‘Labour in Peril as Just Transition Hits Cul-De-Sac’ 25 November 2021

In moving to a low-carbon economy, South African workers may lose out as unions weaken and renewable energy components continue to be imported at the expense of local jobs. After years of promises but still no guarantee of jobs in renewable energy, unions hoping that their members will retain their employment if they cling to fossil fuel industries might miss the chance to negotiate a just transition. An estimated 92 230 people are employed in coal industries, according to the Minerals Council South Africa figures from 2019. Climate change labour experts have warned that a just transition from a carbon-intensive economy to a low-carbon economy will devastate hundreds of thousands of workers in the energy and fossil fuel sectors. This is unless workers bargain collectively for binding contracts that put each of them on "a pathway to an equivalent job of good quality" in the renewable energy sector.

…In other projects, private companies that bid said it would be necessary to import skilled staff for the majority of jobs, including operating and maintenance, with only low-skilled work set aside for locals. "As the promised jobs did not materialise with the renewable energy independent power producer procurement (REIPPP) programme, the initial anxieties [of workers] morphed into opposition. The dominance of multinational corporations in the REIPPP programme, the failure of the localisation programme and the dismal building of a local sector producing renewable energy technologies meant that there were no new battalions of workers that were joining unions and that had a stake in the emergence of a clean energy sector," say Aroun and Sikwebu. An unjust energy transition can only be avoided if the government includes workers in its plans. These must include establishing renewable energy component factories to which workers in fossil fuel industries will be transferred, they say.

…Labour could also be taking steps to improve its position in the looming and inevitable transition, says University of the Witwatersrand emeritus professor of sociology Jacklyn Cock. Unions have failed to align with mining-affected communities and other social movements, which continue to mobilise against coal mines on their own. In the Palgrave handbook, Cock says labour has not had any formal working relationships with community organisations for the past 10 years. "The NUM is resuscitating the old jobs-vs-environment binary. But a lack of preparation is also evident in the labour movement. Some unions, such as the Fedusa affiliates and Solidarity, are largely silent on climate change," she says. The unions generally fail to organise power station workers who are on short-term contracts or working through labour brokers. There are an estimated 2 300 such workers at Eskom's Hendrina power station alone. Unless labour "reclaims its power and establishes closer connections with the environmental justice movement, coal workers and mining-affected communities, the case of South Africa could demonstrate what an unjust transition looks like", says Cock.