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Climate & ecological emergency annual meeting

1 August 2022

The UCU annual meeting on the climate and ecological emergency.

Diary date The Climate & ecological emergency annual meeting was held on 14 November 2024.

This year's theme: Empowering Workers & Learners to Choose a Green Future

The annual meeting advises and makes recommendations to the climate and ecological emergency committee and National Executive Committee on matters relating to climate and ecological emergency and environmental sustainability.   

The meeting also heard reports on the work of UCU in relation to the climate and ecological emergency, discuss motions submitted by branches and local associations. There will also be plenty of opportunity to network with colleague.

Members with an interest in furthering the union's work on climate and ecological emergency may register to attend the meeting.

General

Access requirements

If members have any specific access requirements, please provide us with full details on the relevant section of the registration form to ensure we can make the proper arrangements to accommodate members' requirements. Alternatively, please get in touch with Sue Bajwa.

Conference papers

All relevant papers will be emailed to delegates approximately one week before the conference.


Resolutions

November 2024 meeting

Motion 1  A worker-led transition Proposer - London Retired Members Branch

Workers at the GKN automotive plant in Florence, Italy have spent three years in permanent assembly.

A dispute to save jobs has transformed into a rank and file led movement for just transition, with a reindustrialisation plan to move from producing parts for cars, to solar panels and cargo bikes.

TUC 2024 Congress called for 'a year of green trade union activity including engagement with community and climate justice groups.' This should include holding assemblies in all workplaces to plan just transitions from below, with action plans to implement them.

This branch calls on the UCU to:

Motion 2  GKN solidarity/#Insorgiamo: Just Transition in Practice - Climate and Ecological Emergency Committee

This meeting applauds the Italian workers of GKN and their amazing struggle for a Just Transition.

They promote the slogan 'insorgiamo' = we make insurgency. As the GKN workers' campaign says:

"This resistance has become a project. It has given birth to a reindustrialisation plan from below, with the aim of giving back to the territory the jobs that were destroyed, creating a socially integrated factory at the service of the community that defended it, and restarting with an ecologically advanced production, with a socially advanced co-operative structure, and with a community based on mutual aid."

On 9 July 2021, Melrose Industries announced the closure of its GKN Driveline (formerly FIAT) factory of car axles in Campi di Bisenzio, Florence, Italy and its workers' layoffs (more than 400).

In many such cases the workers and unions settle for negotiating enhanced redundancy benefits. In this case, the GKN Factory Collective took over the plants and kick-started a long struggle against decommissioning. What makes the ex GKN Florence dispute unique is the strategy adopted by the workers, who made an alliance with the Climate Justice movement by drafting a conversion plan for sustainable, public transport and demanding its adoption.

Such a strategy engendered a cycle of broad mobilisations, repeatedly bringing tens of thousands to the streets. So the dispute is still open, and the permanent sit-in at the factory continues. The workers were meant to be finally dismissed on 1 January 2024, but the GKN Factory Collective thus turned New Year's Eve into a final call to action to defend their conversion plan.

Such pressure from below probably played a role in the Labour Court's decision, announced on 27 December 2023, to overturn the layoffs for the second time. The 31 December 2023 concert in the factory, and the subsequent nocturnal march across Campi Bisenzio's industrial area, became a mass mobilisation to relaunch the workers' current plan to set up a cooperative to produce cargo bikes and solar panels, within a broader vision for a worker-led ecological transition.

This project needs material solidarity now. Over 600,000 euros have been collected by the popular shareholding campaign to launch the co-operative, moving closer to the target of one million euros. All information on how to contribute, individually or as an organisation, can be found at the website www.insorgiamo.org

This meeting agrees UCU should:

  • work with other UK trade unionists to support the GKN workers' struggle and send them a solidarity message
  • circulate information about the dispute and the shareholding campaign to members and affiliates
  • publicise other solidarity initiatives to members and affiliates.
  • promote events to learn from the GKN struggle for a Just Transition here
  • take a financial stake in the cooperative 'popular shareholding' https://insorgiamo.org/100x10-000

Annex: resources

Motion 3  Motion in support of the Climate and Nature Bill and its second reading - University of Exeter

This meeting notes:

  1. the passing in 2024 by UCU congress, of a motion titled 'International and political influencing on climate and ecological emergency'
  2. the plan for a new UK law that addresses the climate and ecological emergency - the Climate and Nature bill - that, among other things:
    1. commits the UK to make its fair share of emissions cuts, including full accounting for and action on emissions that the UK causes overseas
    2. strengthens the commitments of the Environment act, by committing to reverse biodiversity loss by 2030
    3. calls for a climate and nature assembly to help Government and Parliament develop an emergency strategy.
  3. that the Climate and Nature bill has been put forward as a private members bill by the Liberal Democrat MP Roz Savage and needs at least 100 MPs to attend its second hearing on Friday 24th January 2025 to proceed further as a private members bill.

