Socialist change needed to guarantee jobs and climate action
Tom Ruddell, Young Socialists Scotland, Prospect Scotland Branch Executive Committee (personal capacity)
The Covid-19 pandemic has underlined the need for a socialist transition to end climate change, guaranteeing work or full pay for all.
wind turbine component fabricator goes under
While just last year millions took to the streets to demand climate action from government and business leaders, 500 workers at Burntisland Fabrications (BiFab) face unemployment as plans collapsed to fabricate £2bn worth of components at the site for the Scottish renewable energy sector.
The Scottish Government had previously invested £52m in BiFab but as the site hit economic difficulty during lockdown they declared there was “no legal route” to secure the future of the site due to EU state aid laws and the cheaper production of products overseas.
While these workers could be benefitting society by producing components for Scotland’s renewable energy transition, capitalism has thrown specialist equipment and highly-skilled workers onto the scrap heap the moment profits can’t be made.
The Scottish Government – who predicate their vision of independence on getting back into the same bosses’ EU who preside over anti-state intervention rules – has squandered an opportunity and shown itself unable to meet the needs of workers for employment and a sustainable future.
The Scottish Trades Union Congress (STUC) reacted to the announcement with “fury” and declared that the “Scottish Government’s reputation for consultation with workers and supporting the renewables supply chain is in tatters”.
The Scottish Government should remember that 500,000 marched in Madrid against the capitalist COP25 summit, and with just 11 months till COP26 in Glasgow workers will have gained no confidence that any deals will have their interests at heart.
Attacks on workers at Prestwick Aircraft Maintenance Limited
At the same time my union, Prospect, is representing workers at the Prestwick Aircraft Maintenance Limited (PAML) who experienced savage attacks on pay and safety in April. A key supplier for the budget airline Ryanair, PAML, unilaterally cut workers’ pay by 50% and refused to use the Job Retention Scheme, firing workers who refused to accept the terms.
Workers were forced to continue as-normal through the first pandemic lockdown putting workers and their families at significant health risk. A Prospect negotiator commented “PAML seem utterly unconcerned about the risks that they are asking members to take.”
Faced with the sudden development of 100 unionised workers and intervention from Prospect, PAML belatedly furloughed the majority of the workforce at 80% pay.
While this shows that the trade union movement is able to take defensive measures to protect workers’ rights, terms and pay, it also exposes the brutality with which capitalists will treat the working class when profits are at threat – and the unwillingness of the Scottish government to take adequate action on workers’ behalf.
Trade Unions must fight for the working class
While the situation faced by workers at PAML or BiFab may seem like just a product of the Covid-19 crisis, the workers’ movement knows from bitter experience that any stability under capitalism is an uneasy truce between the working and capitalist classes.
The capitalist mismanagement of society means the BiFab workers’ skills have been wasted – but trade unions should take urgent action to secure the jobs of these workers and the future of the site.
In 1976 trade unionists representing 18,000 workers at the Lucas Aerospace Corporation developed a programme to protect their jobs from cuts. The workers themselves developed the Lucas Plan – a truly democratic planned transition from producing military hardware to “socially useful products” such as medical equipment, renewable energy equipment and even battery-electric and hybrid transport technology.
The Lucas committee commented that the direction of society to maximise profit was the cause of “poor treatment of labour and more recently in racial discrimination, pollution of the environment and inability to achieve stability in the economy”. These words ring just as true today as they did 44 years ago.
Today the trade unions have limited themselves to case-work and have failed to demand that workers must not pay for the Covid-19 crisis. We should take inspiration from the ambitious Lucas Plan and organise fighting unions to put forward a socialist plan for society which guarantees work or full pay for all.
Socialist change needed to secure full work and take real climate action
Only a democratically planned socialist transformation of society to sustainable production can guarantee work or full pay for all while coordinating the action we need to avert the climate crisis.
Market logic sees the capitalist class directing production to maximise their profits, leading to ongoing extraction of fossil fuels and the piecemeal development of “green” technology.
While renewable technology is now an attractive investment for capitalists, in some cases cheaper per kWh than conventional thermal power plants, the BiFab betrayal underlines that workers are not guaranteed to benefit.
Socialist Party Scotland calls for the major productive forces in society to be taken into public ownership under democratic, working-class and trade union control and management.
Through public ownership of the economy and trade union organisation a comprehensive plan for the socialist transition of society to sustainable technology could be produced, ensuring that employment and conditions for the working class will be prioritised rather than cast aside.
Indeed, many trade unions are calling for a “just transition” where workers won’t pay the price for the climate crisis. With wasteful or polluting industries such as fossil fuels or aviation set to shrink, trade unionists call for workers jobs to be guaranteed through retraining and redeployment, without loss of pay, into green jobs like renewables, home insulation, recycling, public transport and sustainable land management. The impact to mining communities during Thatcher’s neoliberal transition to gas in the 1980s is a reminder of the stakes for workers.
Not only must this transition be “just” but it must be socialist. The Lucas Plan shows us a glimpse at the ambition and capability with which workers would approach the climate crisis if free from capitalist control – it is only when the latent talent of the working class is harnessed in the interest of all, not for profit, that we will make the progress we desperately need.
