The United Kingdom cannot simultaneously rearore and reconstruct its nuclear energy industry without remaining open to qualified migrants, according to a foreground voice from the country's union movement.
Mike Clancy, secretary general of the Prospect trade union, said that the government's ambition to increase defense expenses to 3% of GDP and achieve its zero net objectives, including through new nuclear energy projects, would be limited by skills shortages.
The construction of the energy infrastructure for Net Zero would require an aging workforce to develop 150,000 by 2030, he said. If the ministers have continued new defense projects at the same time, “a large part of engineering, science, mathematics, project management, cyber (skills) are absolutely the same in these sectors – then where do people come from?”
“These are potentially fantastic opportunities. Their realization is extremely difficult due to the crossing of skills,” said Clancy in an interview with the Financial Times, adding that engineers and scientists were often attracted to more remunerated financial jobs.
Clancy was speaking just before the government announced 11.5 billion pounds of the funding for new states to build to build A new nuclear reactor On its Sizewell C site in Suffolk – a project planned to support around 10,000 jobs.
As a secretary general of prospect since 2012, Clancy represents around 157,000 professionals working in the public and private sectors in science, engineering and other technical specialties.
Many of these areas had been “very international” before Brexit, said Clancy, a long-standing defender of closer links with the EU, and current president of the National Advisory Group of Civil Society affected by the UK's trade agreement. The nuclear industry was one of those where the skills base of the United Kingdom had shrunk, he added.
The challenge for the government, he said, was “to convince British citizens that they have a participation … in the construction of infrastructure” while explaining that “in the short term, without managed immigration, especially in certain professions, we cannot do what we have to do”.
Recruitment abroad has become much more expensive for British employers due to changes in visa rules and costs made since 2023 by the previous conservative government.
Further policy changesIn a white paper last month, will limit the visas of skilled workers for higher level jobs, will further increase the salary thresholds and the costs, and make employers' access to the visas subordinate to their commitment to train the staff born in the United Kingdom.
A goodbye Hiring abroad in the IT and engineering sectors by the government's migration consulting committee has since found any evidence that employers in these sectors depended too much on international recruitment, but that migrants helped to fill the skills of skills and to make a great contribution to public finances.
The current salary thresholds had “potentially caused that certain regions (of the United Kingdom) are increasingly high in the system” and made visas sponsorship more difficult for younger workers and less well paid in the early stages of their career, said the Mac.
Clancy also warned of the potential of new clashes – and industrial action – between the government and the unions concerning the remuneration of the public sector, reflecting “repressed frustration” about the long pressure under the conservatives and the lack of progress since work was elected last summer.
The warning is striking given the wider message from Clancy is that companies and unions must forge a more consensual approach to industrial relations, because the government provides reforms that will give workers representatives a stronger voice.
The bill on employment rights “should be a path to better job Relations, not only more conflicts, “he said, referring to the joint work with the Charter Institute of Staff and Development, the group of employers, to rebuild the negotiation skills on both sides and give unions a role in the overhaul of work for the age of artificial intelligence.
“We do not think that the growth in unions in the private sector will increase by a constant conflict,” he said. “People at the workplace want their problems to be solved.”
