Sharon Graham: Bord na Mona experience must act as warning

Workers demand good jobs on living planet

Unite, which represents workers throughout Ireland, is supporting the march for Climate Justice and Just Transition being organised in Dublin on Saturday by the COP26 Coalition Ireland.  The march will assemble at 12 noon in the Garden of Remembrance.

Urging trade union members to turn out on Saturday, Unite Regional Coordinating Officer Richie Browne said:

“Climate Justice and a Just Transition mean investing in creating and protecting jobs, as well as ensuring that all workers have retraining rights and – crucially – the right to bargain collectively through the unions of their choice in new green industries”.

Unite is supporting COP26 events throughout Ireland and Britain, and the union’s General Secretary Sharon Graham said:

“Unite members in Bord na Mona have experienced at first hand what happens when decarbonisation is not accompanied by a robust Just Transition plan. At the same time that harvesting of peat has been suspended locally it is being imported from Germany, Latvia and Lithuania. Workers and communities in the Midlands have yet to see much tangible benefit from the Government’s €28 million Just Transition fund. The Bord na Mona experience must act as a warning”, Sharon Graham concluded.