Latest news with #justtransition
The Independent
14-05-2025
- Business
- The Independent
Unions and green groups call for £1.9bn emergency funding for North Sea workers
Several trade unions and 65 climate groups are joining forces to call for £1.9 billion in emergency funding for North Sea workers ahead of the Government's spending review. The organisations are holding a rally outside Parliament on Wednesday morning to demand Chancellor Rachel Reeves provides more support for oil and gas workers so they can make the transition into green jobs. A group of Labour, SNP and Green Party politicians are also said to be joining. Of the £1.9 billion, the coalition says £1.1 billion a year should go to developing permanent, local jobs in public and community-owned manufacturing. It added that a further £440 million of furthering investment each year should go to ports and £355 million per year should go to developing a dedicated training fund for offshore oil and gas workers with match-funding from industry. The groups also argued that oil and gas companies consistently fail to invest in renewable energy jobs and retraining for their workers as they prioritise shareholder profits and cut or offshore jobs that should stay in Britain. It comes as recent job losses at the Scunthorpe steel plant in North Lincolnshire, the Tata steel plant in Port Talbot, Wales, and the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland have spurred a national debate about a just transition for workforces and communities in high-emitting sectors. Mel Evans, climate team leader at Greenpeace UK, said: 'It's vital that we don't leave oil and gas workers' future in the hands of private companies who put their profits above workers' security and the climate time and time again. 'That's why Rachel Reeves must commit to this emergency package of funding to protect workers and their communities. 'If she fails to act, she leaves their livelihoods at the mercy of greedy oil bosses and will undermine community confidence in the transition to renewable energy.' Claire Peden, a Unite the Union campaign team lead, said: 'The UK government must deliver a real, robust plan that guarantees good, secure jobs for oil and gas workers as part of the energy transition. 'So far, that promise hasn't materialised, yet 30,000 jobs are at risk by 2030. 'Climate change is an urgent crisis, but it must not be working people who bear the brunt. A just transition needs to be a workers' transition: no one must be left behind.' Ruby Earle, worker transition lead at Platform, said: 'Today, unions and climate campaigners are sending a clear message to the Chancellor. 'We need urgent public investment that creates permanent, unionised renewable energy jobs and supports the country's oil and gas workers to move into them. Multinationals have held us to ransom for too long. 'It's time we give workers and communities a real stake in our energy industry.' Besides Greenpeace, Unite and Platform, the coalition includes the National Union of Rail and Maritime and Transport Workers (RMT), the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCS), Aberdeen's Trades Union Councils and 65 climate groups including Uplift, Friends of the Earth Scotland, Oil Change International and Extinction Rebellion.
Forbes
13-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Job Market Challenges Revealed By Closing A California Oil Refinery
The Valero refinery in Benicia, California, set to close in 2026. In other recent refinery closures ... More in California, few of the laid-off workers have found jobs at anywhere near their refinery wages. Last month, officials with Valero Energy announced they would be closing the company's 170,000 barrels-per-day oil refinery in Benicia, California—a city of 25,000 residents, east of San Francisco. The plant, spread across 900 acres, employs over 400 workers, and is scheduled to close in April 2026. In the weeks since the announcement, state and regional officials have come forward to assure Benicia officials, local residents and workers that there will be a 'just transition.' The workers will be provided with re-training and re-employment services to achieve 'good jobs, quality jobs.' We'll see. In California we've had experience with refinery closures over the past decade and 'just transition'—a popular phrase of the Biden Administration. In these previous refinery closures, despite generous amounts of government funding for retraining and re-employment, few of the laid-off workers were able to obtain new jobs at anywhere near their previous wages, and a high number remained unemployed, more than a year after closure. The Valero and broader refinery story is timely, given the prominent role of manufacturing jobs in today's economic debates. Retraining and reemployment of laid-off refinery and other manufacturing workers have proved to be far more difficult in practice than in the retraining theories of high profile journalists (Thomas Friedman) as well as economists with the Obama and Biden Administrations. The experiences suggest why policymakers might not be so cavalier going forward about refinery closures and other manufacturing closures. The Valero plant is located in a part of East Contra Costa that for the past few decades has been site of several oil refineries. One of these refineries was the Marathon Oil refinery. In October 2020, the Marathon refinery shut down operations and laid off 345 unionized workers. The Contra Costa