A Guest Post by, Dundee ALBA Candidate Scott Agnew standing in Coldside Ward.
Oil and Gas offshore workers haven’t had their problems to seek since 2015. In that time, there has been two major downturns, a pandemic, and a reassessment of our energy needs going forward, this will see fossil fuels totally phased out and replaced with clean and renewable power sources in the coming decades. As the jobs began to go, workers were left wondering what the future held. Sometime in 2020, we started hearing a phrase that was coined in the USA in the 1970s, ‘Just Transition’.
The idea in the UK goes back to when the coal mines were closed in the 1980s and whole communities were abandoned with little hope, this has led to social and economic problems in these communities that are still ongoing today two generations later. A similar situation occurred in Fife in 2016, following the closure of the Longannet Coal-fired Power Station, where the Scottish Government’s own Just Transition Commission concluded that there was a ‘strong feeling among local people that their voices had not been heard’ with ‘no transition plan in place for the community’. The ‘Just Transition’ plan for the offshore workforce would see the predominantly North East of Scotland workforce transition into the new renewable sector, thus avoiding the social and economic problems that occurred in the mining communities occurring in North East Scotland.
For just transition to work, the general opinion is that Certificate Passports are needed. This would see those that are, say, OPITO (Oil and Gas) trained, able to transfer their skills to the wind sector without having to duplicate courses under GWO (Wind industry). A simple solution to a complex problem you might think, but not according to the training providers, trade bodies and lacklustre governments in Westminster and Holyrood. Training providers don’t want to lose the cash-cow of duplicate courses under OPITO, GWO and STCW (Shipping), trade bodies want to guard their own fiefdom jealously, and governments, after years of feting the offshore industry and the money it provided to the economy, have now used the industry as a climate-change scapegoat, thrown it under the bus, and are, at best, lukewarm to the plights of the employees.
This has been highlighted by Platform, a group led by Friends of the Earth and other environmental NGOs with trade union and industry input, who recently, with the help of of the Green MP Caroline Lucas, managed to have 3 amendments inserted to the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill at Westminster on 21st February 2022 focusing on Just Transition, Certificate Passports and the general transfer of skills from oil and gas to the renewable industries, something that 94% of oil and gas workers approved off in a recent survey. Despite there being a clause in the amendment that would have the measures apply to Scotland, the SNP contingency at Westminster abstained from the vote and did not even take part in the debate! The excuse for this, according to my MP and dozens of other generic replies I’ve seen from other SNP MPs, is that ‘As the Skills and Post-16 Bill covers a devolved area of competence and will not directly affect education or training in Scotland, the SNP have not and will not be participating in debates or votes on this bill’; I don’t want to sound pedantic, but read the amendments, there’s clearly a clause that would have the measures apply in Scotland.
All of us who wrote to SNP MPs were referred to the ‘world leading £500 million …Just Transition for the the North East of Scotland’s Oil and Gas sectors’, however, if you read the full Scottish Government’s ‘Supporting a Greener Scotland’ document, the only thing referring to skills transfer for workers is the ‘Green Jobs Workforce Academy’. Retraining through this route would be lengthy and expensive; the Certification Passport is quick, relatively inexpensive and would get people into renewable industries quicker.
If the SNP are serious about ‘Just Transition’, they should be listening to the likes of Platform, the offshore trade unions and the workforce in general; this clearly hasn’t been done.
‘Just Transition’ will only work if linked to a functioning Certificate Passport policy and if governments are fully behind this transition. If not, this particular just transition will go the way of the miners and Longannet and a massive skills base will be lost for good.
Good to see someone who understands what could be the plight of Aberdeen and the Oil and Gas off-shore workers – and more important, points towards the obvious way forward. Better still, the fact that Scott is an ALBA
candidate!
Very informative.
The demand side favours this practical, pragmatic solution, same for the supply side. The vested interests in the training sector act as a block to protect their cash cow and this requires government intervention.
Best of luck with that. The middle class, humanities graduates (elected, special advisors or civil servants) that comprise the Scottish Government are likely to regard the issue with studied indifference at best.
Excellent piece, Scott and Roddy. Says it all. This is getting more and more like Scottish Labour and the invested interests of the few in hanging on to their fiefdoms. We need a breath of fresh air in Scotland and, as Scott says, the plan was always to gradually move oil and gas staff into the renewable energy field with the least resistance to change, but, of course, this is Scotland, where everything is always such a huge effort. Energy – human energy – is something that appears to have been lost here, and giving up at the first hurdle seems to be the name of the game across the board. These ‘walking in treacle’ tactics should be stamped on and eradicated.
An oldish film, Fame is the Spur, starring a brilliant Michael Redgrave as a young firebrand who becomes a sad establishment figure and sell-out, should be compulsory viewing for all SNP MSPs and MPs and all would-be candidates for election. It sums up what happened to Labour, but it could apply equally well to the SNP now. In the end, the Redgrave character was abandoned by everyone who had believed in him. Take note SNP and Greens – and, indeed, every other party that has pretensions to govern.
There is no need for any “Passport system for transition” with the lead times involved 30-50 years.
As Scottish Youth leaves Schools they will get training by going strait into windpower , this already exists
i know a couple of lads who are already doing Windpower training , they will get jobs in the new
industry while people continue retiring in the old Oil and Gas Industries and that training will
slowly wither and die on the Vine but it will take decades and people with already existing
transferable Skills like electricians will get jobs if they want them because of those sought after
skills they already have.
There will likely always be an Oil and Gas Industry anyway but smaller because Military Vehicles are not going to be built to run on Batteries when all an enemy has to do is to knock out Power Stations and National Grid
Transmission Lines to be able to win a war. The idea of Tanks having to find a recharging points is just laughable. We are aiming to be Carbon Neutral NOT Carbon Zero , its maybe even possible the likes of Russia ,Iran and China will stick their Fingers up to the rest of the Worlds Grren plans anyway and just keep on burning their own vast resounces of Coal, Gas and Oil after all what else do many of them have ?