After a punchy party conference, Ed Miliband is still running on a high. The Energy Secretary, whose clean power plans are often a target for right-wing ire, has now managed to win over some of his fiercest critics: the unions.
Today the government has unveiled the UK’s first ever national clean jobs plan. With this long-awaited strategy, the government hopes to create 400,000 extra jobs in 31 priority occupations such as plumbers, electricians and wielders. If everything goes to plan, under Miliband’s new scheme, by 2030 employment is expected to double to 860,000. Oil and gas workers – who are often held up as the so-called victims of the Green Transition – will benefit from up to £20m in total from the UK and Scottish governments to fund bespoke careers training.
But more interestingly, this plan signals a clear leftward shift from Miliband (who is often held up as a vanguard of the ‘soft-left’ in the cabinet). The plan also includes several key employment rights measures that trade unions have long been calling for. And as a result, it has been enthusiastically backed by some of net zero’s loudest critics within the trade union movement, including representatives from GMB, Unite, Prospect, Community and a raft of others. Their concerns congregate around worries that the clean power transition will not treat oil and gas, and other industrial workers fairly. By laying out a clear four year strategy for clean power jobs, the Energy Secretary hopes to assuage those concerns.
As part of the offer to the unions, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero will close the current loophole in employment rights legislation which means that those working further than 12 miles offshore do not benefit from the full raft of workers’ rights. This will provide serious benefits for those working in offshore wind and is intended to help attract more people to the sector.
The department will also set up new fair work charters which stipulate that if a clean power company (in offshore wind, or solar power, for example) wants to take up the government’s clean energy bonus, they must be able to provide clear evidence that they have good industrial relations and have a recognised union for employees. Clean Power companies have grown under the government’s renewed charge towards green energy: this stipulation in Miliband’s Clean Power Jobs plan will encourage them to give back.
Miliband described this as a “landmark national plan” and added that he hopes the government’s new measures will mean “if we get this right, we will create an economy where there is no need to leave your hometown to find a decent job”. Sources close to the Energy Secretary told the New Statesman that this is crucial to taking the fight to Reform. (Richard Tice, Reform’s deputy leader, is often heard in the Commons describing the government’s plans as “net stupid zero”). By focusing heavily on maintaining good industrial relations – especially on clean power – the government hopes to expose Reform’s double standards and its unsustainable plans for British workers. Under the government’s logic, Reform would allow business as usual and continued drilling, despite the fact that in 2024, less than half of the UK’s oil and gas came from the North Sea. In fact, by 2027, it is estimated that the UK will be 95 per cent reliant on imported fossil fuels.
This flagship strategy comes at a particularly testy time for Labour politically. Recent polling for next week’s Caerphilly by-election has put Labour on 12 per cent well behind Reform and Plaid Cymru (42 per cent and 38 per cent respectively). Reform’s campaigning in Wales – which commenced with Nigel Farage’s press conference in June – has included pledges to reopen the coal mines, in direct contravention of Miliband’s clean power vision.
“Reform are campaigning on de-industrialisation, and re-opening the pits,” a source close to the Energy Secretary said, “we see what they’re doing in Wales.” They described the Clean Jobs Plan as a recognition from the government that more needs to be done to bring the unions along with this mission. “Ed is doing very bold stuff: he’s basically saying, you only get public money if you recognise the unions”. Some in the clean energy world have described this move as “class conscious environmentalism”.
This is all part of a realignment of Miliband’s relationship with the unions, hints of which were very clear at the Labour Party conference at the end of September. At a Climate Jobs Alliance drinks reception in Liverpool, Miliband and GMB’s general secretary, Gary Smith, signalled their new, clear alliance. Smith, who has been a fierce critic of Net Zero, told the reception “we know that working class communities are impacted first by the climate crisis”, after which Miliband gave him an avocado as an apparent “sign of their growing bond”. Indeed, GMB has looked favourably on Miliband’s new Clean Jobs Plan.
Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, national officer at GMB told the New Statesman, “GMB welcomes this roadmap for clean energy jobs and the cast iron expectation unions, and their members will be at the heart of this.” Even Unite’s Sharon Graham – a long standing and vocal critic of Miliband’s net zero mission – is on board. “Unite members will welcome the commitment to 400,000 green jobs with strong collective bargaining rights,” she said, but cautioned, “the actions set out in this plan are initial steps in what must be an ambitious strategy for tangible jobs, backed by an equally ambitious programme of public investment.”
This is clearly a powerful move by Miliband, and it proves his resilience as a cabinet minister in a particularly turbulent Labour government. Ahead of the Spending Review earlier this year, a raft of negative briefings suggested that Clean Power 2030 could be scaled back. Instead, Miliband’s department was one of the biggest winners.
After September’s reshuffle, rumours emerged that Miliband was almost demoted to Housing Secretary (the post which Steve Reed now inhabits). Instead, he stayed firm. This plan is a clear leftward signal from the Energy Secretary at a time when this government’s direction is under clear scrutiny (Miliband has backed Powell in Labour’s Deputy Leadership race which has been viewed by some as a referendum on the government’s political alignment). Could this be a signal from the Energy Secretary that in order to win the battle with Reform, Labour must return to its roots?
[Further reading: Ed Miliband: “Pessimism never won a single f****** victory”]
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