All change at the Unite union
Are we finally seeing the unions offering genuine and unequivocal support for workers in the oil and gas industry?
To be fair, the GMB have long been consistent in refusing to indulge the Green activists. It hasn’t been the same in my own union, Unite. I had lost confidence in the leadership following the Renationalisation of Energy Report in February 2023, which appeared to have been authored by green activists — the ‘research’ was amateurish, even using articles from The Guardian as evidence. Worse, it was depressingly anti-fossil fuel, totally ignoring the jobs and tax revenues the sector provides.
The union’s leadership have been giving few grounds for optimism. Sharon Graham, the General Secretary has claimed that ‘eye-watering profits’ are still being made in the North Sea. This is crazy. The windfall of 2022, when prices and profits soared, is long in the past. But the windfall tax stays in place until 2030. Worse, some of the biggest companies in the North Sea are now lossmaking. It is no wonder that jobs are being shed at the rate of a 1,000 a month. If companies cannot make a profit they close and invest elsewhere. Graham’s chirruping on about ‘jobs, pay and conditions’ look daft in this light.
I thought it was significant that a GMB member was asked to introduce Rachel Reeves for her speech at this week’s Labour Party Conference. It suggested that both the union and the Chancellor are fully aware of the importance of the oil and gas industry, even if the Energy Secretary and my own union were not.
Or so I thought. However, just as I was about to despair of any change in their apparently dogmatic position, along came a Unite official, Cliff Bowen, who represents 35,000 oil and gas workers. In a speech to the Labour Conference, he announced that ‘Unite will no longer accept decarbonisation by deindustrialisation’. He was repeating what I heard last month at a Westminster demo by Lindsey Oil Refinery workers - ‘not transition but treachery from the Labour government’ - ‘Mr Miliband you accused the Tories of being anti-science, well you, Mr Miliband, in my humble opinion are anti-people’.
Although it’s too soon to say for sure, Cliff Bowen’s speech may be a sign that, at last, Sharon Graham is listening and, more importantly, acting.