- As one of the supporters, transform! europe invites you to join the 2023 Global Climate Jobs Conference in Amsterdam from 6 to 8 October, when climate, social and labour movements and activists will come together to organise and build social power for radically progressive policies that stop climate change!
From Green New Deals to Climate Jobs, many blueprints for just transitions and socioeconomic and ecological transformations have been put forward. But we are failing to build powerful social movements around these ideas while their labels are now being used to promote green capitalism.
We must take these transformational policy visions out of our narrow circles and small discussion rooms and turn them into programs with broad support from working people. We need an agenda that can bring together different social movements.And we need the political power to implement it.
Do you want to build power and organise to win? We want to invite you to gather in the Amsterdam (Het Dokhuis) in October 2023 for the Global Climate Jobs Conference.
We will host open and frank discussions about radically just policies, about the future of working class organising, about alliance building between climate, labour and social movements, and about goals and political strategy and organizing. A conference based on the acknowledgment that without a radical restructuring of our economy we will fail to deliver a just transition and climate justice. A conference to build the social power that can stop climate change.
Anyone who is interested in bringing together the climate and labour movement is invited to join the 2023 Global Climate Jobs Conference.
Click here to register!
Venue: Het Dokhuis, Amsterdam
Some parts of the conference will be streamed online. More information on this will be out soon.For more information on the programme, speakers, venue, accommodation, etc., please visit the official website of the Global Climate Jobs.
Programme
At the 2023 Global Climate Jobs Conference, we will bring together everyone who wants to take part in the challenging but pressuring task of building social power to stop climate change. We want to move from policy discussions to action. We seek to set a conference for frank and ambitious discussions on working-class organising, alliance and movement building and political strategy, towards Climate Jobs and Ecological Unionism.
In this conference, we will build on three pillars of questions:
- Program: What is the progressive agenda and policy proposals to face the multiple social and climate crises? What does a political program compatible with climate science and driven towards social justice looks like?
- Strategy: What do these political proposals mean to our movements and organizations strategically? What is the left plan for power? What do different organizations need from each other to build strong alliances? How will we organise to win?
- Narrative: How will we communicate our agenda? How do we show people what we are fighting for? How can we gain broad support for progressive proposals?
And these will be structured in 3 kinds of sessions: Panel Discussions (interventions by invited speakers), Plenary Sessions (open and facilitated discussions with all of the participants), and Parallel Sessions (workshops session or focus discussion proposed by participants and organisations).
Friday, 6 October
9:00 CET – Opening Session with
Jonathan Neale – Global Climate Jobs Network
Bas van Weegberg – FNV
Leonor Canadas – Organizing team
Sean Sweeney – TUED
10:00 CET – Panel on Program with
Lala Peñaranda – TUED
Benjamin Miguel Alvaredo – SENTRO
Béla Galgoczi – ETUI
14:00 CET – Parallel Sessions on Program
(more sessions to be announced)
A United Front Against Debt: Why debt cancellation is the common denominator to unite workers and climate movements in the Global North & South – Debt for Climate
Debt is an extremely powerful tool of colonialism and an essential driving force of extractivism. It is also a major wealth distributor from the poor to the rich and an instrument of the ruling class to exploit workers globally. Yet most of the climate movements in the Global North are shying away from this topic due to its designed complexity, and thus remain ignorant of one of the major pillars of global inequalities. It’s time to overcome the fear of finance colonialism and organize globally to cancel the debt of Most Affected People and Areas, which is the Global North’s knee on the neck of the Global South. Learn about Debt for Climate, a global grassroots initiative, uniting labour, indigenous rights, feminist and climate movements to make the Global North pay its historic climate debt by cancelling the financial debts of the Global South as way to enable a just and workers-lead transition away from fossil fuels.
17:00 – Parallel Sessions on Program and Strategy
(more sessions to be announced)
Climate Jobs
Workers have been rising up across the globe against the cost-of-living crisis, rampant corporate greed, and repression of workers’ rights. However, despite the multi-crises facing the working class, rarely are climate jobs demands put at the centre of industrial disputes. This workshop will look at possibilities for advancing climate jobs demands within labour disputes, as part of building a global collective ecological working-class consciousness.
Theories of Change and Conflict Escalation – Climáximo
In this workshop we will discuss different theories of change that organisations have regarding different issues and analise the strategies and tactics they use to achieve their goals. Then we will talk about conflict escalation, a tool that various “momentum-driven” movements have used in recent years.
A good start for our workshop is this except from a letter from Birmingham Prison, 16 April 1963, by Martin Luther King Jr.:
You may well ask: “Why direct action? Why sit ins, marches and so forth? Isn’t negotiation a better path?” You are quite right in calling for negotiation. Indeed, this is the very purpose of direct action. Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has constantly refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks so to dramatize the issue that it can no longer be ignored. My citing the creation of tension as part of the work of the nonviolent resister may sound rather shocking. But I must confess that I am not afraid of the word “tension.”
21:00 – Movie Exhibition: “Everything Must Change”
Cost of living, climate change, food, housing, land: the multiple crises we face are deeply interlinked, which means the solutions are too. “Everything Must Change” explains how all these crises – and the accompanying spiralling price rises – have come about, and shows how a just transition away from a free market extractive system based on exploitation to a renewable energy system based on peoples needs can solve all of them. Drawing on the experience of numerous inspiring social movements, the film argues that as a movement we need to concentrate much more on emissions arising at the point of production, rather than at the level of consumption – which means building a global mass workers and peasants movement to enact that transition ourselves as a matter of priority, because governments and big business aren’t going to do it for us.
Featuring Indian Farmers Movement, Construction rank & file, Grenfell, La Via Campesina, BLF Green Bans, Right to Food, Living Rent, Kenyan Peasants League, striking French and English workers, Save St Fitticks, PELUM Zimbabwe, the Lucas Plan and many more.
Saturday, 7 October
10:00 CET – Panel On Strategy with
Sean Sweeney – TUED
Leonor Canadas – Climate Jobs Campaign Portugal
Anabella Rosenberg
14:00 CET – Parallel Sessions on Strategy and Communication
(more sessions to be announced)
Workers can Win! – Uniting workers and the climate movement in Britain
With rising inflation there has been a large wave of industrial activity in Britain. With the publication of organising guides like Workers can Win!, there is renewed interest in organising workers amongst progressives. In this session we’ll explore the lessons of the book, the state of the British strike wave, and what linking has occurred with the environmental movement.
“Workers’ Assemblies” by Safe Landing
How can we encourage more deliberative democracy (e.g. “Workers’ Assemblies” – like “Citizens’ Assemblies” for workers) within Trade Unions, in order to design alternative visions of the future for air travel, other high-carbon sectors, and organise towards a just transition?
17:00 CET – Wrap-up Plenary
21:00 CET – Movie Exhibition
Sunday, 8 October
9:30 CET – Panel on Narrative
AIDC – South Africa
Daniel Gaio – CUT
Andreas Ytterstad