Written by George Hibberd
Former airline pilot
Last Thursday, pilots in France went on strike to oppose the French government’s plans to triple taxes on plane tickets.
But is it in French pilots’ best interests to be striking against increased aviation taxes?
Usually, we would be in full support of striking workers. To be clear, we absolutely support the right of workers to exercise their power and their right to withdraw their labour. But why are we sceptical about this particular strike by French pilots?
The French government has proposed to triple taxes on plane tickets in a bid to raise 1 billion Euros for the state which they say has an “environmental aim” because of aviation carbon emissions. The tax seems to be similar in nature to Air Passenger Duty (APD) in the UK where the tax isn’t directly on the fuel or linked to the per passenger emissions of the flight like an emissions tax might be. But the tax is scaled for the categories of European, intermediate and long-distance flights, much like APD.
SNPL, the French pilots’ union, is saying that increased taxes is an “unprecedented attack on the aviation sector in France, its jobs, its competitiveness and its sustainability.”
But does this make sense? Does increasing taxes on aviation negatively impact its ability to decarbonise and be sustainable?
Industry leaders often opine that the aviation industry must continue to expand if it is to afford to pay for the alternative jet fuels and the future technologies that promise to decarbonise the industry. They’re essentially saying that aviation emissions will have to increase if they are to afford to decrease them sometime in the future.
We in Safe Landing believe that aviation should be taxed more.
Currently, aviation fuel is completely tax-free – very different to how we are taxed filling up our cars at the petrol station. This is essentially a tax subsidy for the relatively wealthy who can afford to fly regularly.
As a society we don’t accept the assertions from the likes of the CEO of fossil fuel giants that they must continue to extract oil and gas and expand their operations if they have any hope of decarbonising. This would be absurd and perverse. So why do we accept the same assertions from aviation leaders?
Usually, workers are striking in opposition to industry leaders fighting for fairer pay and better terms and conditions.
But when it comes to decarbonisation, for some reason, striking workers are often in lockstep with these very same people. If we do not trust our leaders when they say we need to take a pay cut whilst shareholders face no such hardship, why do we accept what they say when they talk about sustainability? Why is there not the same critical thinking and class solidarity?
One reason could be that industry leaders have been very effective in their greenwash campaigns to the public and workers saying that aviation is “just 2%” of global emissions, that emissions are just too difficult to abate to bother doing anything about in the short-term and that decarbonisation should be up to the metaphorical “other industries”. They have been very effective in arguing that any increase in plane tickets will negatively impact on passenger numbers and therefore put aviation workers’ jobs at risk.
Historically, this may have been correct in an industry environment with stiff competition and a race to the bottom for ticket prices. But we face a very different and altogether existential situation when it comes to the immediacy of the climate crisis and the permanency of the impacts if it is not avoided or mitigated for.
The fact is that every industry is going to have to decarbonise rapidly if we are to avoid the worst impacts of climate breakdown.
Aviation should not be excluded from that, especially being a high-polluting industry. Aviation might account for 2% of global CO2 emissions but its overall warming effect is up to 2 or 3 times that figure and is set to rise as a proportion of global heating as other industries decarbonise. Countries like the UK have produced plans to reach net zero by 2050, but they have been widely criticised by climate organisations as inadequate.
If our industry does not have a credible plan to decarbonise, we will be imposed with legislation that will not necessarily have workers prioritised or even consulted.
IATA has said that decarbonising aviation is going to cost around $4.7trn between now and 2050.
That’s a massive $175bn/year. So where is that money going to come from if not from the aviation industry itself and those that use aviation the most?
Increasingly and rightly so, global south countries are also calling for financial reparations and money for loss and damages due to climate breakdown from high-polluting countries and industries.
Is it fair that the general public is taxed more to pay for this? Or is it fairer that high-polluting industries like aviation who already face low taxes, and in some cases zero tax, are taxed a bit more?
If aviation worker unions do not come up with a plan to address the climate crisis in a way that both decarbonises our industry and prioritises workers rights, then we risk being legislated out of existence facing mass permanent redundancies.
This is exactly why unions need to put workers in the driving seat and start partaking in deliberative democracy like workers’ assemblies to address this crisis head-on.
Unions like Unite in Grangemouth have campaigns around “no ban [on oil and gas extraction] without a plan”. One of the issues unions face with existential crises like the climate crisis is that they are so busy fighting against pay cuts and diminished terms and conditions that they simply don’t have time to address the climate crisis.
Addressing the climate crisis requires a process of education and information, deliberation and deciding-making, something our current union structures and processes do not easily facilitate. Workers’ Assemblies provide that space. It presents unbiased climate science, the problems the industry faces with decarbonisation and the uncomfortable realities of the solutions proposed by industry leaders. It provides the time and space for aviation workers, those that have the biggest stake in the future of industry, to deliberate over the information they’ve heard and come up with recommendations for decision-makers.
Aviation leaders can easily make grand statements about decarbonisation and protecting jobs but in reality they will jump ship, as they always do, after a relatively short tenure in their position having achieved their goal of increasing profit and value for shareholders. They simply do not have the will to think in the longer term. Their role and the inherent hierarchy in capitalist businesses are systemically flawed and unable to address the existential crises facing our industry and its workers.
Workers’ Assemblies are not a revolutionary idea, but it’s what is necessary to augment unions’ current decision-making processes and hear what workers actually want when it comes to choosing which direction to go in the face of decarbonisation.
I am proud to have been part of the British Airline Pilots Association (BALPA) Environmental Study Group who have succeeded in getting the union to start scoping a Workers’ Assembly on climate. It’s been a process years in the making but it is starting to come to fruition. What we are hoping to prove is that if British airline pilots can enact deliberative democracy, a relatively conservative union compared to others, then other unions can do the same. Speaking to a French A320 captain from the union ALTER just the other day, he was extremely excited to hear about BALPA’s plans and hopes to take this to his union and further onto SNPL.
I’ve reached out to the SNPL myself but if you are in the union or If you know anyone in the union, get in touch with us so we can start this dialogue. We need to start enacting deliberative democracy within our unions not only to avoid striking against legislation that might actually be in the best interests of workers but also come up with our own worker-led plan for the future of our industry.