Unjust Transition
The Future for Fossil Fuel Workers
The worker lockout at Regina’s Co-op Refinery Complex shows that, left unchecked, corporations will transfer the costs and burdens of the necessary transition to a fossil fuel–free future to workers.
About the book
In 2019, Regina’s Co-op Refinery Complex (CRC), a subsidiary of Federated Co-operative, locked out Unifor Local 594 after collective bargaining negotiations failed. CRC used the transition to a “low carbon” future as the justification for concessions on working conditions and reducing the workers' pension plan. The lockout demonstrates what a “just transition” means to fossil fuel corporations: rollbacks of collective bargaining, worker rights, cooperative spirit and environmental justice. In the name of a new future, Federated Co-operative and the Saskatchewan government trampled all over important worker rights — the right to strike and picket, occupational health and safety, pensions and collective bargaining. It also highlights the sorry state of co-operative values in Canada. As corporations and governments are poised to make a transition that will be detrimental to workers and communities, this books argues that solidarity between unions and community movements is absolutely necessary to make the transition away from fossil fuels a just one.
Contents
- Chapter 1: Refinery Town in the Petro-State: Co-opting the Just Transition (Emily Eaton, Andrew Stevens and Sean Tucker)
- Chapter 2: Horizons of solidarity: The Regina Refinery Pension Lockout (Kevin Skerrett)
- Chapter 3: “They Had No Intention of Ever Coming to an Agreement”: Voices of 594 (Local 594 members and editors Emily Eaton, Andrew Stevens and Sean Tucker)
- Chapter 4: Class Power and Legal Coercion in the Regina Refinery Lockout (Charles Smith and Lisa Wanlin)
- Chapter 5: Ungovernable: How a Refinery became “Too Big to Fail” – And What It Means to the People of Saskatchewan (Patricia Elliot)
- Chapter 6: “You’re Not Boiling Milk”: Health and Safety at the Co-op Refinery (Sean Tucker)
- Chapter 7: The Regina Refinery Lockout and the Many Crises of Journalism (Doug Nesbitt and Emily Leedham)
- Chapter 8: Towards a Just Transition for Refinery Workers? Taking Control of the Change (Emily Eaton)
- Chapter 9: Transition Pathways: Workers before Profits (Emily Eaton, Andrew Stevens and Sean Tucker)
