Trade Unions and Just Energy Transition by Zwelinzima Vavi Nedbank - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Trade Unions and Just Energy Transition by Zwelinzima Vavi Nedbank / EE Publishers Seminar on: “Unlocking a just energy transition for SA”

The context of the just transition debate

• Historic improvements to the lives of millions
• Electrification
• Water with a 93.2% of the population with only 66.4% access to

sanitation facilities

• Increased access to health and education
• Basic rights of movement and expression
• Collective bargaining
• Democratic elections
• Yet persistent economic challenges threaten the gains and present a

mammoth challenge

2

Unemployment, inequalities, poverty and slow growth

• Unemployment at an appalling 37% with 10 million people excluded from

any economic activity

• 52% of our kids below the age of 25 are not at work, school or any training
• 54.3% of the population lives in poverty in 2011
• But that was based on a R779 per person
• Today based on R1042 per person per month, poverty is at 63% of the

population

• 14 million people go to bed hungry every day
• SARB expects growth in 2018 at 0.7%, 1,7 in 2019, 2.0% in 2020 and 2.2%

in 202

• Population grown is around 2%

3

Deindustrialisation and worsening wages and working conditions

• A decline in manufacturing output from 23% of GDP in 1994 to around

11/12%.

• The rise of precarious jobs and destruction if quality jobs
• Wages of workers have been kept low with median salary at R3033 in

2014 but the NMW put it at R20 an hour or R3500 if you have an 8 hour 5 days working week

• Income inequalities are at world records beating levels.

4

Racial and gender inequalities

• Painfully slow progress in reversing the inherited racial and gender

inequalities

• More than 65% of all new promotions to senior management are still

going to white people and 75% of senior management remains white

5

In the real world we are on a knife edge

• Millions feel excluded, angry and frustrated in a society where only the

rich get richer

• The poor are asking if democracy only serves the wealthy, especially

white monopoly capital

• The masses are beginning to ‘sulk’ as Frantz Fanon described a

resignation from the politics - only 50% of the voting population voted in

• 2014. We told a third of the registered will not vote
• This ticking bomb continues to tick , with our cities surrounded by a ring
• f fire.

7

Disarray in the state

• Our public institutions and many SOEs are in complete disarray
• Eskom, which cannot keep the lights on
• SAFA accused of $10m bribery
• PetroSA, the SABC and SAA have problems
• In SARS, SAPS, Intelligence Service, Hawks and IDIP

, top officials are accusing each of illegal spying and are being paid off with huge golden handshakes to keep silent.

• Risk of becoming a failed & unaccountable state, driven by

parasitic capitalists and politicians.

• The cancer of corruption, and the failure to bring more than a

handful of those responsible for it is the most extreme expression of this disease

12

• The term emanated from USA labour movement in the efforts of the Oil Chemical

and Atomic Workers Union now part of United Steelworkers. They negotiated a superfund for workers when 14, 000-acre Ciba Geigy Chemical felicity in New Jersey was closed down in the mid 1980s after its toxic foot print attracted

• pposition from environment groups and government.
• Some unions use the term to express concerns of specific category of workers
• n the impacts of climate and environmental policies
• But progressives used it to describe a broader and deeper socio economic

transformation - societal shift to a sustainable, low carbon economy or a zero carbon world over a period of years

• Transformation must reflect an appreciation that there will be a deep

transformation of the current one because it is not sustainable

• It should be a serious attempt to mitigate the impact of emissions but to also help

communities to adapt in a transition

What is just transition?

More on workers and just transition

• SAFTU and progressives strives to develop a just transition that talks

to here-and-now - worker focused transitions but a need for a deep economic transformation of the entire economy.

• It is this context that I started to paint a picture of economic

stagnation, increasing levels of deindustrialisation, joblessness, poverty and inequalities

• A union that ignores this context in its engagement is digging its own

grave, but also a union movement that ignores the environmental and climate change imperatives will be irrelevant to society

• Thats what unions must bring to the United Nations Framework

Convention on Climate Change (UN-FCCC)

Social dialogue Or Social Power

• Social dialogue and social power must bring the two interconnected

concepts - worker focused transition and socioeconomic transformation comprehensive and integrated approach

• This must happen at local, national and international platforms
• Social power includes the ability to restructure global political economy: it

must reject the current arrangements of power, ownership and profit and we not for the so-called win-win with is the chicken and the pig partnership to make breakfast

• A union that ignores this context in its engagement is digging its own grave,

but also a union movement that ignores the environmental and climate change imperatives will be irrelevant to society

• Thats what unions must bring to the United Nations Framework Convention
• n Climate Change (UN-FCCC)

Energy is the main source of emissions

• Energy makes the largest contribution to global GHG emissions

through the burning of coal, oil, and gas.

• Even ahead of the Paris talks, IEA’s former executive director

Maria van der Hoeven asserted that “keeping temperature increase below 2ºC will require a revolutionary changes (to the global energy system)

“Revolutionary changes” in energy

Energy is makes the largest contribution to all GHG emissions through the burning of coal, oil and gas. IEA predict a 30% increase by 2040

Decarbonisation pathways

Emission reduction requirements to remaining within the 2ºC

Economic impact of carbon tax, renewable & current economic policies

G.1. The economi mic c impact ct of the carbon tax Econometrix used a number of economic models, together with its assumptions, to predict the potential impact (cost) that the introduction of a carbon tax could have (all figures are approximate): Slow GDP growth by 0.3% to 0.4% per annum, thus reducing the size of the GDP by 2030 with between 4.4% to 6.2%, or R213 billion to R300

• billion. 1.1 to 1.5 million fewer jobs would be created by 2030. The

number of dependents affected could total 4.2 million to 5.7 million.

• Slow mining GDP growth by 0.2% to 0.3% per annum, thus

reducing mining GDP by 2030 with between 3.5% and 
5%, or R11 billion to R16 billion. 35 000 to 50 000 fewer jobs would be created by 2030. 133 000 to 190 000 dependents could be

• affected. Recent growth in the sector has been limited and it can

be anticipated that, in the absence of other measures, these trends could continue and the sector could well show minimal if any growth.

• Slow manufacturing GDP growth by 0.1% to 0.36% per annum,

thus reducing manufacturing GDP by 2030 by 1.5% to 5.5%, or R15 billion to R33 billion. 120 000 to 225 000 fewer jobs would be

• created. 426 000 to 855 000 dependents could be affected.

Economic impact of carbon tax, renewable & current economic policies