This meeting believes:

  1. that existing legislation has proved insufficient to adequately slow down climate change and the destruction of nature.
  2. that the Climate and Nature Bill represents an important proposed piece of UK legislation aimed at improving the UK's response to the climate and ecological emergency.

This meeting resolves:

  1. to write a letter for MPs to explain the importance of the Climate and Nature bill and ask them to support it, to include attending its second reading.
  2. to share this letter with UCU branches to encourage them to contact their constituency MPs to call on them to support the Climate and Nature bill and attend its second hearing.
  3. to promote awareness of and constructive debate and action on the Climate and Nature Bill, in support of addressing the climate and ecological emergency. This being achieved through members' education, research, citizenship, external engagement and impact activities.

Motion 4  Climate & Nature Bill 2024-2025 - City of Bristol College

This conference welcomes the fact that the Climate & Nature Bill (CAN Bill) has been sponsored as a Private Members Bill by Roz Savage MP

This Conference further welcomes the high level of cross-party support for the CAN Bill with over 180 MPs supporting the bill

This Conference notes that the CAN Bill is a plan for a new UK law that addresses climate change, global warming, and the nature crisis in line with the most up-to-date science. The Bill is the only proposed legislation before the UK Parliament that ensures a comprehensive and joined-up approach to the climate emergency.

This Conference calls on:

  • the General Secretary, the National Executive Committee and the Climate and Ecological Emergency Committee to work together to lobby MPs of all political parties to support this bill
  • UCU to encourage and urge members to write to their MPs asking them to support the CAN Bill

Motion 5  Fare Free Public Transport - West Midlands Retired Members Branch

The transport sector is one of the biggest emitters of carbon & nitrogen oxides and particulates in the UK. If we are to move to net zero, these emissions will have to be phased out. Due to the current transport system, we suffer with congestion, delays, accidents, ill health and inaccessibility.

We therefore declare that

  1. we need real transformation of our mass transit system.
  2. we urge UCU to lobby government to take practical steps towards a social and sustainable system by introducing Fare Free Public Transport, as practised in e.g. Luxembourg, Malta, Dunkirk.
  3. we further request an immediate start be made by trialling Fare Free Public Transport in a selection of towns and rural settings to support our students' access to education.
  4. we will work towards a publicly-owned, integrated public transport system which allows public transport to be the travel option of choice.

Motion 6  USS' involvement in the climate and ecological costs of war and conflict - Climate and Ecological Emergency Committee

Meeting believes:

  1. investments held by USS implicate many UCU members in the military- industrial complex
  2. war and conflict produce many climate and ecological harms, including:
    1. destruction of the natural environment by military activities,
    2. destruction of human-made assets causing their embodied carbon to be released, or further greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions released through reconstruction, e.g. buildings
    3. fossil fuel use, GHG emissions and pollution by armed forces and the military-industrial complex of supply chains, R&D, etc
  3. via USS, we fund, enable and financially benefit from conflict
  4. USS is a pension scheme run in our name, for our benefit. It is our right to instruct USS to avoid investments, and forgo financial returns, that run against our values.

Meeting resolves:

That CEEC and the Superannuation Working Group should devise a plan of work and campaign to achieve USS divestment from war, conflict and the military-industrial complex

Motion 7  Update Value 4! Advance HE's Professional Standards Framework to integrate the Professional Value of Environmental, Social, and Mental Health - Climate and Ecological Emergency Committee

Meeting notes:

  1. the 2021-23 review process of the AdvanceHE Professional Standards Framework (PSF) for HEA Fellowship awards proposed the addition of a core knowledge K3: 'Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) to inform practice'
  2. sustainable Development (SD) is the transnational framework developed by UN signatories which includes economic growth as a key goal (SDG 8)
  3. SD and ESD form a depoliticised and hegemonic discourse, as demonstrated by the PSF K3 proposal.
  4. the potential of 'sustainability' and 'development' frameworks to tackle climate change and intersecting biosocial system failures is contested in scholarship and activism
  5. the updated PSF 2023 omitted K3, reporting 'concerns related to interpretation, assessment, the risk of dictating curriculum and one element of practice being prioritised over others.'

Meeting asserts:

K3 was ill-conceived, but the obligation for fellowship applicants to evidence how they

integrate a commitment to improving environmental, social, and mental health into HE practice has transformative potential for the sector.

Meeting resolves:

To advocate for the rewording of the Value 4 descriptor, so that applicants are required to show how they contribute to the environmental, social, and mental health of the wider context in which HE operates, recognising implications for practice.

Last updated: 8 January 2025