TUC agrees radical proposals to tackle climate crisis

Delegates at TUC Congress voted for a motion which called for 'a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown'.

A placard with text reading "There is no planet B"

Delegates at this year’s TUC Congress have voted to support a series of radical measures to address the climate crisis. A motion backed by delegates called for ‘a rapid and just transition away from fossil fuels to prevent catastrophic climate breakdown’.

The motion was proposed by Unison and seconded by PCS. Among the proposals put forward in the motion were ‘negotiated transition plans’ to protect workers in all sectors of the economy, the establishment of a ‘national climate service’ to ‘plan, coordinate and fund education and training for the workforce and wide scale transformation to a decarbonised economy’, and mandatory environmental impact assessments on all proposals and decisions.

The motion also called for key sectors including energy, water, transport, mail broadband, education, health and social care to be taken into public ownership.

The discussion around the motion has been fraught, with long behind the scenes work being done to get a final text that a large proportion of the trade union movement could agree upon. While no union delegations ultimately voted against the motion, some did abstain – including Prospect.

Chris Jarvis is head of strategy and development at Left Foot Forward

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