Country Workforce Development Board immediately responded with a series of re-employment and re-training services. An individualized employment plan was developed for each worker, incorporating skills and goals, and singling out skills that might be transferable to other occupations. Workers who sought training for new occupations were provided with such training at no cost, and also were provided with assistance in identifying and pursuing job openings. Additionally, the Contra Costa Board was assisted in re-employment activities by the California Federation of Labor Unions, which had its own Rapid Response unit, as well as by the United Steelworkers Local 5. Despite these expansive re-employment efforts, only a minority of the laid off workers were able to find jobs at anywhere near their former salaries. The University of California, Berkeley Labor Center tracked the shutdown and re-employment process, and surveyed laid-off workers. The Labor Center final report, issued in April 2023, noted that 14-16 months after the shutdown, 26% of the laid off workers were still not employed. Of those who had found jobs the job paid on average $12 per hour less than the average job at Marathon: the average hourly wage at Marathon was $50 per hour compared to a post layoff average wage of $38 per hour. Though East Contra Costa has been the hub of refinery activities in Northern California, the number of jobs in the remaining refineries was limited, and had been shrinking in the past decade. Much was made of transitioning workers in the 'green economy", but the number of these jobs in the Bay Area was small, and they paid far less than the Marathon and oil and gas jobs. Health care, business services and information technology were growing sectors in Contra Costa, but often not good fits for or of interest to the Marathon workers. Following the Valero announcement, Joe Garofoli, Senior Political Writer with the San Francisco Chronicle, contacted Benicia city officials as well as workers at the Valero plant. The officials emphasized the main role that Valero played in the city's finances: of the city's $60 million general fund budget, Valero contributed $7 million, and contributed another $2.9 million toward the city's enterprise fund for water and wastewater. Garofoli profiled one long time worker at the plant, Mark Felsoci, 63, who had been a crane operator at the plant for 28 years. He was grateful for the job, which had enabled him to purchase a house in Benicia, achieve stable employment, and unlike many other crane operators not commute to multiple work sites. Felsoci told Garofoli that he had few hopes that he or other workers would find similar jobs. He singled out for criticism the idea that the Valero workers could be retrained for green economy jobs. 'These guys that are putting up these solar panels or working in solar fields, they're probably making half of what refinery workers do. They don't get the benefits…You can transition to anything you want, but it's going to pay way less than what you doing before.' Kern County, the center of oil production in California, illustrates the big gap in number of jobs and wage levels between oil and gas jobs and green economy jobs. Kern, which stretches over 8100 square miles in the south Central Valley, is one of the state leaders in green energy. In 2020, it produced a quarter of the state's total renewable energy in 2020, through its network of solar power generators and its 5000 wind turbines in the Tehachapi wind corridor. But this renewable energy production created only 543 jobs in 2020. This number amounted to less than 4% of the 16,223 direct jobs in oil and gas in 2020 (with nearly double that amount for the oil and gas sector counting suppliers and other jobs connected to oil production). The average wage of the direct jobs in oil and gas was $82,017 in 2019 while the average wage for green economy jobs in Kern was 40% lower , at $57,000. Kern County employment in oil and gas has rebounded in the past few years with the rebound in worldwide oil prices. However, Kern officials know the future of oil and gas employment in the county, as well as statewide, is daunting. Since 2015, the oil and gas industry in California has been faced with California state government and politics aimed at phasing out fossil fuels: a lengthy moratorium on permits for new wells, more stringent air quality requirements, and general higher costs of doing business in the state. In announcing its closing, Valero described it as following 'years of regulatory pressure, significant fines for air quality violations, and a recent lawsuit settlement related to environmental concerns.' Similar government policies were singled out by Phillips 66 officials when in October 2024 they announced the closing of the Phillips 66 refinery in Wilmington, Southern California. That refinery accounted for 8% of the state's oil processing. That shutdown will result in layoffs for 600 direct workers by the end of this year. With the politics of oil and gas in California (the industry has been the main villain in state government for years), it may be that the industry can do nothing to reverse the trend of refinery closures. But at least as this process continues, there should be no illusions on any side about what can be expected for many of the laid-off workers--even with the sophisticated and well-funded re-employment systems in place. There should be no illusions about 'just transition.'
