MacAskill exposes sacking of offshore workers and calls for Home Office to take urgent action
ALBA Depute Leader Kenny MacAskill MP has today (Thursday) published a paper which exposes the sacking of workers in the offshore wind sector, and their replacement with cheap foreign labour which has been facilitated by the Home Office’s extension of the Offshore wind workers Immigration Rules concession 2017.
Mr MacAskill has revealed that as a result of the immigration rules concession extension at least 36 UK crew recruited to work in the offshore wind sector have been sacked to make way for cheap labour from abroad.
In a statement Mr MacAskill MP said:
“The scandal of fuel poor Scots living in energy-rich Scotland is compounded by the outrage of Scots workers in the offshore wind sector being sacked and replaced by cheap labour from overseas.
“It is one thing to relax immigration rules to deal with genuine labour and skills shortages but to do so in order to sack Scots workers is totally and utterly unacceptable.
“We have already seen the disgraceful actions of P & O and yet now the Home Office is allowing a repeat just miles off our shores.
“By extending the Offshore workers concession rules the Home Office is allowing this outrage to happen. Employing foreign workers at cheaper rates boosts the profits of corporate energy companies while workers at home are thrown on the scrap heap. This is unconscionable.
“That is why I am standing shoulder to shoulder with the RMT trade union in exposing this practice and calling for the Home Office to take urgent action to bring it to a halt.
“It’s not just a windfall tax that is required against those firms profiting from the misery of fuel poor families but firm action against those companies who are exploiting and sacking our workers.”
Notes
A copy of the paper is attached below.
Energy-Rich Scotland - Fuel-Poor Scots
The loss of a state asset and the loss of jobs
Offshore wind should see Scotland benefit from its natural resource and it’s people have access to affordable fuel. Moreover, it should provide for Scottish businesses to benefit from its location and create jobs for Scottish workers.
But one windfarm situated just off the coast of Fife shows the failure of UK and Scottish Governments to achieve that. It also highlights the absurdity of ownership being with foreign state-owned companies and jobs going to businesses outside Scotland and to foreign workers.
The Windfarm
Neart na Gaoithe is the site of an offshore wind farm situated just 15.5 kilometres off the coast of Fife and covering an area of 105 square kilometres. It will produce up to 450 Mega Watts from its 54 turbines enough energy to power around 375,000 homes. The energy will be landed in East Lothian where work is ongoing near Torness.
