Back in the late 1990’s I was concerned about the lack of apprenticeship and technical craftsman training. Why?
I had been in industrial sales for about 20 years I decided I wanted to go back on the tools as welder. Yes it meant putting on blue overall once again? “So what I thought” it’s a skill and it’s important job! Like driving a train or driving a truck, the first one transports 1000’s of passengers and the other transports 1000’s of goods.
Being a welder or metal fabricator or a carpenter or a electrician or a plaster or a plumber or a painter are essential jobs. All those people do real jobs and are fundamental to smooth running of societies complex system. By the way it’s not the cyber world that makes or produces things.
In the early mid 1980’s the conservative government under Margaret Thatcher closed down all the U.K. skill centres and completely scrapped the Training Opportunities Programme or TOP’s scheme. My ex wife did a RSA secretarial short hand typing course and was paid unemployment benefit whilst attaining this 6 month course at a local technical college in Northern Ireland. If I remember she was on the last TOPS course ever.
I helped her get a job as a receptionist typist at a company I worked for called Westbro Aluminium Wire Company based in the West Midlands which was later taken over by ALCAN Aluminium.
Back to my story of skill shortages in the U.K. I decided to contact my local conservative member of parliament Julie Kirkbride about the lack of skills training In the U.K.
I explained my concern of lack of technical craft skill training. Later I had letter from Margaret Hodge a Labour Minister, which was, to be fair, a vacuous A4 letter with nothing concrete about craft skill training.
I remember thinking? How I am going to refresh my own craft skills to re-entre the work place? I contacted the Matthew Bolton college of technology in Birmingham and they advised me to contact the Engineering Employers Federation which I duly did.
Lady at EEF told me they had circular that went to all their members in the midlands. I placed an advertisement in the back of the paper. Which I did and I had few companies contact me Farr Filtration and Mitsui Babcock.
In the end I went to Mitsui Babcock and they put me through their ECITB Engineering Construction Industries Training Board Nation Skills Development Scheme in engineering construction and welding. Mitsui Babcock had an amazing welding school designed to teach apprentices and older mature students welding using; SMAW – Shielded Metal Arc Welding GTAW – Gas Tungsten Arc Welding and finally FCAW – Flux Cored Arc Welding.
I spent around 6 months going through both skills gaining National Vocational Qualifications in Construction Engineering and Welding. Eventually on completion I worked in their fabrication facility at Tipton West Midlands.
I then went on into site construction engineering welding working on oil rigs, oil refineries and power stations as a high integrity pipe welder. I was lucky I had this opportunity at 49 to become a highly skilled and well paid coded welder.
Again back to my original story of the lack or shortage of skilled workers. I remember on one contract at Aldbrough gas storage. LNG Liquid Natural Gas Storage facility located 1.5km inland, near Aldbrough, in the East Riding area of Yorkshire, UK. Jointly developed by Statoil and Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE), the facility has a storage capacity of 370 million cubic metres of gas in nine underground caverns. They were old salt caverns and the salt was leached out using high pressure water jets.
I was in one of the temporary rest cabins having lunch and many of the guys were snoozing after their midday meal break. I thought looking around the cabin they were all like me mature “grey haired brigade” I called them.
Hardly any young engineering craftsman were on the job. I thought one day in the not too distant future there’s going to be an almighty shortage of skilled people to do these high skilled jobs.
My generation of baby boomers were children born just after world war 2.
So now it’s finally come home to roost that we have a massive skill shortage. Why oh why did prior governments not see this coming?
Prior to Brexit we had free movement of labour from mainly old eastern block countries such as Poland, Rumania. They filled in theses jobs. Because they were able to earn wages 4 times higher than their home countries. That’s not so true today as their cost of living has risen in line with rest of European countries.
But it wasn’t only skilled workers but non skilled for other industries, HGV drivers, labourers, civil engineering construction workers both craftsman and labourers.
Agricultural workers and meat processing workers and on and on. All these foreign nationals were here to work and not live off state benefits.
The conservative government also brought in the IR35 refers to the United Kingdom‘s anti-avoidance tax legislation designed to tax ‘disguised’employment at a rate similar to employment. In this context, “disguised employees” means workers who receive payments from a client via an intermediary, for example, their own limited company, and whose relationship with their client is such that had they been paid directly they would be employees of the client.
That has meant that workers now are being employed more on direct basis which means employers have to pay proper terms and condition of employment. But this also means the worker takes home less pay in his pay packet after tax. With the old sub contract system he was able claim more tax deductible benefits. Giving him bigger pay cheque each week or month!
Now we have a perfect storm with Brexit, covid and now the furlough payment scheme finishing. Many of the foreign nationals won’t return to the U.K. because of how they were vilified by the press and brits. Tougher immigration rules. Now the U.K. has suddenly got a massive labour force crisis. In every sector of commerce.
Lack of fuel at the pumps and no drivers to drive the tankers. Food shortages through lack of logistic HGV drivers and on and on! It was perfect storm that take 20 years to materialise.
Strangely it’s allowed me at 70 to go back into the work market to top up my savings.
But it also dawned on me as I cycle past a petrol station queues, how lucky I am not to rely on a car for transport. But it also rang bell in my mind about climate change? If there was ever time not to rely on fossil fuels it is now.
It seems as if all these things are coming together, climate change, shortage of workers, shortage of Liquid Natural Gas and so forth. Yes all these things coming together at once would make it difficult for any government to deal with. But the U.K. seems to have amplified this crisis with shortsightedness and poor decision making?
Now the government is scuttling around for quick fixes! Get the army in, issue short term visas but the crux of the problem is far more deep rooted. Baby boomers retiring, lack of National skills training in all trades, a reliance on overseas workers. Reliance on fossil fuels, short term government planning. Unforeseen pandemic and delusional thinking in tackling the Covid virus.
Poor public transport reliance on cars and trucks, so the chickens have come home to roast all of a sudden! With Taxation, Brexit and the lack of european labour plus the covid pandemic! Not double whammy not even a triple whammy but a quadruple whammy!
Finally the real underlying issue is climate change. This is slowly and surely creeping upon us. Many feel this isn’t real it’s a conspiracy enacted by shadowy forces.
But it’s a real phenomenon, which is certainly happening to us slowly by stealth.
Interesting video by the German DW news on desertification. What’s desertification? the process by which fertile land becomes desert, typically as a result of drought, deforestation, or inappropriate agriculture.
“Nearly one fifth of the world’s land is threatened with desertification” as the young Geta Thunberg stated politicians are all blah blah blah!
Climate change is enormous challenge for man kind and we’re going have to adapt and quickly or else!