Forbes
13-05-2025
- Business
- Forbes
When An Oil Refinery Closes In California
The Valero refinery in Benicia, California, set to close in 2026. In other recent refinery closures ... More in California, few of the laid-off workers have found jobs at anywhere near their refinery wages. Last month, officials with Valero Energy announced they would be closing the company's 170,000 barrels-per-day oil refinery in Benicia, California—a city of 25,000 residents, east of San Francisco. The plant, spread across 900 acres, employs over 400 workers, and is scheduled to close in April 2026. In the weeks since the announcement, state and regional officials have come forward to assure Benicia officials, local residents and workers that there will be a 'just transition.' The workers will be provided with re-training and re-employment services to achieve 'good jobs, quality jobs.' We'll see. In California we've had experience with refinery closures over the past decade and 'just transition'—a popular phrase of the Biden Administration. In these previous refinery closures, despite generous amounts of government funding for retraining and re-employment, few of the laid-off workers were able to obtain new jobs at anywhere near their previous wages, and a high number remained unemployed, more than a year after closure. The Valero and broader refinery story is timely, given the prominent role of manufacturing jobs in today's economic debates. Retraining and reemployment of laid-off refinery and other manufacturing workers have proved to be far more difficult in practice than in the retraining theories of high profile journalists (Thomas Friedman) as well as economists with the Obama and Biden Administrations. The experiences suggest why policymakers might not be so cavalier going forward about refinery closures and other manufacturing closures. The Valero plant is located in a part of East Contra Costa that for the past few decades has been site of several oil refineries. One of these refineries was the Marathon Oil refinery. In October 2020, the Marathon refinery shut down operations and laid off 345 unionized workers. The Contra Costa Country Workforce Development Board immediately responded with a series of re-employment and re-training services. An individualized employment plan was developed for each worker, incorporating skills and goals, and singling out skills that might be transferable to other occupations. Workers who sought training for new occupations were provided with such training at no cost, and also were provided with assistance in identifying and pursuing job openings. Additionally, the Contra Costa Board was assisted in re-employment activities by the California Federation of Labor Unions, which had its own Rapid Response unit, as well as by the United Steelworkers Local 5. Despite these expansive re-employment efforts, only a minority of the laid off workers were able to find jobs at anywhere near their former salaries. The University of California, Berkeley Labor Center tracked the shutdown and re-employment process, and surveyed laid-off workers. The Labor Center final report, issued in April 2023, noted that 14-16 months after the shutdown, 26% of the laid off workers were still not employed. Of those who had found jobs the job paid on average $12 per hour less than the average job at Marathon: the average hourly wage at Marathon was $50 per hour compared to a post layoff average wage of $38 per hour. Though East Contra Costa has been the hub of refinery activities in Northern California, the number of jobs in the remaining refineries was limited, and had been shrinking in the past decade. Much was made of transitioning workers in the 'green economy", but the number of these jobs in the Bay Area was small, and they paid far less than the Marathon and oil and gas jobs. Health care, business services and information technology were growing sectors in Contra Costa, but often not good fits for or of interest to the Marathon workers. Following the Valero announcement, Joe Garofoli, Senior Political Writer with the San Francisco Chronicle, contacted Benicia city officials as well as workers at the Valero plant. The officials emphasized the main role that Valero played in the city's finances: of the city's $60 million general fund budget, Valero contributed $7 million, and contributed another $2.9 million toward the city's enterprise fund for water and wastewater. Garofoli profiled one long time worker at the plant, Mark Felsoci, 63, who had been a crane operator at the plant for 28 years. He was grateful for the job, which had enabled him to purchase a house in Benicia, achieve stable employment, and unlike many other crane operators not commute to multiple work sites. Felsoci told Garofoli that he had few hopes that he or other workers would find similar jobs. He singled out for criticism the idea that the Valero workers could be retrained for green economy jobs. 'These guys that are putting up these solar panels or working in solar fields, they're probably making half of what refinery workers do. They don't get the benefits…You can transition to anything you want, but it's going to pay way less than what you doing before.' Kern County, the center of oil production in California, illustrates the big gap in number of jobs and wage levels between oil and gas jobs and green economy jobs. Kern, which stretches over 8100 square miles in the south Central Valley, is one of the state leaders in green energy. In 2020, it produced a quarter of the state's total renewable energy in 2020, through its network of solar power generators and its 5000 wind turbines in the Tehachapi wind corridor. But this renewable energy production created only 543 jobs in 2020. This number amounted to less than 4% of the 16,223 direct jobs in oil and gas in 2020 (with nearly double that amount for the oil and gas sector counting suppliers and other jobs connected to oil production). The average wage of the direct jobs in oil and gas was $82,017 in 2019 while the average wage for green economy jobs in Kern was 40% lower , at $57,000. Kern County employment in oil and gas has rebounded in the past few years with the rebound in worldwide oil prices. However, Kern officials know the future of oil and gas employment in the county, as well as statewide, is daunting. Since 2015, the oil and gas industry in California has been faced with California state government and politics aimed at phasing out fossil fuels: a lengthy moratorium on permits for new wells, more stringent air quality requirements, and general higher costs of doing business in the state. In announcing its closing, Valero described it as following 'years of regulatory pressure, significant fines for air quality violations, and a recent lawsuit settlement related to environmental concerns.' Similar government policies were singled out by Phillips 66 officials when in October 2024 they announced the closing of the Phillips 66 refinery in Wilmington, Southern California. That refinery accounted for 8% of the state's oil processing. That shutdown will result in layoffs for 600 direct workers by the end of this year. With the politics of oil and gas in California (the industry has been the main villain in state government for years), it may be that the industry can do nothing to reverse the trend of refinery closures. But at least as this process continues, there should be no illusions on any side about what can be expected for many of the laid-off workers--even with the sophisticated and well-funded re-employment systems in place. There should be no illusions about 'just transition.'
