THIS weekend, Unite delegates from across Scotland will meet in Dundee to hold our policy conference.
 
We will debate motions on critically important issues facing our nation, such as apprenticeships and skills, safer public transport, challenging the abhorrent funding cuts to the health and social care sector, and fuel poverty. These motions will chart the industrial course forward for our union in Scotland.
 
The future course is built on solid foundations. Over the last year, due to the hard work and determination of our whole Unite family, we are securing wage wins that are helping to transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of workers across our economy.
 
Unite officers and reps work tirelessly to deliver the best possible pay, bargaining and recognition agreements. This is often backed up by the resolve of our members to take their employer head-on by supporting strike action. So, I want to take this opportunity to say thanks for everything you do — our union’s success is down to you.
 
We have negotiated inflation-beating public-sector pay deals, which have been backed by our membership in local government, the NHS and ambulance service, and Scotrail. Unite members led from the front across the public sector, significantly moving the dial from where the pay negotiations started.
 
We have delivered wage wins at Allied Bakeries (8.5 per cent) and Diageo (10.3 per cent), alongside successes for Stagecoach drivers in Perth (7.1 per cent) and Wincanton drivers at Bellshill (10 per cent). A two-year pay deal worth 8 per cent for Alvance aluminium workers in Lochaber. A pay boost for around 2,000 offshore caterers while 600 Unite members employed by Babcock Marine will receive a 7.5 per cent pay rise backdated to August last year.
 
More wage wins at Dounreay nuclear power station, James Walker Devol, Scottish Power Energy Network and Clydeport engineers alongside Unite securing a new collective bargaining agreement involving contractors at the St Fergus Gas plant.
 
As part of our “runway to success” campaign across Scottish airports, we have delivered inflation-busting pay deals. ICTS workers at Aberdeen and Glasgow airports secured a deal worth 12.8 per cent, while Edinburgh airport services workers secured a 12 per cent increase — and there are many more wage wins in this industry as our strategy begins to take off.
 
There remain major challenges for us in Scotland, not least over the British and Scottish governments’ incompetent Just Transition process.
 
The emerging green industries, which we are told are going to miraculously replace tens of thousands of jobs in the oil and gas sector, currently remain a pipe dream because it is not rooted in any industrial reality.
 
In Scotland, the latest figures for low-carbon and renewable energy employment are estimated to stand at 25,700 in 2022. In the offshore and onshore wind sectors, the two sectors which are supposed to be spearheading the green jobs revolution, only 6,200 jobs were estimated.
 
Unite firmly believes that new green jobs can be created with a coherent and properly funded industrial strategy with workers at the forefront. The glaring problem is that both governments don’t seem to have any strategy.
 
It’s crystal clear to us that jobs must be protected during the decarbonisation process. We have to manage this process in an organised way to ensure that we avoid the industrial destruction which was unleashed during the 1980s.
 
Yet, industrial vandalism on a mass scale is now what stares our members at Grangemouth in the face with the premature decision of PetroIneos to close the oil refinery. It’s estimated that the economic contribution of the refinery stands at £403.6 million, and with it, 2,822 jobs are reliant on its operations.
 
Keir Starmer may have taken down the picture of Margaret Thatcher from his office while John Swinney may talk about the devastating hurt that the closing down of Scotland’s mines caused for communities, but in the first real test of the Just Transition process, they have contributed “net zero” in support of the Grangemouth refinery workers.
 
Unite is fully determined to hold government and leading politicians to account for their inaction and failures. We will demand from them answers as to why they are not prepared to take a transition stake in companies to protect existing oil and gas jobs while also investing to create new greener jobs.
 
Unite believes these job demands can be delivered with active government support and investment — and for us, the answers to those demands start at Grangemouth.

Derek Thomson is Unite Scottish secretary.