Not a skills shortage, more a training blockade

In the new Employment Rights Bill, you will find that the generic right to skills training is noticeable by its absence, as is the assigning of responsibility to employers to provide it, or even allow workers time off to obtain it for themselves.

The bill’s designers will know that employment without the right to training is an insecure and rocky road leaving workers at the mercy of the market. Yet it fails to address the precarious position of unskilled workers, and it fails to ensure skilled workers have the right to be upskilled, potentially leaving them also in the same state.

The deliberate decision of British employers not to train workers is a national scandal and largely responsible for the desperate state of the British labour market. What is called a skills shortage is actually a well planned training blockade for workers in Britain. There’s nothing accidental or incompetent about it.

The blockade has gone on for decades and is testament to the ruinous business plans in which many employers in Britain consciously make little or no mention of training for workers. And those who do are reducing their commitment.

The International Monetary Fund report Upskilling the UK Workforce tells us that Britain’s workforce has “larger and more chronic skills gaps than in most peer countries”. Surveys report widespread recruitment difficulties, with implications for output, in high-skill sectors like digital and software, manufacturing, medicine and life sciences, teaching, and construction.

One key reason, the report explains, is the decline in workplace training and apprenticeships, particularly for the young. The apprenticeship levy, introduced in 2017, even with the recent minor reforms, was flawed from the start in many ways – criticised by employers and trade unions.

But the levy was never going to work in an established culture that relies on skilled workers from abroad – which employers want and unions have not challenged.

The IMF report makes it clear that the British government has for some time been desperately trying to recruit non-EU migrants to replace the EU migrants we were always told made no difference to the British labour market, or to training, or to pay and conditions.

The report laments that the “recent increase in non-EU migrants has not fully offset the adverse impact from Brexit on the availability of needed skills, including because smaller firms face more recruitment hurdles with regard to non-EU hires.”

Here we see the clear and persistent push of global capitalism onto governments to facilitate mass immigration, which of course it is willing to do.

But even the IMF is clear that “there is an urgent need to upskill the UK workforce”. They identify five crucial elements to addressing the dilemma:

Encourage students and young workers to join and excel in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics); ensure adequate vocational and on the job training, particularly for the young; retain the talent produced by Britain’s world-leading universities; upskill the existing labour force; and facilitate attraction and retention of in-demand skills through adjustments to the visa regime.

Migration

The last point reveals the IMF’s true intent – and that’s the most crucial of all in the view of employers. While there is strong evidence of action on visas, it’s hard to find what is being done about the other points.

Employers and the governments that serve them continue to rely on luring skilled workers from countries who can ill afford to lose them. We never hear about that from those members of our class misled into supporting global capitalism’s push for mass movement of workers.

Britain, becoming devoid of meaningful training capacity, is of course a preferred destination point. It is foolish to overlook this attack on the working class here and abroad and to see it as an issue of racism. And it’s convenient for global capitalism that so many have fallen into that trap.

‘The refusal to train workers is largely responsible for the desperate state of the British labour market…’

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), a respected source of research on employer behaviour, makes clear in its recent report, Employer Views on Skills Policy in the UK, that skills are a key driver of economic performance and productivity, for organisations themselves as well as for the wider economy. They are also fundamental for individuals, determining employment and earnings potential.

The report admits that post-Brexit employers face a challenging recruitment context, with three-quarters reporting that they have hard-to-fill vacancies. There are issues with both the volume and quality of applicants, with the biggest gaps in specialist and technical skills, as well as broader employability skills, such as problem-solving and communication.

The CIPD, an organisation that supports employers, is keen to demonstrate that the employers who take a more strategic approach to skills – conducting a workforce planning exercise, putting a training plan in place and having a training budget – are much more likely to invest in skills, engage with education institutions and training providers, and prepare for the future.

This highlights the critical importance, the report says, of building the people management and leadership capabilities of organisations to drive up the demand for skills and training. This is especially true for smaller organisations who either tend to overestimate their grasp on skills or be unaware of their skills challenges.

But as the report shows, many employers still roll out the same mantra that it’s the fault of the education system for not preparing young people for the workplace. Employers have opted out of any notion that they have the responsibility of inducting young people into the workplace.

Instead, schools, further education colleges and especially universities spend millions on employability programmes. This was part of the role of the real apprenticeships that began to disappear in the 1970s with the destruction of British industry. Now, the report tells us, employers want young people with “experience of the world, employability skills and common sense”.

Employers say young people have poor attitudes and a lack of motivation. The solution, the CIPD thinks, is more workplace opportunities for young people while in education, and employability skills.

‘What is really needed is a change of culture…’

But what is really needed is a change of culture in Britain, a new sense of corporate social responsibility. We should expect employers to support young people: to take them on and teach them the joy of learning new skills and in taking pleasure from a job well done, and the strength workers acquire from a good work ethic.

The really sad thing is that now young people are buying into the employers’ negative view of them. Many even feel they are entirely responsible for their own preparation for work ahead of getting a job.

The CIPD report also finds that too few employers engage with the further education sector and that employer awareness of the government’s technical education reforms remains low.

The CIPD’s notion that the new government has “a vision of a revitalised technical and further education sector with employers at its heart” is naïve. But it makes sense that for the reforms to be successful, there is a need to raise awareness and share examples of the positive impact that further education institutions can play in developing workforce skills.

Minor

The last government made minor reforms to the apprenticeship levy. The new one wants to make a few more. The CIPD wants a bigger shift – for employers to be allowed to use levy funding to invest in training delivered by their local FE colleges. And that would also boost business engagement with the system.

Scotland has tried a slightly different way of implementing the levy but most employers there behave just as they do across Britain – criticise the levy and do their usual workarounds.

It is true that some employers are focusing on improving pay and conditions, especially when forced to do so by well unionised workers. Some are upskilling existing staff and offering apprenticeships. The levy provides an opportunity for policy makers to harness this trend, offer solutions and engage employers in skills-based initiatives. But they won’t do so without more pressure.

Instead the figures show (see Box) employers continuing to blockade training while they wait for the government to usher in the next waves of immigrant workers, preferably from countries where pay and expectations are lower. It’s not a conspiracy – it’s there in plain sight.

If you want a thriving economy, if you want the chance of a secure, fulfilled workforce, and you want young people who feel valued by society and who want to contribute to it through their work, then you must think about how workers can collectively take control. The idea of progress through parliament is a mirage, as the Employment Rights Bill shows.

Currently we have a destructive economic system: on the one hand supported by the unwitting, who foolishly think opposing mass migration of skilled workers from countries that train and need them is racist; and on the other by those actively conniving in the destruction by ensuring workers are unprepared for their own future and for the future of this country.

• Related article: The training scandal in figures