Coventry TUC

Presentation by David Ridley, NUJ delegate to Coventry TUC and a journalist. Also chair of Coventry Green New Deal.

Industry and Employment

  • Coventry is a typical post-industrial town. Historically, a lot of car manufacturing. Today, most work in the public sector, however there is above-average manufacturing compared to the rest of Britain, with the car industry still being quite significant. 

  • Two large universities and one university hospital. Some university-funded ‘green’ car manufacturing. 

  • The make-up of the TUC reflects this balance between Unison, UCU, PCS etc delegates from public sector jobs as well as older trade unionists in huge Unite branches linked to now-closed factories. These branches have a lot of money and a lot of activity, for example many of the local councillors come from these, but are largely retired members not in active workplace struggle. Very good for keeping the TUC and the wider labour movement alive in the city.

Coventry TUC

  • Coventry TUC benefits from these older and young branches and is a real base for the labour movement in the city and keeping the tradition alive in the city. 

  • 15-20 people regularly turning up. 

  • Has not done a lot on green issues. David, as chair of Coventry GND, has been pushing the green agenda a bit more in the Trades Council

Coventry GND

  • Campaign on: Fuel poverty, heat networks, against heat incinerators and burning waste, campaigns around trees and green spaces.

  • Includes more direct-action focussed comrades. Can be hard to incorporate different approaches and tactics into one movement. 

  • Coventry GND does largely lobbying, e.g ‘shadow climate strategy’ for the city. Working on better community engagement.

Rolls Royce

  • Coventry GND is involved in Rolls Royce. During Covid, a lot of jobs in the civil aviation department were at risk. At the site they make the cases for the aeroplanes. Coventry GND got involved via Zarah Sultana’s office. They were interested in looking at a Lucas Plan style project, and working with the site convenors to think about what else could be made at that site. 

  • Through this Coventry GND became involved in the wider civil aviation Unite sector - particularly with sites in Barnoldswick and Inchinin - thinking about how to save jobs through diversification. The project went on for a few years. At one point Coventry GND were tasked with providing an alternative business case to Rolls Royce management - didn’t get very far. 

  • The project fizzled out but hasn’t formally finished. They faced some barriers with the difficult task of working with a Trade Union to try and get a business to change the work it is doing.

Just Transition Network Coventry

  • This is a newer partnership between Coventry TUC and Coventry GND, which hasn’t quite got off the ground yet. Coventry GND activists decided out of the experience with Rolls Royce to learn from the lessons and barriers they’d faced to set up a supportive network for all those working on these issues in trade unions, for example Green Reps. Aims are to bring people together and support people in the work they’re doing elsewhere. ‘Social movement approach to just transition.’ They want to explore the idea of green bargaining. 

  • The aims of the Rolls Royce work were fighting against job losses by facilitating worker-led ideas for green alternatives to the manufacturing which used people’s skills, for example wind turbine engines. Rolls Royce management weren’t interested in that, so to be successful it would have to be put on the bargaining agenda.

  • Another example is the staff-student solidarity network at the university. They have been looking at sustainable food for the university, for example staff and students growing food on allotments. This is something the university wants to. Barriers to this are workload and workplace stress, so they are going through workload bargaining machinery to put a green workload claim in to say workload must change if we can do any of these things.

  • The Trades Council is supportive of the Just Transition Network taking off but is wary of the different approach. 

Key points from Q&A and discussion

  • Contributions from members who had previously worked in the aviation industry, who had shared similar barriers with trade union democracy that David described. Contributors discussed forms of deliberative democracy such as ‘workers’ assemblies’ for developing democratic, wide-ranging visions of work that climate catastrophe demands, which traditional trade union structures don’t always allow for. 

  • Safe Landing, has successfully lobbied a trade union to Canada to conduct a workers’ assembly and hope the British Airline Pilots Association will follow suit in the future. 

  • Other contributors pointed out that actually the trade unions have moved quite far on climate, giving example of Unite No Ban Without A Plan as a good example. The Our Power report by FoE Scotland and Platform was mentioned. Climate Assemblies were discussed and contributors had experience of, but not workers’ assemblies.

  • In the main part in Coventry, most of the climate movement have little interaction with the trade union movement. Conversation moved onto the difficulty across the board of dealing with how workers are pitted against climate activists. ‘We drive together’ climate and bus workers’ campaign and the GKN workers in Florence were both cited as positive examples of climate and worker struggles being united.

  • One contributor brought up that increased hazardous weather is proving a hook in to get the unions across the board onto thinking about climate change, such as with the Heat Strike campaign. 

  • Other contributions discussed the 2021 strike at Rolls Royce Factory in Barnoldswick which included demands around changing the nature of production to save jobs, however to this day these demands have not been acted on by the management.

Resources and links