Model motion for Trade Unions

DEFUND CLIMATE CHAOS MOTION

& INFO PACK FOR TRADE UNIONS

A model motion for your Trade Union

If you pass the motion in your branch/Trades Council/Trade union,

INTRO

This info pack guide contains everything you need to raise the profile of Fossil Finances in your Trade Union. Using a model motion and an Info pack containing resources and advice, get your Branch, Trade Union or Trades Council on board and mobilise more workers and trade unionists into the Climate movement. We must end fossil fuel projects and dry up their financing as a key part of ending Climate Chaos.

INFO PACK CONTENT

Join our Fossil Finances Trade Union briefing page 2
Fossil Finances motion - text page 2
Become a Partner of Defund Climate Chaos coalition page 4
Take action page 4

JOIN OUR TRADE UNION BRIEFING 13th JUNE 6.30PM

WHAT?

Tipping Point UK is running regular briefings for trade union members on the issue of Fossil Finances and the work of the Defund Climate Chaos coalition. The briefing will equip you with some knowledge, skills and resources you need to get your trade union branch to start taking action for climate justice.

WHEN?

The first briefing is taking place on Monday 3rd October 2022, 6.30pm - 8pm.

The briefing will be held on zoom and you can sign up to join here.

DEFUND CLIMATE CHAOS - MOTION TEXT (444 WORDS)

If you are unsure how to pass a motion, check our simple guide here.

This Trade Union Council / Branch / conference / AGM is very concerned at the outcomes of the COP26 Climate talks in Glasgow as they:

Failed to put an end to the expansion of fossil fuels
Failed to tackle the UK finance sector’s funding and insurance of fossil fuels.

New fossil fuel projects will blow us past our safe climate limits. If we want a liveable climate – meaning temperatures rise no more than 1.5°C – there can be no new investment in oil, gas or coal. A radical shift to a carbon-neutral sustainable economy & society must start now via a Just Transition. Workers and communities directly affected across the world and in the UK should not pay the price of the necessary transition. The Finance industry - banks, insurers and fund managers - must be held to account for their crucial role in funding climate chaos.

As Trade Unionists, we believe that:

Climate justice means keeping fossil fuels in the ground, right now. We need to stop new coal, oil, gas and fracking projects.
Banks, insurers and other private financiers must stop supporting and profiting from fossil fuel extraction, false solutions like biomass or carbon capture and storage and new infrastructure like roads and airports.
Public money must stop being given to polluting industries, through our central banks, pension funds, and government subsidies.
Polluters and finance executives that are profiting from causing climate chaos, must pay climate reparations, for the harms they drive around the world.
We need a financial transaction Tax to support to invest in good, green jobs, especially for workers transitioning from high carbon industries and projects and those hit the hardest by climate impacts, Covid-19, and precarity
Together we need to democratise the financial industry to force a just transition and ensure energy access for all.

This Trade Union Council / Branch / conference / AGM therefore agrees to:

Support campaigns to end fossil fuel projects such as North Sea Oil projects like the Cambo field, West Cumbria coal mine, East Africa Pipeline, and the Trans Mountain Pipeline.
Raise the profile of the issue of Fossil Finances with members, affiliates and partners by sharing resources, running briefing sessions, participating to relevant events and/or lobby politicians on the issue.
Sign up/ donate to the Defund Climate Chaos coalition and support events targeting the financial institutions behind fossil fuel investments
Circulate the latest version of this motion and info pack to affiliates/branches/members for them to escalate it to their Trade Unions (Branches, Regional Committees and Conferences, Equalities networks conferences, National conferences and up to the Trade Union Congress if possible)

BECOME A PARTNER

Defund Climate Chaos is a wide coalition of groups around the world calling for an immediate end to fossil fuel financing. Collectively, we believe that extracting more oil, coal and gas to build more fossil-fuelled infrastructure is madness. New oil wells, airports and roads built now will lock us into decades more future pollution that breach our communities and planet’s safe limits.

