A Just Climate Transition

Sheffield TUC working for

Climate Justice

Sheffield TUC has focused on the wider sense of Just Transition:

• Climate jobs (jobs that reduce climate emissions)
• Supporting young people campaigning on climate justice
• Organising for an economy based on equity and wellbeing, not exploitation of precarious and low-paid workers

Sheffield’s history is linked to steel and manufacturing

• Arms manufacture - historically and now
• Huge job losses in steel in 1980s - “The crisis in the steel industry in the late 1970s was sharply felt in the Don Valley, with nearly 20,000 jobs lost between 1978 and 1981 alone. By 1988, British Steel’s local workforce had declined in number by 80%.”
• Forgemasters is seen as an iconic Sheffield steel company, but was sold to a US company. It has now effectively been renationalised to support development and production in nuclear and defence.
• Sheffield celebrates its offer: “An ‘innovation district like no other’ - the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (AMRC). Home to Boeing (largest aircraft manufacturer) who built a £40m factory & Rolls Royce contributing £12.2 billion to the UK economy.” AMRC employs 700 people.

Sheffield’s largest employers are in the public sector:

Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust: The second-largest NHS Trust in England, employing 16,000 people

University of Sheffield: employs just under 8,500 people

Sheffield Hallam University: The 11th-largest university in the UK, employing just under 4,500 staff

Sheffield City Council: Employs over 8,000 staff, including staff in schools.

AND

27,000 people work in IT & Digital media

15,700 people work in the creative industries

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Where do South Yorkshire people work now?

Although there is a high density of steel and manufacturing jobs in South Yorkshire compared to national averages, this does not equate to a huge number of jobs overall.

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BUT, in regional economic policy these jobs are seen as key, and public money is being used to subsidise and attract these jobs…

What does economic development look like?

The South Yorks Growth Plan says “our Growth Areas will attract income and investment which will increase the number of high-paying, secure jobs”.

The cost of attracting each job is seen as equivalent to roughly £200,000.

Sheffield Needs a Payrise

In the wake of the 2017 Resolution Foundation report, Sheffield TUC and the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union launched the Sheffield Needs a Payrise (SNAP) campaign, focusing on organising in low wage sectors like fast food.

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“The union movement desperately needs to innovate to remain relevant to low wage workers facing a changing nature of work which is becoming increasingly short-term and casual,” SNAP organiser Rohan Kon said.

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https://nowthenmagazine.com/articles/radical-roots-work-in-sheffield-past-present-future-working-class-industrial-revolution-low-pay-capital

2024 Conference - Climate Jobs and Climate Justice

Sheffield TUC and other union activists worked with South Yorks Climate Alliance to run a day school unpacking issues around climate jobs and climate justice - how does the South Yorkshire economy need to be transitioned?

Speakers and workshops on:

• Climate jobs in retrofit, transport, care for nature, care for people
• Community wealth building
• A worker-led transition for steel and manufacturing
• Meeting human needs globally instead of colonial extractivism

To be followed in April by events on needs-based economics and challenging the military-industrial-academic complex.

Strange allies..?

“When the government of the day is pushing the ‘growth above all’ narrative, it needs cities like Sheffield to demonstrate that not only is an alternative model possible – it is necessary,” he said.

“Taking its cues from other progressive cities around the world, Sheffield could and arguably should be prioritising redistribution above an outdated vision of trickle-down economics. Carbon reduction is a natural by-product of a shift from extraction and consumption to wellbeing and equity.”

Former South Yorks mayoral Net Zero officer, now working for UoS Grantham Centre.