Beyond the Year of Climate Action Building a Lasting Worker-Led Climate Movement
As we bring the Year of Climate Action to a close, it’s clear this has been much more than a year-long campaign. It’s been a turning point a statement of who we are as a union and what we stand for in the face of a global crisis.
Over twelve months, BFAWU members have led conversations, challenged employers, educated one another, and shown that climate action is a trade union issue rooted in class, fairness, and worker power.
From our workplaces to the political stage, we’ve made it clear: the fight for decent jobs, safe conditions, and a liveable planet are one and the same struggle.
What We’ve Built Together
This year has shown the strength and imagination of our movement:
We’ve connected climate justice to class justice.
We’ve exposed how the same system that drives poverty pay and exploitation drives environmental destruction and that only organised workers can change it.
We’ve turned awareness into action.
From green bargaining and workplace safety to just transition demands, BFAWU reps and members have shown how collective power can deliver real, practical change.
We’ve made climate a bargaining issue.
We’ve demonstrated that every negotiation over pay, safety, or production is also a climate negotiation because how we work shapes the world we live in.
We’ve put equality at the heart of climate action.
From women workers leading campaigns for justice, to solidarity with those in the Global South and climate-affected regions, we’ve built an intersectional, international response.
We’ve built hope.
Not the shallow hope of PR campaigns or empty promises but the grounded, collective hope that comes from workers standing together, taking action, and refusing to be ignored.
Why This Work Matters
The climate crisis is not a future problem it’s here now, reshaping the world of work, threatening jobs, and deepening inequality. But it’s also reshaping the future of trade unionism.
Our role as a union is not just to defend our members from the worst impacts of a broken system it’s to build the power to change that system altogether.
The Year of Climate Action has shown that BFAWU is ready for that task. By linking our industrial, political, and equality work, we’ve proven that workers are not just victims of climate breakdown we are the agents of transformation.
When we fight for safe workplaces, for fair pay, for food justice and public ownership, we’re already fighting for climate justice. We’re already building the alternative: one based on solidarity, democracy, and collective control.
What Comes Next
The Year of Climate Action doesn’t end here it’s the foundation for the years ahead.
Our next steps are about turning ideas into structures, campaigns, and power:
Embedding green bargaining across every sector, so climate issues are part of every negotiation and every workplace conversation.
Expanding training for reps on climate, environment, and just transition building confidence and skills to challenge employers and win change.
Strengthening alliances across the trade union movement, community organisations, and international partners to coordinate worker-led climate action.
Campaigning for public ownership and investment in food, energy, and transport essential to any serious Green New Deal for working people.
Ensuring no worker is left behind fighting for just transition plans that protect jobs, pay, and communities.
This work is part of who we are as a union: fighting for dignity, safety, and justice wherever working people face exploitation or inequality.
A Movement for the Future
The Year of Climate Action has reminded us that the solutions to the climate crisis won’t come from the boardroom or Westminster they’ll come from the shop floor, from union branches, and from the collective strength of workers who refuse to give up on the future.
Our members have shown that climate action isn’t about guilt or sacrifice it’s about power, democracy, and solidarity.
The BFAWU will continue to lead that fight proudly, unapologetically, and with the same spirit that’s carried our union through every struggle in our history.
Because the future we need won’t be handed to us.
It will be organised.
The Year of Climate Action may be ending but the movement we’ve built is only just beginning.
Together, we’ll keep fighting for a world that works for workers, for communities, and for the planet we all share.