© godrick, istockphoto.com

Back in the mists of time, as callow trainee civil servant, I used to get shunted around the country to various locations to gain experience. At one far-flung outpost, I spotted a poster on a Union notice board protesting at “MISUSE OF TECHNOLOGY”. Intrigued, I read on and this evil technology was… word processing software. The Union was trying, and clearly failed, to protect jobs in the typing pool.

I think back to this every time I hear a senior Union figure like Louise Gilmour or Sharon Graham attacks the Government for its Net Zero policies and the impact on jobs in the oil and gas sector. Graham apparently supports Net Zero but you wouldn’t believe it from many of her outbursts. Her caveat is she wants a ‘just transition’, read: ‘a transition to a low carbon economy where no high carbon jobs are lost.’

Ever since the Luddites, dramatic changes in employment patterns have been resisted angrily by those on the wrong side of that change. That’s completely understandable, but the idea that society can progress without certain jobs becoming literally redundant is for the birds. Think of all the fletchers, farriers, nightsoil men, wheel tappers, lamplighters, elevator boys, town criers, chimney sweeps, highstreet photo developers, switchboard operators, video store clerks, and, indeed, typists. I’m sure all of them were mightily pissed off when they were handed their P45s, but they didn’t make front page news, unlike Net Zero where any downside causes uproar and the upsides get no notice whatsoever.

I’m not knocking the union movement here – I believe in the right to organised labour. And I understand why Unions have to take such a position, after all, you can’t turn around to your subs-paying members and say “Sorry, mate.” However, Graham in particular takes her protest to hyperbolic levels, calling for Government Minister Ed Miliband’s head. Maybe a red flag for Graham and Gilmour should be the way they are being egged on by rightwing free marketeers who despise the whole concept of unionised labour, and who portray Net Zero as socialism by stealth.

A ‘just transition’ does not and cannot mean ‘no transition’. The Unions have a key role in helping with reskilling – offshore oil workers to wind farm maintenance engineers, oil drillers for geothermal, gas boiler engineers to heat pumps etc. There are serious skills shortages in the green economy – and scope for new members as the sector develops.

Another practical consequence of Union resistance, is Miliband and predecessors feel obliged to keep shovelling public money into the bottomless pits marked ‘hydrogen economy’ and ‘carbon capture and storage’, both of which hold out false hope to those currently employed in the molecule-based energy economy. If he’s already getting it in the neck from the Unions despite this sop, he should cut his losses and put the cash into accelerating electrification.

The only thing you can predict in life is change and the low carbon transition is fast building a head of steam (!). Old jobs will go, new jobs will appear; that is the way the world has always been and always will be. Yes, Union leaders need to represent their members, but they also have to help the transition to a Sustainable future – their member’s grandchildren won’t thank them if they don’t.