Public and Commercial Services Union

There is increasing awareness of the need to be ‘green’, both in the workplace and in life more generally, as climate change poses a growing threat and our natural resources are increasingly depleted, highlighting the need for more sustainable living.

PCS is committed to a green agenda – which you can read about on the ‘Green Workplaces’ pages elsewhere on the union’s website – and is developing a network of green reps to act as workplace champions on these issues.

In recent years, PCS conference has carried an increasing number of motions on green issues, which are summarised on the green workplaces pages.

PCS has also contributed to the Campaign Against Climate Change's pamphlet, 'One Million Climate Jobs NOW'. 

In Wales, we have recently begun to step up our work in this area and have begun to produce a regular newsletter dealing with green issues. We welcome ideas and contributions from branches and individual members on what will become an increasingly important part of our activity. 

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Report of the PCS Wales Green Forum meeting held on 12 July 2010

The forum met in the PCS Wales office in Cathedral Road, Cardiff and it was good to see some new reps there.

Attending were:

• Marianne Owens (PCS Wales Committee vice-chair),
• Chris Hall (Wales committee vice-chair),
• Steve Ryan (Wales Committee Green Officer),
• Amanda Lacey (HMRC West Wales),
• Rachel Williams (HMRC South Wales),
• Adam Wadding (WAG Cardiff),
• Grant Williams (ONS Newport),
• Darren Williams (PCS Wales Campaigns Officer)
• Ben Venables, who works on the Climate Solidarity project at PCS HQ.

Marianne opened the forum by explaining that, while the last forum had been cancelled due to the CSCS dispute, climate change and green issues were still hugely important issues that had to be given full attention.

Steve Ryan explained that the theme for the day was linking green issues into the fight back against cuts. It was easy in these difficult times for the environment to take a back seat, yet initiatives such as the 'One Million Climate Jobs' campaign were illustrative of how often green issues could have a direct effect on fighting the cuts.

Darren Williams then explained the role of the Wales Committee and the Wales plan, and commented that it was good that Green issues were now a discrete part of that plan.

Jayne Smith, in her role as Wales learning services officer, explained the educational opportunities that were on offer from a Green Seminar in the Autumn's TUC green course stage 1 and, in the New Year, stage 2.

Ben Venables then gave an informative and inspiring account of the work of the Climate Solidarity project and the role of unions, especially PCS, in this. It was hoped that members in Wales would soon have the opportunity to participate, as funding was currently only for England; this was especially frustrating as branch questionnaires showed that Wales was far ahead on green matters.

The Forum then broke into workshops to look at what the Wales Green Plan might look like.

The following action points were suggested:

• establish a regional email group
• encourage each BEC to have a green portfolio
• use 'Learning at Work' Day to promote green issues
• make Green literature available at all meetings
• facilitate book swaps
• hold recycling / swap days (e.g. clothes swap)
• ensure that green items are on the agenda for meetings with local management
• prepare a green rep recruitment pack
• forums to be based on issues coming from reps
• link up with branch ULRs
• hold more seminars and forums
• draft and circulate model motions to conference
• link into the union's campaigning and organising agenda
• reach out to community and other groups, such as trades councils (or other cross-union bodies like the North Wales Shop Stewards' Network), Fair Trade, 'Transition' groups and community action groups
• Have fun!

Of these issues, the priorites were deemed to be: getting green reps on BECs and (putting together a recruitment pack to facilitate this), establishing an email list and raising issues with local management.

The copy deadline for the next issue of Green Matters, the Wales Committee Green newsletter was set for 3 August.

Steve Ryan.

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Action Points from the December 2009 Green Reps' Forum

A PCS Wales green reps' forum was held on 1st December 2009 (see Green Matters no. 3 for a report of the day). The forum broke up into three workshops, which considered different aspects of the union's green agenda and came up with the action points listed below: 

Workshop 1: How do we ensure that green issues remain important at a time of economic crisis and global recession?

• Highlight long-term savings gained from sustainable policies
• Empower members to act locally
• Link up with local communities - e.g. around the 1 million green jobs campaign
• Local initiatives such as car-sharing
• Pressure business to be green
• All new build to pass environmental audit
• Strengthen international links e.g. recent Copenhagen summit
• Link with external green groups
• Lobby for investment in green industries
• Use 'Make Your Vote Count' campaign to highlight green issues
• Protest and survive!

