Workers and trade unions in the Asia Pacific are stepping up their resistance to energy privatisation. Unions in Pakistan and Australia took significant actions in recent weeks signalling a growing pushback against the handing over of public energy assets to private and foreign interests. In Australia the proposal specifically is more focused on the most efficient way to support industry power needs is through direct public ownership. 

Pakistan: Workers Take to the Streets 

In Pakistan, the All Pakistan WAPDA Hydro Electric Workers Union (CBA) has launched a nationwide protest movement against the federal government's plan to privatise power distribution companies, known as DISCOs. 

In a coordinated show of defiance, thousands of electricity workers took to the streets across at least 13 cities in Pakistan in early June. Simultaneous rallies were held in Islamabad, Hyderabad, Lahore, Larkana, Sukkur, Mirpurkhas, Shikarpur, Nawabshah, Ghotki, Quetta, Gujranwala, Peshawar, Faislabad, Badin and several other cities. Workers marched through main roads, raised slogans against rising inflation and converged on press clubs and public squares to deliver their message. 

In Mirpurkhas, HESCO employees marched from the divisional office to the local press club, carrying banners and placards. In Larkana, hundreds of workers marched from the SE Office to Royal Chowk, with union leaders declaring they would not accept privatisation under any circumstances. Protests were also held in Tando Adam, where the union staged a pen-down strike, rally and sit-in. 

Union leaders have raised a common set of demands: withdrawal of the privatisation plan, regularisation of contractual employees, clearance of long-pending promotion and allowance cases, and filling of staff shortages.  

CBA Union President Abdul Latif Nizamani, who led the central rally in Hyderabad, demanded that the government abandon privatisation of profitable distribution companies. “Our government’s over-reliance on directives by the International Monetary Fund in shaping economic policy of the country are concerning. IMF is known for pushing privatisation of public services at the cost of workers' jobs and energy security of the countries. We reject government’s move to privatise DISCOs and demand that it remains in public sector. If the government does not withdraw the privatisation proposal and address employees' demands, the protest movement will be widened further.” 

Australia: ETU Raises Voice for Public-led Renewable Energy Pathway  

On June 3, PSI affiliate Electrical Trades Union (ETU) National Secretary Michael Wright and McKell Institute Chief Economist Alison Pennington addressed the National Press Club in Canberra, presenting a new research report titled Powering Australia's Future. 

The report argues that the private electricity market has failed Australian heavy industry — including steel, aluminium, copper and critical minerals — by being unable to provide electricity that is cheap enough, reliable enough, or under long enough contracts to sustain industrial production. Commercial energy markets, the report finds, are structurally incapable of meeting the needs of energy-intensive industries at a time when demand for electricity is growing rapidly as more and more sectors — transport, mining, manufacturing, heating — shift to the grid. 

Australia heavy industry and manufacturing sector was made possible by cheap state-owned electricity from the middle of last century.  Over the last decade these predominately coal generators have been privatised and are coming to end of their life.  The private sector is unable to provide heavy industry with electricity that is cost effective or to unlock investment in new renewable energy that provides a completive advantage. Government is increasingly having to step in to bail out industry.  The ETU sees an opportunity for the government to step in and directly owned and operate renewable energy to meet industry's need.  

The ETU is calling for "Sovereign Power" — a federal government-owned entity that would build, own and operate renewable energy generation and offer long-term power purchase agreements to industry at cost. Because a government entity does not need to generate profit or carry the same financing costs as private players, it would be able to deliver electricity far more cheaply and reliably than the market. 

ETU maintains that public ownership of energy generation is essential not only for industrial competitiveness but for job creation, workforce training and economic resilience in the face of global supply shocks and geopolitical instability. 

Australia’s fortunes in the next century will live or die on the flow of electrons,” said Michael Wright, National Secretary, ETU. “Our energy systems will determine business conditions, industrial output and living standards as least as much as our financial systems. A future made in Australia must be powered by Australia. Government can step up, break the industry bailout cycle and create conditions for success.” 

The ETU is taking this proposal to the upcoming national conference of the Labor Party.  The Labor Party is centre left and is currently in government through the Albanese administration.