A major British union, the GMB, whose “About” page doesn’t even say what the letters stand for, just issued a remarkable warning about Net Zero. The BBC reports that “Labour’s green policies are costing jobs and ‘hollowing out working class communities,’ the leader of the GMB union has warned.” That was a short honeymoon, now wasn’t it? And it’s not about to resume since Gary Smith, whose title of “General Secretary” has a distinctly Bolshie ring, warned against “decarbonization through deindustrialization” and it’s far from clear whether there’s another route. But it gets worse, because he added that “We're going to see huge reductions in our carbon emissions, but at what price?" and called for an “honest debate” on the government’s Net Zero plans. So here’s our opening position: “Be it resolved that the UK will not see huge reductions in carbon emissions so it’s all pain for no gain”.
The UK has seen considerable reductions since 1990. But those involved non-repeatable pluckings of low-hanging fruit including the dash from coal to gas, along with the long-running deindustrialization of Britain in response to global trade liberalization, and lately they’ve been rising again. There’s no easy way even to nudge them down, let alone cause “huge reductions”. But bad government policy can certainly cause a lot of pain.
Evidently GMB stands for “General, Municipal, Boilermakers and Allied Trade Union (GMBATU)”, more or less. That was its name from 1982 to 1987 when it was officially shortened to GMB, perhaps because being a municipal and boilermakers’ union was absurd, or boilermakers ceased to be a major part of its membership. According to Wikipedia it:
“is a general trade union in the United Kingdom which has more than 560,000 members. Its members work in nearly all industrial sectors, in retail, security, schools, distribution, the utilities, social care, the National Health Service (NHS), ambulance service and local government.”
Well, maybe. But not a lot of them. Its website, in a patronizing discussion of “What is a trade union?” (do you get a lot of people who don’t know?) claims that “More than six million people in the UK belong to a trade union.” Well, maybe. But less than a tenth are in yours, now are they?
It’s also more noteworthy than surprising that overall something like 33 million Britons are employed, so most of them are not in any union, especially not boilermakers as opposed to bureaucrats. Only about 12% of British private sector workers are unionized, as against nearly half in government (a figure that itself is down by 12 percentage points since 1995).
We may seem to digress. But we don’t, not even when we mention that GMB is a major union bulwark of the Labour Party but not among the crazies. Indeed, on its “About” page they list their priorities and there’s nothing exotic like, say, “From the river to the sea” or “Net Zero or bust”. Instead it says:
“GMB’s job is very simple: to get the best deal possible for you. Better pay, terms and conditions/ A decent work life where workers are safe and treated with dignity/ Better work / life balance/ Fairness – making sure working people have their rights at work and are treated fairly and legally when there’s a problem.”
When such people are becoming vocal about the extreme, life-destroying cost of climate change policies, even if they then whistle a bit into the wind about prospective gains, you have to stop talking about the “backlash” as some oil company plot and realize that it’s starting to hurt ordinary people badly.
And, we might add, not changing the weather.
So this GMB union supports the Labour Party,which then turns around and cancels many of their jobs in the name of The Climate Religion?Wow!Talk about biting off your nose to spite your face!