Copenhagen: Negotiating One Word at a Time

Bob Baugh, executive director of the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Council and co-chair of the AFL-CIO Energy Task Force, sends us this report from the second day at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, Denmark, where 40 U.S. union members are part of a 400-member global union movement delegation led by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC). Read our previous blogs on the climate change talks here, here, here, here and here.

It was great to open this morning’s ITUC briefing session with a cheer. Our delegates were elated. The “just transition” language we have been working on had received a huge boost with the U.S. statement of support. In the United States, our just transition language speaks to the creation of good jobs. By that we mean jobs with good wages, benefits, safe and healthy working conditions and with opportunities for training, education, advancement and growth. In the international community the ILO (International Labor Organization) has defined these ideals with the words of quality jobs and decent work.

The negotiating sessions that followed led to other public statements of support as the debate opened on a U.S. amendment to the language. What we had achieved was general agreement on the idea that just transition needed to be addressed. Now it was all about the exact wording of paragraph 12 of the Shared Vision statement.

As negotiations moved into high gear, talks that began Thursday afternoon went into the early morning and resumed again mid-Friday, before going into the night. The U.S. lead negotiator, Jonathon Pershing, met until 5 a.m. Friday only to resume another marathon session the next afternoon. It takes time because, much like collective bargaining, there can be much agonizing over the meaning of every word, their nuance and even the order in which they appear.

This is the U.S. amendment that sparked the discussion to the just transition language that sparked the discussion:

12.1             Convinced that an efficient effective just transition to a low carbon economy presents substantial economic opportunities and that investments in low emission infrastructure and technology have the potential to create millions of quality jobs (and decent work) and to advance sustainable development in all parts of the world.

12.2            Acknowledging that climate change and efforts to respond to it all affects almost every aspect of society and will require broad engagement with a range of stakeholders including industry, civil society, and local provincial governments and acknowledging further the need to promote gender equity.

There needs to be final resolution on the language. The U.S. proposal, with our urging, captured the “quality jobs” idea but missed the “decent work” part. In a meeting that occurred as this was being written, our negotiators agreed to add decent work to their text. Special Envoy Todd Stern said, “We feel it is important to support this issue.” And, we’re glad he feels that way.

The point of all the work on this language is to both help define a social, economic and employment perspective within a climate agreement and to assure that unions and civil society must be recognized as stakeholders. Workers and their unions must have a voice in the workplace and community and a seat at the table with their governments at home and in the international arena when decisions are being made.

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