Deindustrialisation versus just transition at Grangemouth

The possibility of real solutions appears to be edging ever closer for Grangemouth – making it very much the topic of the week. UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has vowed he would leave ‘no stone unturned’ in efforts to find a future for workers at Grangemouth.

£1.6 million is being put into Project Willow, a UK and Scottish Government report into the site’s future, and, following a meeting with Mr Miliband last week, Gillian Martin, the Scottish Acting Secretary for Energy and Net Zero, confirmed that the Scottish Government wishes refining at Grangemouth “to continue for as long as practicable”.  

“We are committed,” she said, “to working collaboratively with Petroineos, UK Government ministers and Unite the Union to explore the options available to secure a long term, sustainable future for the site and accelerate new employment opportunities.” 

Will this turn out to be more than words? Or will Grangemouth workers be let down once again? 

No doubt there will be more Grangemouth news this week – if nothing else the launch of the Just Transition Commission’s report into the site. Ahead of this, last week I talked to the Unite workers calling for the life of the refinery to be extended until those new ‘industries of the future’ present available jobs for the workers.

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This Thursday I’ll be digging into the report and talking to the authors about why Grangemouth has been viewed as a ‘litmus test’, and if it is possible to turn it from red to blue. 

For me, a key issue not often enough discussed is what exactly we mean by a Just Transition. Often it seems we can have different ideas about the term. We know that, too frequently, workers don’t relate to it, with, in one Unite Grangemouth survey, only 30% having confidence in the process, though it’s about providing positive futures for them. This is perhaps because it feels as if it belongs to the world of green activism – when it should not. It’s for all of us who are affected by a shifting world, dominated by global multinationals. 

What’s clear, from the stories we often tell, is that a collective desire is that the oil and gas workers of Scotland, and their communities, do not go through what those of coal and steel and other sectors in the past went through. That is what for many a Just Transition is. It’s about not letting this be another new wave of deindustrialisation in which workers are left behind, and communities devastated.

Deindustrialisation is the ghost that haunts the transition – and it is a reminder that what Scotland is dealing with is not just about the switch to clean energy, or climate action. It’s also about an oil and gas reserve already in terminal decline.  

It’s about not letting this be another new wave of deindustrialisation in which workers are left behind, and communities devastated (Image: Derek McArthur)
It is also the theme that links two pieces I’ve been working on over the past couple of weeks. One is about 9CCG, a group of community councils who have combined forces to negotiate the best deals they can on local wind farm money. Its CEO, Stephen McCarron, highlighted how these East Ayrshire communities were post-coal, post-industrial. He stood for a photograph under the Barony A-Frame, the preserved headgear of the Auchinleck colliery, and told a tale of loss and deprivation, of wind energy that was never going to occupy the place in Cumnock Valley life that coal once had, but whose money was welcomed. 

But the PetroIneos oil refinery at Grangemouth, whose closure is slated for next year along with the loss, potentially of 400 jobs, is the issue of the moment. It is the transition that matters now, and, though it tends to be seen as a feature of a net zero plan, it’s worth remembering it is also part of that longer story about industry.

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Look at Grangemouth and what we see is a closure that is partly about a joint venture of a multinational, INEOS, and China-owned PetroChina, responding to a global market, which is itself affected by many factors from geopolitics to global net zero targets. When the closure was announced, it was reported that the site had lost £1bn over the previous 12 years.

The idea of a Just Transition originated in workers movements in the United States as part of an effort to protect workers impacted by new water and air pollution regulations. The Scottish Government defines its outcome as “a fairer, greener future for all”. It describes it as “the process that must be undertaken in partnership with those impacted by the transition to net zero.” The International Trade Union Congress  defines it as securing “the future and livelihoods of workers and their communities in the transition to a low-carbon economy”. 

Partly it is about making sure that workers are not left behind, but also it’s about how, in the process of developing this green energy sector, it might be possible to replace the inequalities of the old working world, the poverty of industrial relations, with something that listens more to workers and provides security. 

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The voices pushing for this Just Transition are many, but I wonder if there might be more if a new phrase were generated by today’s workers?

In the run up to the General Election, a coalition of environmental groups including Friends of the Earth Scotland issued a call demanding investment, expansion of publicly-owned energy, “expanding sectoral collective bargaining across the energy industry and supply chain” and “a jobs guarantee, that ensures every oil and gas worker can find equivalent, alternative employment or funded retraining”. 

All this still seems a long way off. Grangemouth will be where we see if that commitment is there.