Nick: Ozzi, I know you're involved in movements of workers experiencing the transition and seeking to build a just transition. What’s your experience?
Ozzi: As I mentioned, in Trinidad and Tobago we are experiencing an unjust transition. We are still signing new oil production contracts with BHP Billiton, Shell, BP, while the jobs that are left are jobs that no longer have decent terms and conditions. It's almost as though there is a reversal back to the 1930s and 1940s, when workers had absolutely no rights in the energy sector.
Our union is working with Trade Unions for Energy Democracy to present an alternative, framed along what is called ‘the public pathway approach’. This looks to lay out a path that would extend public ownership of energy and build a new political economy consistent with the hopes and aspirations of many of us working in trade unions and social movements. This would mean the complete nationalisation of both the energy and power sectors.
History has made it clear that the current energy expansion is inseparable from capitalist expansion. This is what is driving the climate crisis and the breakdown of the world's ecosystem.
So, any viable and effective means of curtailing the energy expansion and mitigating the climate impact must involve taking control of how energy is generated and used. Control of energy is critical given technical realities and also from the perspective of political strategy. So, the struggle for energy can provide a clear focus for us in movements to strive for radical, systemic change.
Nick: Tim and Thea, as we push for a citizen-led, a worker-led, more democratic just energy system what do we need to grapple with? What do we need to change about the energy system?
Tim: I can’t add to what Ozzi says. He shows us so well that energy is not just a technical question of providing a certain number of gigawatts, but it is where our politics is being organised and where questions of justice and social justice are at stake. And that political awareness has not been there in various moments in the past and therefore its re-emergence is quite promising given the scale of the transition that we've got to go through.
Thea: I want to circle back to something I was saying earlier, which is about the hesitance of capitalist investors to invest in renewable energy, which leads to public subsidies of privately owned infrastructures. This raises the question of why not cut out the intermediary. If the public purse is already subsidising and passing major legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act in the US, in order to get any of this transition going, why don't we think about direct public ownership of generation capacity, ownership of the wires and cables of distribution?
In New York State, for example, I've worked on research that supported the Democratic Socialist of America’s (DSA) campaign that succeeded in passing legislation that empowered a state-owned entity that owns generation capacity to buy more renewable capacity and to help decarbonise public buildings. The question of ownership is critical now because it's very apparent that we can't rely on the profit motive to decarbonise as quickly as the climate science demands.
A second answer lies with labour unions and labour militancy. In the US, a few years ago, we had an important development when the United Mine Workers that represents coal miners finally officially endorsed a just transition. This is critical, because a just transition requires organising workers who want a transition and to organise around it so that they benefit from it, rather than delaying a transition, being fearful of it and allying with their bosses.
Recently we also had this major, important, very militant and creative strike organised by the UAW, United Auto Workers that sought to make sure that workers are in the driver's seat, pun intended, of the Electric Vehicle (EV) transition, because the EV transition can work out in all sorts of ways for workers. There are fears of layoffs, of automation, precarisation. But the UAW decided to be a protagonist, and won tons of amazing contracts that ensure that battery workers and EV workers will have the same kind of standards as traditional auto work.
It’s an example of what can happen when unions organise less on the defence of protecting jobs and dirty industries and more on the offence of shaping the kind of renewable energy transition they want. This is not to say that it's not still a very asymmetric battle with corporations and bosses, but I think it lends itself ultimately to more power for workers.
Nick: Ozzi, I wanted to give you the final word. We have a lot of readers of this publication who are involved in energy struggles, up against very entrenched systems of power. What is your message to them?
Ozzi: Well recently, OWTU with other unions of the global South launched TUED South, to show that there is a plausible and legitimate alternative of a public pathway to the existing and failing privatised decarbonise approach. My message is that we must never stop demanding system change.
The demands for system change are the only just responses to tackling the climate crisis. When we transitioned to capitalism, it had a negative impact on the environment. So, what is required is to transition out of capitalism for the vast majority of countries, and especially in the global South.
Without strong and progressive interventions from the public sector, many of the interventions to reduce emissions will not be possible. An effective progressive just transition will require a well-resourced public service sector. Struggles around the world have shown that it is still possible to make a difference, that human society can transition and be reorganised to protect our planet, and at the same time protect the livelihood of those who inhabit it. That's my message.