Workshop 2: What are the most important issues to PCS members and what obstacles must we overcome to achieve our aims?

• Fight job cuts with green alternative
• Use sign-posting to change attitudes
• Facilities time for green reps
• 'Power-off' day
• Learn from initiatives such as school allotments
• Use celebrities to push the issues
• Recycling at work
• Energy efficiency
• Main obstacle: apathy from members and the public.

Workshop 3: How can we practically implement these ideas back in the workplace? What support and resources do we need?

• Report back to BECs on the green forum
• Make Green issues a standing item on the BEC agenda
• Negotiate with the Official Side
• Use organisation such as the Carbon Trust
• Use different mediums to convey the message - e.g. the Al Gore DVD, 'An Inconvenient Truth' 
• Use the 'One Wales' document
• Smart meters and other technological fixes
• Talks from campaigns such as the Campaign Against Campaign Change
• Set up a car-sharing website
• Highlight the financial cost of different modes of transport
• Credit for home-to-office travel
• 'Freecycling'
• Green audits
• Use events such as FairTrade Week to push Green awareness, against climate change, etc.
• Green quiz
• Use alternative working-patterns innovatively to encourage energy savings
• 'Telecottage' working
• Takeaway bins: meet Official Side green teams to see where PCS can help
• Look at best practice
• Survey on green issues

These were the action points from the workshops - there are some great ideas to follow up. In meantime, the immediate outcomes from the forum overall were:

Nationally:

• Push for facility time for Green reps
• Produce a pro forma letter to lobby MPs on this issue 

Wales Committee:

• Pursue the Green reps issue with the Assembly government 
• Raise the issues of double-sided printing and switching off lights

Locally:

• Green issues to be raised at team meetings and on BECs
• Get speakers at BEC meetings from organisations like the Climate Outreach & Information Network (COIN)
• Pursue education on Green issues
• Promote lift-sharing
• Sign up for PCS green emails.

The PCS Wales Green Committee will be further considering how best to tackle these points forward in the New Year.  

 

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Vestas occupation: symbol of a new type of struggle

The increasing common interest between working people and environmental campaigners was symbolised in 2009 by the fight to save the Vestas Blades UK wind turbine factory in Newport on the Isle of Wight.

On Monday 20th July, 25 Vestas workers occupied the site in a bid to save the factory from closure after the Danish-owned company announced plans to relocate the already-profitable operation to Colorado, at the cost of 625 jobs. This was immediately recognised as an important struggle not just for the trade union movement but also a groundbreaking event in green politics, bringing together activists from both areas in the battle against climate change, a struggle to which PCS is giving its full support.

The Vestas factory produced just the sort of renewable energy sources that the UK Labour government had committed itself to invest in as part of its commitment to meet targets on reducing emissions that are causing climate chaos. Yet Ed Miliband, Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, publicly refused to intervene to save the factory and the hundreds of jobs that would be lost as a result of the closure, including those of specialist trained wind turbine production engineers - although it later emerged that the government had offered a number of rescue deals to save the plant, but Vestas had refused each one. Both the trade union and the green movement voiced their concerns, highlighting the sharp contrast between a failing financial sector being bailed out by the government, at the cost of billions of pounds, while a small factory engaged in successful and sustainable production was allowed to close.

The campaign quickly gathered support - not just from the union and green movements in the UK, but from around the globe - and a number of demonstrations were held internationally in support of the occupation. PCS strongly supported the campaign.

The occupation ended, after two and a half weeks, on 7th August, when bailiffs went into the factory to enforce an eviction order. The workers who had been sitting-in were given a heroes’ welcome by hundreds of supporters outside the factory and vowed to fight on. A national day of action was held on 17th September, with protests across the country, and workers blockaded the plant to prevent turbine blades being taken away by the company. A protest camp outside the factory was set up by sacked workers and climate activists, who demanded full redundancy pay for those who'd taken part in the occupation, which they estimated would cost around £45,000. The protestors were evicted, however, in November, a month after the company reported a 70 per cent increase in quarterly net profits on the previous year.