Countdown to Copenhagen

The ITF position on climate change

Massive changes in the organisation of the world’s transport industry are at the heart of the globalisation process. The unit cost of goods transport has fallen dramatically, to below 1 per cent of total production costs, opening up new patterns of production and distribution and dramatically changing the socio-economic life of our society.

Market pressures keep transport costs down. This, along with the high expectations of developed economies, means that much of our transportation could be considered non-essential. Cheap transport has imposed a heavy price in terms of pollution, energy consumption, safety, working conditions and living standards of transport workers and a reduction in the quality of urban and community life. The application of free market principles clearly cannot solve this problem.

It is essential that effective measures are taken to promote energy-efficient transport for the movement of passengers and goods. Individual efficiencies cannot be considered in isolation. To solve the problem, we need measures to limit private car use, such as high fuel and vehicle taxation and road pricing. But we also need fast, comfortable, affordable and efficient integrated bus, taxi and urban rail systems.

Public authorities must take responsibility for the promotion and financing of such systems. Transporters should cover the total costs of transport – including costs such as congestion, pollution, general health, accidents and poor quality employment, which are currently paid by society as a whole.

Climate change is a global problem that cannot be solved by individual countries and needs global regulation. Solutions must be sought through cooperation and technology sharing and they should reject further exploitation of the poorer regions by the richer countries. They must also include promoting sustainable mobility on a global scale, encompassing the different socio-economic backgrounds of the regions of the world, as well as trade union priorities and aspirations.

Cheap transport creates a downward pressure on pay and conditions as well as harming the environment. Untrained or casual workers in the transport sector can pose environmental risks. Even highly trained workers can be involved in accidents, with potentially disastrous environmental outcomes, if they are forced to work excessive hours.

In the transport industry, achieving environmental goals goes hand-in-hand with achieving just and decent work.

David Cockroft on the urgent need to act

Climate change has seemingly been pushed off the agenda for many unions in the face of the financial and jobs crisis. The pressing need to protect jobs is understandable, but the two issues are equally important and closely linked together.

Transport is not the most serious source of greenhouse gases, but it is the one which gets the most public attention. We have to make sure that measures coming out of the Copenhagen discussions do the least possible damage to the jobs and conditions of workers in the transport sector.

That is why the ITF will be present in Copenhagen as part of the Global Unions group fighting for a “just transition” to the new world. It’s why the World of Work pavilion being sponsored jointly by the trade union movement and hosted by the Danish national trade union centre will be holding ITF round-tables on climate change and work. And it’s also why we are putting together a correspondence group of experts from ITF unions around the globe to help us to prepare rational input which promotes more public transport, favours transport modes which reduce emissions and imposes stronger regulations – including respect for workers – throughout the transport industry.

We have to accept that every mode of transport, including maritime and aviation, has to be part of the global solution and that employers and unions have to be part of the process rather than finding that they have well-meaning but unworkable solutions imposed on them.

If there was ever a truly global problem, it is climate change, and that means it needs a global solution. The ITF and its current members – but also workers who are not yet organised into strong unions but need to be organised soon – have to be part of that solution.

David Cockroft is general secretary of the ITF.