Transition and change: The coal phase-out as a study in “just transition”

Technological change in the workplace has always been a disruptive challenge for workers. The closure of Ontario’s coal generating stations was one such event in the Society’s history and showed how important a union is for workers successfully managing these challenging transitions.

In 2004, the Liberal government under Premier Dalton McGuinty began pursuing their campaign promise to shut down Ontario’s five coal-fired generating stations. The Society, OPG, and the Power Workers’ Union, alongside the affected communities, all expressed substantial concerns about the manner in which the government was proceeding. The government had not done an impact assessment. It had no plan to transition the roughly 1,200 workers – 250 of which were Society members – into new positions. It had no intent on investing in affected communities, nor was it considering converting the plants to alternate fuel sources. Despite this, it quickly became clear that the government intended to plow ahead.

Absent of any sort of “just transition” plan from the government, the Society had to take matters into its own hands and began working directly with OPG to take care of the affected Society members. It was clear that if Society members were going to see a just transition, it was going to have to happen through the collective agreement with the employer and not the government.

So, in 2005, Society OPG Local Unit Directors Tony Kokus and Joe Fierro led a successful effort to bargain a coal closure Letter of Understanding into the existing OPG Collective Agreement. The letter leveraged the existing language of the collective agreement to enshrine what would become the seven-Rs of the just transition: relocation, remediation, re-employment, re-training, retirement, redundancy payments, and reinvestment. This negotiated downsizing process meant that when Society members were notified that they were out of a job, union and management supports existed to provide employees a variety of options for an appropriate transition. For members, this meant that they would get a minimum of a one-year notice of layoffs, financial assistance programs, allowances for re-training, and retirement or redundancy packages.

In the end, roughly half of the Society members employed in coal production were relocated to positions in other OPG facilities, with the remainder taking severance and retirement packages.

Thanks to Ontario’s strong nuclear and hydro-electric production, the phase-out of coal in Ontario’s energy grid marked a significant reduction in overall CO2 emissions. It serves, however, as an important cautionary tale for workers.

Technological change has always been a disruptive challenge in the workplace. The coal phase-out serves as an important reminder that when it comes to protecting a worker’s job, the most powerful tools that they can have are a union card and a strong collective agreement.

Nanticoke Generating Station. Photo credit: Jason Paris, Flickr