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TUC submission to the Industrial Strategy Green Paper

Report type
Research and reports
Issue date
Summary of submission

Good work should be a cornerstone aim of the strategy

The outcomes of the Industrial Strategy will primarily benefit working people where the strategy creates or maintains jobs and where it drives up job quality. 

Currently the green paper holds an unstated assumption that growth in target sectors results in growth in good, well-paid jobs.1 Without actively targeting policies for good work, the industrial strategy could prioritise growing businesses that fail to create jobs, or actively offshore them, or pursue growth at the expense of their workforce. The experience of the growth of the offshore wind sector shows that a strategy that successfully grows a sector can fail to deliver a corresponding growth in jobs and supply chains. Industrial strategy should be a tool to ensure that growth delivers tangible improvements to people’s lives.

It is welcome that government recognises the need for growth to support high quality jobs with benefits that are shared across people, places and generations. But we think that in order to be effective, the strategy needs to pro-actively pursue good work. 

A practical way to reflect this in the strategy would be:

1. Ensure explicit reference to good work in the top-level aims. This would work best as a stand-alone aim on a par with Net Zero and regional growth. 

2. Conceptualise the ‘successful people’ outcome as ‘good jobs and skills’. Rather than focusing on ‘higher-paid’ employment in and of itself, ‘good jobs’ should be defined holistically, for example in line with the recommendations of the Carnegie Measuring Good Work working group. 2  Such a definition could encompass pay, security of contract, voice at work, health and wellbeing at work, and inclusion. This is consistent with the approach the government is taking in its plan to Make Work Pay.

3. Define a process for how policies that form part of the strategy will be evaluated against this good work aim / outcome, or the aims / outcomes more broadly.

4. Commit that government support to companies as part of the industrial strategy will be conditional on companies committing to meet job quality standards (whether government support is provided through financial instruments, subsidies, licencing, tax credits, or other levers). 

5. Ensure worker voice and trade unions are included throughout the institutions and stakeholder engagement processes developing the strategy and sectoral strategies.

Foundational sectors and value chains

The strategy should:

6. Incorporate measures to support thriving foundation sectors including steel, basic chemicals, engineering construction, ceramics, cement, freight & shipping sectors. 
7. Set a mechanism for how policies will be designed to onshore supply chains where this is practical.

Skills

Government should

8. Use procurement, licencing, and other leverage to secure sustainable, quality apprenticeships in infrastructure, engineering, and energy projects.
9. Work with trade unions as delivery partners when managing technological transitions (and incentivise or require employers to do so).
10. Bring more resource and certainty into Further Education, including by addressing long-term underinvestment in the sector, and establishing a Right to Retrain. Re-establishing the Union Learning Fund would also support in-work upskilling where it is most needed.

Public investment and infrastructure

Underinvestment in infrastructure is a blocker to investment across many subsectors. We welcome government’s measures aimed at increasing public co-investment in infrastructure and energy projects, including the establishment of the National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy, and the fiscal rules amendment that differentiates investment from day-to-day spending.

To build on this, the strategy should:

11. Increase ambition in public investment into infrastructure (particularly urgently energy network upgrades and ports), including through the National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy.

Regulation and corporate governance

Government should make strategic use of regulation to enable jobs-rich growth, particularly in the following areas:

12. Reform the corporate governance regime, to encourage companies to plan for inclusive, long-term growth.
13. Impose tighter regulations on energy transmission and distribution companies, to curb profiteering and reach necessary investments in upgrades, and consider taking networks fully into public ownership over the long term.
14. Require companies to conduct due diligence on global value chains.

Industrial Strategy Council

15. In order to secure long-term policy certainty and accountability, the Council should be resourced appropriately  and to support government’s implementation as a critical friend. It should be empowered to feed into mission formulation and target-setting, into policy-making, and into evaluation.  
16. Government has been clear that the industrial strategy will be developed in partnership with trade unions. The Industrial Strategy Council should have sufficient trade union participation to make this real. The TUC is calling for an absolute minimum of three members from trade unions out of 15. Trade union members should bring expertise and knowledge about a breadth of industrial sectors. Bodies developing sectoral policy should also incorporate relevant trade unions.

Broader growth strategy

Alongside the targeted measures proposed in the green paper to support growth-driving sectors, delivering on the aims of the strategy (net zero, regional growth, economic security and resilience), as well as the aim to protect and create good jobs, will need action across the economy – from strong public services to everyday economy sectors like retail. 

Read the full report here
 

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