“Anyone but Ed Miliband”: Why Britain’s Unions Hate Net Zero
Two of Britain’s most powerful unions oppose left-wing MP Ed Miliband’s bid to become chancellor. They fear the green transition could cost jobs in the oil industry, one of the few sectors where workers have consistently secured above-inflation pay raises.
Britain’s GMB and Unite unions’ opposition to Ed Miliband as chancellor highlights a key tension in the green transition: decarbonization is vital, but it threatens one of organized labor’s last strongholds — the oil industry. (Wiktor Szymanowicz / Anadolu via Getty Images)
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is on his way out of office. The former mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, is set to become the country’s seventh leader in the past decade. Burnham is in the process of selecting his front bench, including chancellor (the equivalent of the US treasury secretary). One of the possible choices for this role is the current Environment Minister Ed Miliband.
Business is opposed and has declared Miliband, the son of Marxist theorist Ralph Miliband, to be a socialist threat. So far, so unsurprising. More surprising was two of the country’s largest unions publicly declaring their opposition to Miliband. Unite the Union and the GMB, both affiliated to the ruling Labour Party, are pressuring Burnham not to appoint Miliband because “of his relentless focus on the net zero agenda.”
The country’s largest union, Unison, and the teachers’ union both came out in support of Miliband based on his past record of support for workers and in favor of public investment. But his opposition to new oil and gas drilling licenses in the North Sea means more to Unite and the GMB than the possibility of a left-wing chancellor.
Is It All About Oil?
The most obvious answer to the question of why unions would oppose the left-wing candidate for chancellor is oil. Specifically, Miliband as environment minister has opposed granting new licenses to drill for oil and gas in the North Sea. Both unions have members in the oil and gas industry, and so this seems like a straightforward matter of members’ interests.
Yet as with other heavy industries, such as steel or car manufacturing, it’s not climate measures that have decimated the North Sea oil and gas industry. A large part of the decline in workforces is due to steadily increasing automation. Which means even if the government allowed new wells, the total workforce in the North Sea will continue its decades-long decline. Already around half of all the North Sea rigs are not permanently attended installations (i.e., they are automated rigs). More significant is the fact that the North Sea basin is in physical decline. It is geology, not ideology, that led to the peak of production around 2000. Since then production has fallen by about 70 percent. Further drilling licenses won’t lead to a surge in production or to a restoration of the workforce.
Given this, and Miliband’s broader political positioning, why would both unions risk going public against him, and doing so against public opinion and during a historic heat wave? Why did Unite the Union also block its members from protesting fuel poverty this week and not protest the government’s refusal to consider maximum working temperature legislation?
There Is Power in a Union
Unite and GMB oppose Miliband not because of oil but because what oil does for them as unions. It’s about power.
There are three reasons why both unions oppose Miliband as chancellor.
Unite, far more than GMB, has a very strong track record of securing above-inflation pay raises. Their policy is to start pay negotiations with an above-inflation pay demand and threaten industrial action if employers don’t agree. Where this strategy almost always succeeds is in industry and manufacturing, where there is an 80–90 percent success rate. The success rate in other private sector campaigns is 25–50 percent, while there is almost no success rate in the public sector. GMB’s members are mostly in the public sector, and the union tends to rely much more on legal and lobbying efforts. But it too has an interest in the section of membership with the greatest capacity to secure solid gains.
Having a core membership that consistently delivers victories and has immense industrial leverage is critical to both unions. When a union gains a reputation for fighting and winning in pay disputes, it makes further victories easier, as employers view the union as a credible threat. Unions that fight and win also tend to grow.
Continuing to lose members in these sectors will weaken both unions, not just in terms of membership but in terms of overall power.
Automation is far more of an immediate threat to workers in oil and gas, especially as there is no government proposal to close existing wells. But unlike net zero, the two unions have little immediate ability to arrest the expansion of automation. Miliband is a target because the unions see securing more oil and gas licenses as easier than opposing automated rigs.
Secondly, both unions are struggling to adapt to the transition economy. While some inroads are being made, often within sectors such as car manufacturing, more broadly the transition economy is difficult to organize. It is also producing fewer manufacturing jobs than promised. As such, both unions see net zero as costing jobs, not creating them.
And that leads to the third reason. Both unions are not alone in seeing net zero as a betrayal. The right-wing Reform party, currently leading the national polls, has been pushing an anti–net zero agenda as a part of its effort to build support for the party among workers and local communities.
Reform is an immediate threat to both unions, and Unite’s general secretary is on record declaring “Reform have shown absolutely no evidence that they are friends of workers.” They are a clear threat to workplace rights and likely to increase privatization while further restricting union activity. However, as many members of both unions vote for Reform as Labour, and, in more than one town, unions have reported losing members to Reform. Both unions are affiliated to the Labour Party and neither see any party other than the Labour Party as being able to offer them the support they both want.
As such, the public declaration of opposition to Miliband and for more oil and gas is in part an attempt to keep hold of their membership, both literally as members but also in terms of political leadership. Just as the Labour Party has taken increasingly anti-migrant action to try to prevent their decline in support, both unions are trying to shore up their own position with respect to net zero.
It Won’t Work
If Unite and GMB’s opposition to Miliband can be understood as an attempt to defend their power, then we must understand that it will fail.
Automation, and now AI, won’t be prevented by their opposition to net zero or by demanding new oil and gas licenses. Worse, as with other “net-zero-exposed” industries such as steel and car manufacture, oil and gas are international markets, where it is international trade, not national demand, that is the deciding factor. Nor will opposing net zero refill the oil and gas basins in the North Sea. Decline is physically inevitable.
The only two economic sectors growing in the UK are, ironically, the net zero sector, growing at 10 percent per year, and the tech sector, growing just under 7 percent per year. The problem isn’t net zero so much as an unjust transition that doesn’t deliver either the jobs or the wages workers have been promised.
Finally, just as the Labour Party turning right on migration only benefits Reform, so too does Unite and GMB’s opposition to net zero. Unions won’t win the support of workers by turning to the right. Worse, they risk losing social legitimacy and public support by being publicly in opposition to what most people in Britain want: action on climate change.