CJA report | First-Ever ‘Unjust Transition’ Award Goes to major Paris climate talks sponsor Renault-Nissan for violating workers rights

Gary Cranston – Paris – 11th December 2015

Yesterday I joined trade unionists from more than a dozen countries on stage at the first ever ‘Unjust Transition’ award ceremony in Paris.

The award for was given to major sponsor of COP21, French Government owned Renault-Nissan for “egregiously violating human rights and labor advances” by conducting an aggressive union busting campaign in its Canton, Mississippi factory. Renault-Nissan manufacture some of the world’s most popular electric vehicles.

The company ran efforts to stop employees from joining the United Auto Workers union. Renault-Nissan has also reportedly tried to stop workers in a Tennessee plant, which manufactures the batteries for the Nissan Leaf, from unionizing as well.

According to the Sierra Club “The Nissan anti-union campaign has included mandatory anti-union meetings, anti-union orientation sessions for new hires, retaliation against union leaders, and repeated threats implying that the plant may close if the workers vote for representation by the United Autoworkers.”

The French government’s decision to accept their own Renault-Nissan a major sponsor of the climate negotiations indicates that the climate negotiations themselves remain guided by the same economic logic that is driving the climate crisis in the first place.

“It is important to recognize that a clean energy economy must be partnered and paired with just jobs and a just transition,” said Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth. “If we are going to move to a 1.5-degree framework, that framework cannot be accomplished if we leave workers behind.”

Gary Cranston, reporting from Paris.