Sheffield TUC

Talk by Jenny Patient

The local context

  • History of steel and other manufacturing in the city. Huge losses to steel jobs in the 1980s, though some industry remains - e.g. Forgemasters.

  • Strong focus on arms production. Forgemasters effectively nationalised for nuclear and defence production. University of Sheffield’s Advanced Manufacturing and Research Centre (AMRC), strongly linked to arms trade - specifically Boeing and Rolls Royce. A fairly small number of jobs, AMRC only employs 700 people.

  • Sheffield’s largest employers are in the public sector - NHS, universities, Council. Over 37,000 jobs between them. Plus 27,000 in IT and digital media, and 15,700 in the creative industries.

  • Employment in steel and manufacturing is higher than the national average, but not a huge proportion of employment overall. Yet, regional economic policy focused on these jobs and subsidises them with public money.

  • Part of the appeal is that these jobs have high pay, skills, and productivity. 

  • The South Yorkshire Growth Plan calls for investment in the AMRC, nuclear, and ‘sustainable’ aviation fuels. £350 million investment at a cost of about £200,000 a job - and these are high carbon jobs.

  • Sad to see focus on military production for a city with a tradition of anti-militarism - once a nuclear-free and apartheid-free zone.

What Sheffield TUC has been doing

  • Sheffield TUC has focused on a wider sense of Just Transition - climate jobs, supporting youth climate movements, and organising for an economy free of exploitation and precarity. E.g. joint demonstration with SY Climate Justice Coalition during COP.

  • Many precarious, low paid jobs. Sheffield Needs a Payrise campaign, joint project of the Trades Council and BFAWU, has organised in low wage sectors like fast food.

  • The transition is as much about what happens to McDonald’s workers as what happens to Boeing workers. About well-paid, secure jobs across the board.

  • In 2024, Sheffield TUC and South Yorkshire Climate Alliance ran a day school about climate jobs and how the South Yorkshire economy can be transitioned. In April, there will be events on needs-based economics and challenging the military-industrial-academic complex. 

  • Support for just transition was expressed by the former South Yorkshire mayoral Net Zero Officer who resigned, likely over the approval of reopening Doncaster-Sheffield airport.

Key points from Q&A and discussion

  • Engagement between Sheffield TUC and North East Yorkshire and Humber TUC, networking of just transition work by trade unionists across the region. Trying to tell a positive story about new jobs, e.g. retrofit, not just a defensive question of what to do with high-carbon jobs.

  • University of Sheffield engineering department work on ‘sustainable aviation fuel’ - a false solution.

  • Link between Trades Council and climate activists in Sheffield. The Trades Council is fairly outward looking and good at supporting campaigns. South Yorkshire Climate Alliance is working more with unions as well.

  • Political difficulties working with underfunded local Councils and devolved authorities, and with some local TUCs that aren’t interested in climate work. Local governments are also mandated by the central government to prioritise defence production.

  • Question about organising in non-industrial sectors like public services and hospitality discussed in the presentation, and what green bargaining could look like there. Could we engage young people concerned about climate change as workers? 

  • Care work is poorly paid, but it could be central to a post-carbon economy - we can do as much caring, teaching, etc as we want with very little carbon emissions.

Resources and links