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According to the leading voice of the country’s trade union movement, Britain cannot simultaneously rebuild and rebuild its nuclear industry without remaining open to skilled immigrants.
Mike Clancy, the general secretary of the prospective labor union, said the government’s ambition to raise defense spending to 3% of GDP and achieve its net zero target through new nuclear energy projects is constrained by a lack of skills.
To build a net-zero energy infrastructure, he said, the aging workforce will need to expand by 150,000 by 2030. If ministers pursue new defense projects at the same time, “the majority of engineering, science, mathematics, project management, and cyber (skills) are exactly the same in those sectors.
“These are potentially great opportunities. They are extremely difficult to make it happen because of the crossover of skills,” Clancy said in an interview with the Financial Times, adding that engineers and scientists were often seduced by high-paying financial jobs.
Clancy was speaking just before the government announced £11.5 billion in new state funding to build a new reactor at the Sizewell C site in Suffolk. We predict this is a project that supports employment of around 10,000 people.
As Prospect’s General Secretary since 2012, Clancy has represented approximately 157,000 experts working in the public and private sectors of science, engineering and other technical specialties.
Many of these regions were “very international” before Brexit, said the longtime defender of close ties with the EU and the current chair of the national advisory group of civil society groups affected by the UK-EU trade agreement. The nuclear industry was one of those whose skills base in the UK was reduced, he added.
The challenge for the government is to “convince British citizens of convincing infrastructure construction that they have stock,” he said, but “in the short term, we cannot do what we need without managed immigration, especially in certain occupations.”
Overseas recruitment has become significantly more expensive for UK employers as a result of visa rules and fee changes made by the Conservative government before 2023.
Further policy changes mentioned in last month’s whitepaper will limit skilled workers visas to graduate-level jobs, raise wage thresholds and fees, and provide access to visas subject to employers commitment to training UK-born staff.
A review of overseas employment in the IT and engineering sectors by the government’s Immigration Advisory Board found no evidence that employers in these sectors are overly dependent on international recruitment, but said immigration is helping to bridge the skills gap and make a significant contribution to finances.
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However, current pay thresholds have made sponsoring visas for young, low-paid workers early in their careers difficult, as “some areas in the UK could be priced more and more from the system.”
Clancy also warned of further conflicts between governments and unions over public sector pay and the possibility of industrial action, reflecting the “pent-up frustration” about long squeezes under conservatives and the lack of progress since the workforce was chosen last summer.
The warning is that businesses and unions need to develop a more consensual approach to labor relations, as governments bring about reforms that give more voice to workers’ representatives.
The Employment Rights Bill “should be a path to better employment relationships, not more conflicts,” he said, referring to a collaboration with the employer group chartered HR Institute, which will rebuild negotiation skills on both sides and give unions the role of redesigning work in the age of artificial intelligence.
“We don’t think that the growth of private sector union members will rise through constant conflict,” he said. “People at work want to solve their problems.”
