UNITELANDWORKER Comment


Public ownership – affordable energy


Unite general secretary Sharon Graham writes


At this year’s TUC in September on your behalf, I moved a composite calling for the public ownership of energy.


Public, democratic ownership of the entire energy network can end profiteering, make energy affordable for all, and create new jobs in a sustainable industry.


Backing Unite’s motion the TUC congress has thrown its weight behind our campaign for full public, democratic ownership of the energy network in the interests of workers and our communities.


Public ownership of energy could have saved the UK nearly £45bn in 2022, over £1,800 per household. Labour’s Keir Starmer must take action – our economy is broken. Energy privatisation has failed – pure and simple. It has crippled our communities and what remains of our industrial base. Labour needs to back Britain and bring our energy into public hands.


And don’t let anyone tell you we can’t afford it. It would cost just £90bn. We are a £2trn economy. Of course, its affordable. It’s a choice.


But Unite has shown that with our strategy of defending and extending collective bargaining workers can challenge profiteering and economic inequality for ourselves. I told TUC delegates that at Unite we have had more than 900 disputes covering over 200,000 Unite members just in the last 18 months.


I added that Unite has won over 80 per cent of those disputes and put more than £400m back into workers’ wallets. Unite has put our money where our mouth is and backed members in dispute by all and every means.


But when the crisis began, we were told to back off. That workers asking for a pay rise was a national disgrace. That it was driving up inflation. We were told this by


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the same people who clapped like seals before the last financial crash. A crash they never saw coming.


Conference colleagues heard that Unite would not be taking any lessons from the pied pipers of the establishment because it wasn’t wages pushing up inflation, it was rampant profiteering on an unprecedented scale.


And two days after that speech was made we hear the economy is contracting. I commented that in the short term, the Bank of England needs to stop bashing workers with the blunt stick of interest rate rises while ignoring corporate profiteering.


In the longer term, we need sustained public investment to get the economy back on track. This means, as I’ve said,


Sharon Graham General Secretary


bringing energy into public ownership, a serious investment in just transition and collective bargaining that delivers real wage increases and public procurement rules that support jobs.


It’s time for us to build an economy that supports workers, not the profiteers that have driven the cost-of-living crisis. This isn’t radical, it’s common sense.


find out more


See unitetheunion.org for the latest on Unite Investigates


Mark Thomas


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