80% of workers at the CS Wind factory near Campbeltown, Scotland, have been told they could lose … [+]
The MP for the constituency home to Britain’s only factory producing onshore and offshore wind turbines has described as “unthinkable” the decision to lay off 80% of the facility’s staff.
Brendan O’Hara, MP for Argyll and Bute, was responding to the announcement yesterday by the Korean-owned CS Wind that it would need to axe 73 jobs out of a workforce of 94 staff at the facility near Campbeltown in Scotland.
“I’ve been in constant contact with the management and the unions, but this is just unthinkable,” O’Hara told Forbes.com. “There are few enough highly skilled jobs in Bute; we can ill-afford this.”
O’Hara said that talks were still under way between his office, the company and the British trade union Unite over the potential job cuts. The MP said that while the effect of 70 job losses might sound small in a city such as Glasgow, it was a different story for the rural community of Kintyre.
“It’s not just 70 or 80 jobs—it’s 70 or 80 families,” he said.
In a statement, the CS Wind had blamed a “significant gap” in orders, though “work continues to secure new orders” for its turbines.
“Regrettably, at this stage, it appears that there will need to be reductions to the existing headcount across both shop floor production and office-based staff in the coming months,” it added.
Trade union Unite reacted furiously to the announcement, noting that in April this year the company directors delivered a positive outlook. The company posted pre-tax profits in 2018 of £7.1 million ($9.2 million)—a major turnaround from losses the previous year of £191,000 ($247,000).
Charlie Macdonald, Unite regional industrial officer, called on the government to intervene, saying the news was “a major blow to Scotland’s renewables manufacturing capacity. CS Wind is another example of the spaghetti bowl of multi-national interests calling the shots in our nation’s renewables sector with scant regard for workers and communities.”
Scotland’s energy minister Paul Wheelhouse said it would be “a very difficult time for those workers,” and that he had spoken to CS Wind and “committed to do all we can to support the company in their attempts to secure future work for the site.”
The news contributes further to a complex picture of the U.K. renewable energy sector, and mars a report released today that forecasts British floating wind could deliver £33.6 billion ($43.5 billion) in economic activity for the country, and support thousands of jobs.
Entering stormy waters: UK trade bodies say floating wind power can enable Britain to reach the … [+]
Trade bodies RenewableUK and Scottish Renewables said in the joint report that Britain is at the cutting edge of floating wind technology development, expertise that could generate an estimated $296 million a year by 2031 for U.K. exporters. The report also forecasts that floating wind projects could support as many as 17,000 British jobs by 2050, particularly in coastal areas.
The report notes that achieving the U.K. government’s legally binding target of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 will require a quadrupling of low-carbon electricity capacity to 75 gigawatts. Floating wind power, it says, offers “the most cost-effective pathway to delivering 75GW of offshore wind in U.K. waters.”
In the near term, however, it’s clear that the U.K. industry finds itself in choppy seas.
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This post was updated after publication on October 31, 2019, with a statement from MP Brendan O’Hara.
