Read the Green New Deal bargaining claim here.
HEADS OF CLAIM
The University of Liverpool is a signatory to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (“SDGs”) and is currently developing policy that seeks to meet the 2030 targets set by the SDGs. In this claim, the Liverpool University branches of University & College Union (UCU), UNITE and UNISON and the Liverpool Guild of Students propose the action necessary to achieve those targets.
The role of current and future workers and workers’ organizations in combatting the climate and ecological emergency and ensuring a just transition is recognised through the intersecting policy frameworks of the Paris Agreement, the International Labour Organizations Just Transition Guidelines, and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The climate and ecological emergency will necessarily have an impact on staff terms and conditions making it a matter for collective bargaining and negotiation.
This claim seeks to harness the collective power and capabilities of staff, students and local communities to drive bottom-up change through sustained democratic engagement and take the necessary action to ensure the University is SDG compliant and develops a pro-active contribution to climate justice locally, nationally and globally.
By taking effective action to develop the University’s sustainability strategy and policy in line with the UN sustainable development goals, and enshrining workers’ rights and a decolonisation framework in all elements of its sustainability practice, the University of Liverpool will be a leader in its contribution to tackling the climate crisis through a Just Transition framework that benefits all.
This document calls for:
A meaningful reduction in local and global emissions – we call on the University to bring forward its net zero commitment to 2030, expand the target to encompass all emissions including all scope 3 emissions, and adopt a carbon budget approach with the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research carbon budget modelling as a maximum emissions target. This will require an assessment of the university’s estates strategy that brings scope 3 emissions within the net zero target, and the development of a set of policies, incremental binding targets and transparency mechanisms which set out how the target will be achieved.
Sustainable Employment – we call for the adoption of measures to ensure sustainable employment policies that tackle casualization and reduce the pay gap, including a commitment to tackling gendered and racialised pay inequalities and a commitment to a 1:6 pay ratio. The University will establish a formal system of workplace green reps and allocate facility time for these roles. University of Liverpool Joint Trade Unions and Guild of Students Green New Deal bargaining claim
Decolonisation and decarbonisation of the curriculum – A wholesale revision of teaching programmes along the principles of ‘decolonising and decarbonising’ the curriculum.
A just transition in research – This will entail concrete commitments to: supporting and promoting research that tackles problems of climate change and the ecological crisis; working with staff and the campus trade unions to move the University’s research agendas away from unsustainable industrial, economic, social and political practices and processes; ending funding streams that tie the University to companies that are pursuing growth in unsustainable practices and processes
Continual improvement of the University’s divestment strategy
Read the Green New Deal bargaining claim here.