The Guardian
10-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Carla Denyer accuses Labour of failing to challenge Reform UK's net zero ‘lie'
The Labour government is standing back and letting Reform UK 'sell the lie' that net zero will harm working people, Carla Denyer, the Greens' co-leader has said as she prepares to step back from the role she has held for four years. Denyer, who will not contest this summer's party leadership re-election process, told the Guardian that she wanted to focus on her Bristol Central constituency, and to campaign on particular issues, including a net zero policy shaped to the needs of workers. Next week, she plans to table a private member's bill setting out 'just transition' to net zero. While it has no chance of getting the parliamentary time required to pass, Denyer said she wanted to try to seize the initiative back from Nigel Farage's party. 'At a time like this, when Reform are unfortunately managing to sell the lie that tackling climate change is somehow going to be bad for ordinary people, it's really important that we Greens challenge that – and I am worried the Labour government is backsliding on climate policy,' Denyer told the Guardian. While Keir Starmer has publicly defended net zero targets, Denyer pointed to repeated speculation about the position of Ed Miliband, the energy and climate change secretary, and comments by Tony Blair that the strategy to phase out fossil fuels was 'doomed to fail'. 'My worry at the moment is that the government are sort of lurching from crisis to crisis on this,' Denyer said. 'One of the real responsibilities and opportunities of having four Green MPs in parliament is that we can hold the government to account on climate and nature policies, and make the case really strongly that tackling the climate crisis absolutely can and should be done with people, not to people, and they need to plan their industrial strategy on that basis.' Her bill will set out that net zero plans must be agreed with workers, and that every UK-listed company in the oil and gas industries must come up with a transition plan to meet emissions targets, which would include training or redeployment for staff. Denyer's decision not to stand again breaks up the Greens' most electorally successful leadership duo. She and Adrian Ramsay, who is also now an MP, took over in 2021 with the stated aim of building up the party's base of MPs and councillors. Two years later, they spelled out the four Westminster seats to be targeted – all of which were won. 'I definitely don't claim sole credit, but yes, in mine and Adrian's time as co-leaders, we're very proud of our record,' Denyer said. 'We stood for election on a platform of getting the Green party into a serious election-winning machine, and we've achieved that.' Shortly before Denyer announced her intention not to stand again, Zack Polanski, the Greens' deputy leader, said he was challenging her and Ramsay for the leadership of the party in England and Wales. While Polanski praised their record, he implicitly criticised their approach as too cautious, saying the Greens should be more combative, and seek to become a mass membership 'eco-populism' movement. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion Denyer, who argued her style had been less cautious than 'relentlessly focused', pushed back slightly against this argument, while accepting that the Greens had 'been on a bit of a journey in terms of how we communicate our ideas effectively'. Recent Green electoral success, she said, 'shows people do appreciate that the Green party does politics differently – and broadly speaking I don't think most Brits like the kind of politics where they're just watching politicians taking chunks out of each other'. As well as net zero, Denyer plans to campaign for more social housing and rent controls for private tenancies, and to help the party further build up its Westminster base. While refusing to predict how many MPs the Greens could win at the next election, Denyer noted that the party had not just won four seats last July but came second in 40 more: 'Adrian and I are clear that it is absolutely possible for Greens to succeed in the system we've got. We've demonstrated that over the last four years, and I think that there is every possibility that we can make further significant gains at all levels of government over the next few years.'
