The year of trade union climate action: our time to lead change

The question is not whether change will happen but who will shape it. The Year of Trade Union Climate Action is our answer. 

The trade union movement has always been at its best when we’ve faced the big challenges head-on when we’ve organised, mobilised, and demanded that working people are at the heart of solutions. Climate action is no different. We cannot allow a transition that leaves workers behind, communities broken, or livelihoods destroyed. We will not accept a future built on inequality, insecurity, and exploitation. Instead, we’re fighting for a just transition one that delivers good, unionised green jobs, protects existing workers, and puts people and planet before profit. 

This year, the movement will unite around a single call: Climate action is union action. Every workplace, every sector, every branch and region has a role to play. Because the climate crisis touches everything from the food we eat and the energy we use, to the homes we live in and the transport we rely on. The solutions must come from workers, from the ground up, shaped by the collective power of our movement. 

Building a worker-led transition 

The transition to a greener economy must not be left to corporations or politicians. Workers have the knowledge, skills and creativity to drive change and unions have the organising power to make it happen. Whether it’s engineers in manufacturing retooling for renewables, food workers demanding sustainable supply chains, or public service workers pushing for low-carbon communities, unions are showing that climate justice is social justice. 

Throughout this Year of Action, unions across the UK will share stories, tools, and victories that show what a worker-led transition looks like in practice. We’ll highlight workplaces reducing emissions through collective agreements, repurposing skills for new green industries, and holding employers to account for their environmental impact. We’ll amplify the voices of reps and members already leading the way and we’ll support every union to take action, no matter where they start from. 

Organising for climate justice 

Climate breakdown is a class issue. It hits hardest those who have done least to cause it: working-class communities, migrants, young people, and the people of the Global South. The fight for climate justice is inseparable from the fight for economic and social justice. It’s about who owns and controls the wealth of the world, who bears the costs of transition, and who reaps the rewards of a sustainable future. 

As trade unionists, we know that power concedes nothing without a fight. So, this year, we’re building power in workplaces, in communities, and across borders. We’re training green reps, strengthening our bargaining agendas, and demanding national investment in a just transition that creates decent, secure jobs for all. We’re calling for a Green New Deal built by and for working people not dictated by corporate boardrooms or short-term profit motives. 

From words to action 

The Year of Trade Union Climate Action is not just about raising awareness. It’s about action, collaboration, and transformation. It’s about connecting the dots between the cost-of-living crisis, energy security, and the climate emergency. It’s about showing that union-led climate action isn’t a niche campaign—it’s central to the future of our movement and our planet. 

Through this Hub, you’ll find resources to support your union’s climate work, events and campaigns to get involved in, and stories of workers already taking action to make the change we need. Together, we’ll build momentum workplace by workplace, sector by sector until climate action is embedded in every part of trade union life. 

The climate crisis demands courage, solidarity, and imagination. And those are the very qualities that have always defined our movement. This is our time to lead, to show that when workers rise together, we don’t just defend the past—we create the future. 

Join us. Organise. Act. Build the worker-led transition. 

Because there can be no just transition without workers and no future without climate action.