Labour and Unite go to war over oil
By Paul Homewood
h/t Paul Kolk
There is nothing new about battles between the unions and a Labour government. But could a Starmer government be upset by a growing union rebellion from an unexpected quarter? In a move which has been remarkably underreported in England, the union Unite has launched a campaign against Labour’s policy of refusing licences for new oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.
The campaign, called ‘No ban without a plan’, demands that Labour suspends the policy. If successful, it means a future Labour government would continue, like the Conservatives, to grant new licences, until it has come up with a plan to create at least 35,000 new ‘energy transition jobs’ in Scotland – equivalent to the current roles held by oil workers. The union’s General Secretary Sharon Graham has accused Keir Starmer of following a policy which would allow Britain to ‘be held to ransom by Saudi Arabia or other nations’ and adds:
Labour needs to pull back from this irresponsible policy. There is clearly no viable plan for the replacement of North Sea jobs or energy security… Unite will not stand by and let workers be thrown on the scrapheap. North Sea workers cannot be sacrificed on the altar of net zero.
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Opposition to Labour environmental policy is often assumed to be coming mainly from the right: from the Conservative right and Reform. Labour’s standard approach is to portray opponents of net zero measures as dinosaurs. The Unite campaign blows that assumption out of the water and shows that workers in the oil and gas sector are becoming increasingly restive about the prospects of losing their jobs, and aware that the promise of ‘green jobs’ to replace those in fossil fuels has failed miserably to deliver.
According to the trade body Offshore Energies UK the number of jobs in the oil and gas sector has plunged from 117,900 to 74,100 over the past decade. Over the same time the number of jobs in Scotland’s low carbon and renewables sector has grown only from 23,200 to 25,700.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Wise words from Sharon Graham.
Politics makes strange bedfellows.
My enemy’s enemy is my friend.
Where do I sign up to join Unite?
“…North Sea workers cannot be sacrificed on the altar of net zero.”
Interesting terminology —a thinly-veiled reference to net zero as a religion.
Exactly, but Liebour won’t see it that way because they know the science is settled (Ed Miliband said so and he is a politician, and we know they are very clever and never lie).
Ed Milibrain —wasn’t he the one who was doe-eyed and drooling in the photo with Greta Thunberg?
It has to be said that the Unions, including Unite, take an amazingly long time to wake up and smell the coffee.
I knew some NUM members back in 2008 and tried to get them to face up to the implications of Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act, then going through Parliament, without significant discussion within the rank and file Labour Party, the Unions or even the National Union of Minworkers. If there WAS any real discussion, it must have been behind the bike sheds.
Ed Miliband continues to be MP for Doncaster North, where many of his constituents are ex- miners.
When will the penny drop, I wonder?
When thieves fall out.
i’m Labour Party member but Net Zero current plans by all parties are bonkers. I’m hoping for a Brexit realisation to knock sense into our elite politicians. Sometimes they need a down to earth reality check !
Who would have thought that the Labour party, arguably the most destructive entity in the UK since WW2, could just be the force for cheap fuel, by negating NetZero, and so make possible a prosperous future for the country ? Wishful thinking???
But isn’t the first promise on Kneeler Flip Flop U-turn’s childish My Little Promises Card economic stagnation?
Gary Smith from the GMB famously said in support of the fracking, “We will have to confront the fact that we will be buying gas from hangmen, henchmen and head-choppers. We don’t think that’s ethical.” A nicely turned phrase and one which Labour would do well to remember in relation to North Sea oil and gas.
How can we get through to the “working men and women “ to alert them to Liebor’s ulterior plans wrt to Nett Zero, (they will double down on it), immigration ( they will increase it), EU( they will push to rejoin it). All of these will impact the poorest the most.
Labour will simply create a dummy industry to employ these workers or take them in to other Government departments. When you see how many extra people have been recruited in the State sector over the last 10 years an extra 35K will be no problem.
Excellent, at last the Unions have woken up to the LIE regarding Green Energy Employment- there will only be unemployment for millions, not only because Oil & Gas are not extracted, but the decarbonisation of heavy industry equals NO Steel, Glass, Bricks, Blocks Drainage, Ductile Iron Pipework, Clay Drainage, Cement- all employing millions in well paid jobs, how many will enjoy self filling at the local supermarket or picking items for national fulfilment distributions centres on minimum wages.
But there are already people filling those jobs so I think they will be looking forward to unemployment.
25,700 green jobs in Scotland? Really??
There was a study done in England several years ago that showed that the majority of “green” jobs involved waste disposal and recycling i.e. jobs that would exists without net zero. If these types of jobs are included in “green” jobs in Scotland 25,700 becomes believable especially when you include all the non jobs such as sustainability managers in large corporations, the NHS, civil service etc.
Finally a union does what the Labour party was set up to do i.e. stand up for workers rather than pander to middle class metropolitan voters.