop sustainable means to achieve emission reductions from the transport industry.
According to a widely supported motion before Congress, the process would require “fundamental changes in the current system of globalised production which relies on global supply chains, low transport costs and cheap and increasingly casual labour”. It would also require a bigger role for public transport.
The motion insists, however, that the ITF would never accept that the transition to a low-carbon society should take place through increased unemployment and the undermining of wages and working conditions. It adds: “A just transition therefore has to involve job creation, decent work and quality jobs, a radical redistribution of wealth and social security schemes which safeguard people’s livelihood and social and human rights.”
ITF advised it was committed to building alliances to promote a just solution to the problem of climate change and would continue to work with global unions at international level for the forthcoming United Nations climate change conference in Cancún in November and December this year. http://www.itfglobal.org/news-online/index.cfm/newsdetail/4838
(advice ITF media)
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