Workers’ Perspectives on an Unjust Transition: Place, History, and Workplace Closure at Grangemouth Oil Refinery, Scotland

Abstract

Fossil fuel workers are central protagonists in achieving a “just transition” to a greener and fairer economy. This article examines workforce attitudes towards transition, redundancy, and restructuring following Petroineos’ announcement that the Grangemouth oil refinery in Scotland would close by 2025. It analyses interviews with workers recorded as they responded to the announcement, but before closure processes had begun. A labour-centred view of just transition predominated among our respondents, in response to a closure process where capital's agency was the determining factor. Worker narratives were strongly embedded in history and place through Grangemouth's longstanding status as a key oil and chemicals hub. Perspectives on justice moulded across procedural and distributional facets, centred on local employment, but extended also to the reparative through a commitment to avoiding replicating prior waves of deindustrialisation. Fundamentally, a just transition meant applying workers’ skills locally to meet the imperatives posed by climate change.