The coalition includes NGOs, grassroots activists, campaign groups and trade unions. Together, the Defund Climate Chaos Coalition coordinates strategic and powerful action targeting the finance and insurance sectors to cut their ties with fossil fuels. In October 2021, the coalition organised the largest day of action against fossil finance in history, with people rising up in their thousands across the world outside major banks, investors and insurers - including in dozens of towns and cities in the UK. In Spring 2022, Defund Climate Chaos is coordinating mass mobilisations around the AGMs of financial institutions tied up in the fossil fuel industry including Barclays, HSBC, Lloyds of London and Standard Chartered.

TAKE ACTION

BANKS FUNDING CLIMATE CHAOS

This Spring, as the finance industry came together to hold their Annual General Meetings, we have been taking mass action to disrupt business as usual. Banks targeted by those actions included:

Barclays - Barclays is Europe's biggest funder of fossil fuels. Pumping £110 billion into fuelling climate chaos since the Paris climate agreement was signed in 2016.

HSBC - HSBC is one of the largest banking and financial services institutions in the world. It's funded climate chaos to the tune of £84 billion since the Paris Agreement in 2016.

Standard Chartered - Standard Chartered is the UK’s coal bank, a climate killer. This bank is investing billions in fossil fuel companies all over the world. In total, with their dirty business they have channeled £24 billion into coal, oil and gas companies already since the Paris Agreement. You can participate to our digital action Google Review Swarm against Standard Chartered at any time.

Check the Defund Climate Chaos website and sign up to our mailing list to take part in future actions. You can also organise your own action and there are plenty of ideas and tips on the website to help you, including a template letter to workers that may work in the bank targeted by your protest.

You can find out more about why Central Banks should be a target for the Climate movement and watch this video explainer about the role of Fossil Finance.

LLOYD’S OF LONDON INSURANCE

Tell Lloyd’s of London to stop insuring the Trans Mountain Pipeline

Without insurance, climate wrecking projects can’t go ahead. Lloyd’s provides insurance and reinsurance that supports and enables some of the world’s worst fossil fuel projects including coal mines, tar sands pipelines, and new oil & gas exploration. Their business plans are incompatible with keeping climate change under 1.5°C. In total, Lloyds insures 40% of the world’s energy. These practices are far from new. Lloyd’s has a long racist colonial past. Its wealth was built off insurance of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, on which it held a monopoly until abolition. Today, Lloyd’s continues to profit from underwriting projects that sacrifice Indigenous, Black, and brown communities on the frontlines of fossil fuel extraction and the climate crisis.

One project in particular stands out for its destructiveness and abuse of human rights. The TransMountain Expansion Pipeline in Western Canada cuts across the Lands of multiple Indigenous nations that are fiercely opposed to it. Led by Traditional Owners' people across the world have been pressuring insurance companies, and so far 16 insurers have cut ties with TransMountain.

“Our Indigenous and allied direct actions against insurers have worked. The Trans Mountain expansion degrades Indigenous ancestral homelands and sacred waters and is a perpetuation of genocidal practices by the Canadian petro-state.” Erica Masuskapoe, a frontline Indigenous land defender.

People across the world are taking action online to demand that Lloyd’s rule out insuring the Trans Mountain Pipeline. You can get involved by:

Writing to Lloyd’s of London yourself or on behalf of your Trade Union if your branch has passed the Defund Climate Chaos motion.
Share the #StopTMX letter writing action with other trade unionists in your branch and ask them to write to Lloyd’s.

HELP STOP THE EAST AFRICA CRUDE OIL PIPELINE (EACOP)

Building the world’s longest heated crude oil pipeline in the midst of a climate emergency would be grossly irresponsible, yet that’s exactly what French oil company Total and the China National Offshore Oil Corporation are planning to do.This massive pipeline would rip through the heart of Africa – displacing communities, endangering wildlife and fueling climate change.

We need the banks to know that thousands of people around the world agree with the open letter endorsed by over 260 regional and international organizations pleading with banks not to join the $2.5 billion loan to construct the pipeline.

Send your own message now to the 8 banks we think are most likely to consider financing the pipeline. Together we can #StopEACOP and create a just and sustainable economic future.

defundclimatechaos.uk #DefundClimateChaos