What is a “Just Transition”?
The term “just transition” has been increasingly used in public discourse. Most recently, Workers’ Party Member of Parliament (MP) Dennis Tan called for a “just transition” within the petrochemicals industry, citing “disruptions to the talent pipeline” as an area of concern.
But what exactly is a just transition, and what might it look like in practice?
We begin by exploring the origins of a just transition as a concept. The concept of a just transition was born in the United States in the 1970s when Tony Mazzocchi, a trade union leader representing the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers’ Union, sought the support of environmental groups to help fight Shell over safety and health issues affecting workers. At that time, unionists acknowledged that the industries in which their members were working were causing severe environmental problems, and saw the need to phase out industries that were harming workers, community members and the planet. Other labour unions and environmental justice groups have since advocated for similar strategies.
Rather than a singular definition, the Climate Justice Alliance interprets a “just transition’’ as a host of strategies which aim to move away from reliance on diesel and extraction, and pave the way to renewable energies that align with principles of justice.
Based in North America, the Climate Justice Alliance proposes that a just transition can be defined as a shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy; to stop the bad while building the new. Just transition initiatives must change the rules: to redistribute resources and power to local communities; and to shift from top-down decision making to more democratic governance involving those who will be disproportionately impacted.
Job losses due to industry change are not unique to the energy transition. Collapses of industries both globally and regionally have occurred in the past for a wide variety of reasons, including relocation of production, collapse in demand and technological changes.
So, why should we care about fossil fuel workers? Generally there are two broad categories of arguments used to justify a “just transition”:
- Governments have an ethical duty to support affected workers because their work provides the fuel necessary for the country’s growth and prosperity.
- Climate change mitigation policies will face less political resistance if the affected workers and communities are accommodated for early on in the transition process (as a main consideration and not an afterthought!).
How might we centre labour justice and rights in a just transition?
- Community engagement: Engaging with workers at risk of displacement in the decision-making and benefit-sharing processes is key to a successful transition. Policymakers, academics and even advocates tend to take a top-down approach in making transition plans, often leaving out or even intentionally excluding workers’ voices and inputs. This also results in the politicisation of the energy transition, where a false binary of “jobs versus the environment” is created.
- Extensive support: When industries decline, workers need guidance to cope with the loss of livelihood and make plans for employment transition. Worker transition services can provide essential support for workers to identify transferable skill sets and up-skill. These often long-term services also include training providers and career guidance workers.
- Job creation and diversification: The government should understand the nature of emerging “green” jobs and create decent jobs for fossil fuel workers. This means jobs that are equally attractive to those in traditional industries, and which maintain prevailing wage standards and benefits. New jobs should be made accessible to people from a variety of backgrounds and skill sets, and provide possibilities for future progression beyond the renewable energy sector. What matters the most to workers are how secure the jobs are and how long they last in the face of dynamic energy markets.
What does a worker-led energy transition look like?
In Canada, worker-led organization Iron and Earth commissioned a survey with 300 Canadian residents working in the oil, gas and coal sector and found that 88% of fossil fuel workers are interested in training and upskilling to transition to a net-zero economy. The survey also showed that workers want and need skills training but face barriers to successfully transition.These barriers include reduced wages, losing their jobs or benefits, fewer working hours, and disruption to career pathways.
Iron and Earth has proposed the Prosperous Transition Plan calling on the Canadian federal government to implement four national initiatives and allocate their investments accordingly:
To this end, we ask: what might a just transition look like in Singapore, for Singapore?
And we are not the only ones. Youth organisations such as Singapore Climate Rally (SGCR) and Students for a Fossil Free Future (S4F) have been advocating for a just transition. In an article, Kumarr, a climate justice organiser and member of SGCR, remarks:
We are not interested in a green recovery that benefits capitalists if it is at the expense of the majority of the working class and other marginalised communities. A just transition is a green transition that centres the working class and marginalised communities as active agents of this change.
In a published report by S4F, students call on their universities to end ties with the oil and gas industry and pave a way forward by building more learning, employment and scholarship opportunities within the green economy. They, too, remark that an energy transition should not and must not come at the cost of our workers.
It is clear that youth have a vision for the future and are bolding leading us towards it, but a just transition requires vocal, principled leadership on the part of our policy-makers to do the same. Now, it seems that the lack thereof might be our biggest inertia.
