UK Unions
and Labour Party Discuss Reclaiming Energy to Public Control
Forty gather
in Sheffield, England, to discuss different approaches to reclaiming
the power sector, addressing energy poverty, and honoring the
country's climate commitments.
Participants gather in Wortley Hall's Unite Ballroom
In late June 2018, TUED brought together UK unions and a number of
key allies for the latest in a series of discussions aimed at further
developing trade union approaches to taking energy in the UK back
under public, democratic control. These discussions took on fresh
urgency following the UK Labour Party’s commitment to reclaim the
energy system back to the public, first made in its May 2017 election
manifesto, For the Many, Not the Few.
The meeting, which took place June 28-29 at historic (and union
owned) Wortley Hall near Sheffield,
England, brought together representatives from key UK unions—GMB, UNISON, Unite the Union, PCS, TSSA, BFAWU, NEU, and the TUC—as well as policy and movement
allies. Unions from Norway and Greece also attended, as did energy
democracy advocates from Barcelona, Brussels, and Berlin. A full list
of attendees is here. The program is available here.
The Labour Party’s election Manifesto had pointed to the failures of
electricity privatization, to the problems of energy poverty, and to
the need to honor the UK’s climate commitments and put the UK on
course to meet 60% of its energy needs by zero-carbon or renewable
sources by 2030. It also committed to “take energy back into public
ownership to deliver renewable energy, affordability for consumers,
and democratic control” and called for the creation of “publicly
owned, locally accountable energy companies and co-operatives to
rival existing private energy suppliers.”
The Manifesto commitment was also endorsed at the UK’s Trades Union
Congress (TUC) in September 2017, when the congress voted unanimously to support the
Party’s position on energy, climate change, and just transition.
Key
Discussions
In opening the two-day meeting, TUED Coordinator Sean Sweeney
referred to the new political situation presented by Labour’s
impressive 2017 election results, Brexit, and the EU’s aggressively
neoliberal approach to energy and climate policy. Regarding public
ownership, he said:
There’s
a lot of programmatic work that needs to be done on this question.
There’s a lot of disagreement among different unions about various
energy sources. But what we have at the moment is a political
opportunity to rally behind the idea of public ownership, which has
the potential to shift the narrative across Europe. We have a
situation now where the public narrative is rising, not just around
energy but around other public services as well. This is a global
phenomenon.
Rebecca Long-Bailey, Labour Party
Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial
Strategy (BEIS) presented the current thinking within the party on
how to realize its energy and climate commitments. The session
provided an opportunity for those participating in the meeting to
discuss the party’s current policy direction, which focuses on
establishing a number of regional public energy companies.
Shadow
secretary Rebecca Long-Bailey outlines the Labour Party’s energy
vision
In
a written statement, UNISON expressed
concerns about regional public companies being expected to compete
against existing private retail companies. It was felt that adding
competitors to an already over-crowded market—where roughly 70
private retail companies already operate—would not be viable, and
would also put further pressure on existing retail workers’ jobs.
Other
important discussions covered issues of the overall energy mix, the
challenge of meeting winter heating needs, and replacement fuels for
the transport sector. John Storey of Unite the Union outlined key
issues arising around storage technologies in the face of an
increasing reliance on renewable generation, and highlighted the
crucial issue of jobs estimates, emphasizing the urgent need for more
detailed work in this area given wide variation in how these are
defined and counted.
Matthew Lay of UNISON and Stuart Fegan of GMB provided information on
the potential of hydrogen to play a role in the decarbonization of
domestic heating systems, since most of the gas burned in the UK is
not in the power sector, but in people's homes for domestic heating.
TUED’s John Treat presented the most recent data on UK transport
emissions—now the leading source of GHG emissions in the UK—as
well as on electric vehicle sales, drawing attention to their
marginal market position and limited potential to reduce
transport-related emissions.
The
meeting was also addressed by Costas Lapavitsas, Professor of
Economics at the University of London’s School of Oriental and
African Studies (SOAS) and former member of the Greek Parliament for
Syriza. Lapavitsas offered reflections on the challenges likely to
face any efforts to regain public, democratic control over energy as
long as the UK remains part of the EU single market, and on what
could change with the UK’s leaving the EU. His reflections drew from
the arguments and observations made in this May 2018 article
published by Jacobin
magazine, “Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour vs. the Single Market.”
Costas Lapavitsas
discusses challenges to energy renationalization under the EU single
market
Discussions
during the two days were frank and constructive, and those present
seemed to share a sense that the group made a very real and important
step forward in efforts to fulfill the Labour Party manifesto
commitment to reclaiming energy to public control.
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