Defence workers have criticised fellow trade unionists who have urged them to find more “socially useful” jobs. Members of GMB Scotland attacked the Scottish Trades Union Congress, (STUC) which suggested they should stop manufacturing weapons and make renewable energy generators instead. The STUC backed a proposal to form a Scottish defence diversification agency, chiefly designed to retrain engineers working in nuclear weapons facilities. John Dolan, a GMB convener at BAE Systems’ shipyard at Scotstoun, said the promise of a renewable energy revolution for defence workers was “a con” that would weaken UK defence at a time of Russian aggression. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister, admitted yesterday that her government had “not done as well as we wanted in building a domestic supply chain for renewable industries”. She told STUC delegates in Dundee that she was committed to helping the BiFab yards in Fife, which shed hundreds of jobs after an ill-fated attempt to diversify from oil to wind. Earlier at the STUC gathering, Mr Dolan said: “Where is the ‘Saudi Arabia of renewables’ we were promised ten years ago by Alex Salmond and the SNP government? It’s certainly not in Burntisland or Methil.” GMB Scotland said that the “vacuous” diversification plan would impoverish Scotland’s 38,000 defence workers and amounted to an attack on “the livelihoods of our members in shipbuilding and defence”. Arthur West, from Kilmarnock and Loudoun Trades Union Council, which lodged the motion, said: “New jobs are going to be required to replace those involved in the production and maintenance of nuclear weapons. A Scottish defence diversification agency, properly funded and independent of the MoD, would be required to provide the skill-sets and technical expertise of those in the nuclear weapons sector and come up with alternative options to provide quality jobs for the workers affected. “In [this] century we face many challenges, from climate change to terrorism. Research by the Campaign Against Arms Trade shows that if a fraction of the money that goes [on] Trident was used to develop the renewables sector there is a considerable amount of quality jobs [that] could be created.”
Times 18th April 2019 read more »
