We have recently handed a petition calling on Camden to divest our pension fund from the fossil fuel industry. After collecting as many signatures as possible we submited the petition alongside a deputation to the pensions committee in November.
Abandoning fossil fuel investment is not only the right thing to do is also the financially smart thing to do. Several major financial institutions, among them the bank of England, have branded investment in fossil fuel as ‘risky’.
Over the last year, students have been walking out of school to highlight the climate emergency, and in advance of Greta Thunberg’s address to the UN, they asked us to join them. In response to that call, Camden UNISON called on members to rally at lunchtime outside 5PS last 20 September 2019 and, for those who could, to join the students in Parliament Square. Council staff were met by NUJ members from the Guardian and other local workers, and a group of primary school students with placards they’d made.
Speakers from Camden UNISON, the NUJ at the Guardian, the UCU (college workers’ union) at UAL in Granary Square, Extinction Rebellion and from the political parties in Camden addressed the rally before a group of UNISON members left to meet the student strikers and march in Whitehall to chants of “No coal, no oil, keep your carbon in the soil” and “system change not climate change”.