Betrayal of our workforce by ‘Business as Usual’

Efforts to reform our energy generation and CO2 emissions are being held hostage by emotive language, from business and politics, on behalf of employees who have been left exposed by industry’s refusal to diversify and manage obvious risks to their business models.

Tony Abbott is jet-setting his way around the country, visiting climate-change exposed industries, moonlighting as the vocal, emotive, arm’s-length spokesperson through which billionaire owners and fat-cat executives can bemoan the fate of their employees.  Employees who apparently have only the government to blame for their predicament – not the intractable and combative stance of their own industries and employers.

“…clean up power-stations rather than close them,” comes the plea.  This despite the lion’s share of global funding for greening industry being eaten by CCS research and resulting in pitiful results and huge timelines for any potential impact.

The polluting and energy demanding sectors of industry have been eyeing the spector of climate change, and the obvious reforms it entails, for decades now.  As time has progressed, the science and issues of climate change have become more solid and better quantified, assuming that one has not been willingly rolling in self-delusion.  The obvious outcome of a strengthening case for climate change is that there will be a significant shake-up of industry, focussing on those that are still generating significant volumes of greenhouse gases.

Students of risk management would probably have expected the exposed companies (whether through gas generation or through high power consumption) to have observed this risk, the steady strengthening trajectory, and the huge ramifications for their business, and that they would have moved to diversify out of their exposed position, or to have actively engaged in mechanisms that offset their emissions and allow them to continue if there is no valid alternative.

One would also expect that employees, as major stakeholders with a heavy reliance on their income from these companies, would also have ensured that their livelihoods and communities were protected by encouraging and policing the risk management methods put in place by their employers.

However, instead, what we have had from these companies is a complete stone wall.  Rather than investing in alternate energy sources, rather than divesting their interests in heavy generation of greenhouse gases and diversifying into less exposed businesses, they have instead waged a PR war against the public, scientists, politicians and even the perceptions of their own employees.  So now, rather than being proactive and moving into the future, we are bogged down in a protracted war of FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) where significant amounts are spent on a PR campaign to distort the issue.

Can sole blame for the plight of these employees really be laid at the foot of government and its obligations to reform greenhouse emissions, or should there be a realisation that choices made by individual businesses and industry groups are responsible for leaving the workforce totally exposed to any impacts from reform?  As a metaphor, if the government reforms were a diesel train coming inexorably closer, despite huge delays and sidetracks, and business continually reassured their workers on the tracks that either the train was imaginary or would never arrive, who would you hold responsible when the train finally ran the workers under?  The train that must get where it is going?  The business owners who willingly sacrificed the workers to squeeze out the last second of profit?  Or the supervisor who never stopped to seriously question his boss’s stance on the ‘imaginary’ nature of the train as it bore down on him?

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