New report – on the need for Covid financing to include a right for aviation workers to re-train
Tens of thousands of aviation sector jobs are at immediate risk due to Covid. Across Europe airline owners and executives are lobbying for, and in many cases receiving, generous unconditional loans and underwritings from governments to prop up their struggling businesses. Yet these interventions do little to protect the wellbeing of workers, nor do they address major challenges facing the sector, such as the need to stabilise core national and regional infrastructure and to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A new briefing produced by the New Economics Foundation (NEF) proposes a new approach to bailouts, steering the sector through its transition. They propose a co-ordinated sector-wide package including delivery of a new skills and employment strategy, a new job re-skilling programme which protects employment while workers are supported to transition into alternative roles. Also conditions to all financial support to suspend shareholder dividends, to end excessive executive pay, unethical tax practices, and to require investment in green technology and decarbonisation.
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CRISIS SUPPORT TO AVIATION AND THE RIGHT TO RETRAIN
Securing jobs and skills through the Covid and climate crises
10 JUNE 2020
It says:
Tens of thousands of aviation sector jobs are at immediate risk as a result of the Coronavirus crisis and the measures put in place to contain it. Across Europe airline owners and executives are lobbying for, and in many cases receiving, generous unconditional loans and underwritings from governments to prop up their struggling businesses. Yet these interventions do little to protect the wellbeing of workers, nor do they address major challenges facing the sector, such as the need to stabilise core national and regional infrastructure and to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
This briefing calls for an urgent change of course, and proposes a new approach to bailouts in the UK aviation sector which protects workers’ interests while steering the sector through its transition. We propose a co-ordinated sector-wide package to support workers in the aviation sector in transitioning through a period of disruption and uncertainty, including:
- A new bespoke, sector-wide, crisis support plan and package for aviation, with oversight from a new sector panel with representation from unions, businesses and government.
- Commitment to a union-negotiated limit on redundancy rates across the sector.
- Delivery of a new skills and employment strategy, including conversion of the job retention scheme into a new job reskilling programme which protects employment while workers are supported to transition into alternative roles.
- Accelerating the Government’s review of aviation sector tax arrangements and introduction of new mechanisms which ensure a fair contribution from all employers to the costs of the retraining programme.
- Ensuring a fair public return on bailouts. Taking equity stakes in all large businesses bailed out in the aviation sector, and attaching the right to take further stakes (warrants) with any other financial support. Attaching conditions to all financial support to suspend shareholder dividends, to end excessive executive pay and unethical tax practices, and to require investment in green technology and decarbonisation.
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https://neweconomics.org/2020/06/crisis-support-to-aviation-and-the-right-to-retrain
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The report is at
https://neweconomics.org/uploads/files/aviation-workers.pdf
It says:
“The government should support businesses in adhering to the agreed redundancy rate
by converting its current Job Retention Scheme into a bespoke part-time job retraining
scheme. In line with the principles of a ‘just transition’ for workers, the aviation sector
would be able to make use of this bespoke extension until the sector has stabilised at a
level of passenger departures compatible with the UK’s national and international
climate agreements.”
We propose that the government respond to the decline in employment threatened by aviation sector executives with a new skills and employment strategy which facilitates retraining of aviation sector workers at risk of redundancy and supports them into other roles – including emerging job opportunities outside the sector and related to within sector decarbonisation. This proposal would build upon and accelerate Government’s ongoing work around establishing a ‘right to retrain’ and could draw financing from its commitment to a National Skills Fund.
A condition of any bailout for airlines and other aviation sector businesses would be that all workers are offered the opportunity to remain on the company books, while working reduced hours (e.g. part-time hours) and pursuing training in their non-utilised working hours. All workers would be paid their existing wage for hours spent conducting their usual work activities. For hours spent retraining worker pay would be guaranteed at 80% of normal wages up to the scheme limit of £2,500 per month, and subject to the real living wage minimum income. Education costs would be covered by the government through the National Skills Fund.
Alongside the training programme the government must develop a wider programme of job creation in green sectors through its Covid-19 recovery package, and ensure these jobs are available to upskilled aviation sector workers. In particular, in keeping with the Government’s ‘levelling up’ programme, creation of good quality work in regions which have been left behind, and deprived of inward investment must be prioritised.
https://neweconomics.org/uploads/files/aviation-workers.pdf
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