Wendy demands help for Apprentices

24 more builders lose their jobs

Wendy campaigns for every young person in Scotland to gain the right to quality training. Support has come from major trade unions and business organisations, including construction workers union Ucatt and the Scottish Chambers of Commerce.
 
Campaigning politician Wendy Alexander today revealed 24 more construction apprentices in Renfrewshire are without work. 
 
Ms Alexander demanded that the Scottish Government provide more support for apprentices after it was revealed that across Scotland 855 apprentices were made redundant in the past year.
According to Skills Development Scotland, 720 of these – including 24 from Renfrewshire – were in the construction industry.
 
Wendy Alexander said:

“I am deeply concerned that 24 apprentices from the construction trades in Renfrewshire have lost their jobs in the past year. These young people are being deprived of the opportunity to train for the future in an industry that needs their skills.
 
“The Scottish Government  bear a heavy responsibility for this because they have turned off the tap of public sector investment and made the recession worse than it would otherwise have been.  In Renfrewshire the previous Labour Council commissioned 10 new schools and agreed to the refurbishment of 12 more. 22 planned or built by the last Council compared to just 3 planned under the current SNP/Libdem Council. 3 versus 22 that is the real difference – the difference not only to Renfrewshire pupils but to the construction tradesmen and their apprentices who were employed in these projects.  

“Every young person should have the right to quality training. The SNP will have been in power 5 years by May 2012 and  yet not even one of the small number commissioned  by them is likely to have opened by then”.

Scottish Chambers of Commerce head of Policy and Public Affairs Garry Clark said:

“Scottish Chambers of Commerce is strongly supportive of continual investment in apprenticeships and we believe that support for skills is crucial to our future economic competitiveness.”

Scottish Regional Secretary of UCATT Harry Frew said:

“We need Scottish ministers to make much stronger commitments to apprenticeships because if the industry loses skills then companies will be forced to bring in foreign workers and costs will rise during the recovery.