Prospect gives evidence to House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee on UK labour supply

Prospect general secretary Mike Clancy gave evidence yesterday (11 October 2022) to the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee (EAC) as part of its inquiry into the UK’s labour supply.

Clancy, with the TUC’s Kate Bell, talked about a range of subjects from public sector workforce and pay, to hybrid working and the government’s planning failures regarding the aviation industry.

After being asked initially about people leaving the workforce, Clancy highlighted Prospect members’ involvement in specialist and STEM disciplines:

“Our experience of this reduction in the size of the workforce – there are two or three factors I would emphasise. First of all, a long-term failure to adequately value, in our economy, what I might describe as STEM skills, broader engineering and similar occupations, and that there is a significantly ageing workforce where there is a struggle and a war for talent. If you are numerate and adaptable there are a number of different, better-paid jobs you can go into.”

Clancy also pointed to the reduction in the number of self-employed people in the workforce, particularly in the creative sector, who had left as a direct result of problems with the government’s employment support scheme.

Clancy mentioned the aviation industry as an example where Covid, and the pause to flights, had exposed a huge workforce problem.

“What has been laid bare is a number of sectors where the underlying attractiveness of the jobs has meant that people are not prepared to go back to them even if they left them. There are easier alternatives elsewhere.”

The aftermath of COVID has left us with a changed world of work with people often no longer working exclusively in the office, although Clancy did highlight the huge number of jobs where working from home is not an option.

He also looked at the problems some people may face working from home:

“There are some advantages for people, like the flexibility that can come out of hybrid working. But we have spoken a lot of about the impacts of work intensification, surveillance and the right to disconnect. More people are asking ‘if we are going to have a labour market that is more deregulated than maybe a lot of people have the appetite for – do I want to be a part of that?’”

Committee members asked why wage inflation was so poor when we have high inflation, and you’d think higher pay would bring more people into certain sectors.

“I would say it’s three or more decades of the reduction in the impact of collective bargaining. In so many parts of the economy there is no one to ask [for higher pay] on behalf of employees, particularly in the private sector. And we’ve built-in a process whereby you get what you’re given.”