3 minute read
Oil and gas workers talk about their future and the industry
By Ryan Morrison, Just Transition Campaigner
Over the past few months, we have been hearing from oil and gas workers sharing their views on their industry and the transition away from fossil fuels. Together with Platform and Greenpeace we produced the ‘Offshore’ report discussing the findings and implications of this survey.
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Energy workers play a vital role in all of our lives, ensuring we can switch our lights on, heat our homes and travel around our communities. However, the climate crisis demands that the source of this energy changes through a shift from fossil fuels to renewables.
The products our oil and gas workers are going to work with must be different but their vital role in each of our lives will stay the same. When people talk about the future of energy, they too often overlook those people who have the skills and experience to actually make a transition happen. We wanted to change that, and so we set out to hear from them directly.
The most common solutions suggested in the workers' responses.
What offshore oil and gas workers told us
Of the 1,383 workers who took the survey (an estimated 4.5% of the offshore workforce), 43% have been made redundant or furloughed since March 2020. Unlike other sectors, this was not a new experience with many referencing the last oil price collapse between 2014–16 and the significant impacts on their livelihoods. There is a palpable exhaustion with boom and bust leading offshore workers to identify job security as the part of their job they are least happy with.
The survey also asked how respondents felt about the support provided by the local, Scottish and UK Governments with most saying there has been “nowhere near enough” . This included frustration over the free rein for companies to use increasingly precarious contracts, poor investment in training opportunities as well as inadequate Universal Credit payments.
More than 80% of the respondents told us they would be open to moving out of oil and gas into other parts of the energy sector. Only 7% wouldn’t consider a switch with most of these saying they were simply too close to retirement. The survey offered ten alternative fields with offshore wind (53%), other renewables (51%) and rig decommissioning (38%) the most popular options. We asked the workers what their biggest priority would be in moving fields and 58% selected job security, reinforcing the frustration with precarious work in fossil fuels.
The full Offshore report contains more of the survey results and also includes the direct testimonies of eight workers themselves. Despite the willingness to engage with us in these discussions, and the extensive skills and expertise offshore workers bring to the table, a final statistic is perhaps the most striking – 91% of those who responded to the survey had never heard the term ‘just transition’ .
A just transition must be shaped by workers, communities and environmentalists
A just transition requires a complete transformation away from fossil fuels, but in this process we can create quality and sustainable jobs in a fairer economy. That so few workers recognise the term is evidence the Scottish Government are yet to make it anything real to those likely to be most impacted, despite their increasing just transition rhetoric.
Offshore concludes with several recommendations to the Scottish and UK Governments to address this by harnessing the extensive knowledge workers have of their industry and what is needed to make a transition happen. Workers must be at the heart of decision making to ensure they can shape policies that affect their livelihoods and communities.
Instead the Scottish and UK Governments too often rely on industry executives to lay out their preferred path – the same people who have undermined climate science while treating their workforce and local communities across the world with contempt. The Offshore report is part of our efforts to wrestle control of ‘just transition’ away from those oil bosses who are focused on next year's bonuses. Instead we should put real power into the hands of workers and their trade unions, communities and environmentalists to craft an alternative vision for energy in Scotland and the UK.
The report demonstrates that offshore workers want to be part of that process, they know the problems with their industry today and have solutions to address them for a better, greener future.
