Nautilus stated that the UK Home Office decision to extend an immigration waiver that enables offshore wind construction companies to employ foreign crew, risks jobs and training in the sector. The specific waiver allows companies to pay non-European workers, who are often out at sea for 12 hours or more a day, less than the UK minimum wage.
Nautilus general secretary Mark Dickinson sent a letter to immigration minister Caroline Noakes, reminding the minister of the Union’s current and previous worries about the working conditions of many seafarers serving on vessels operating in UK waters.
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The Union also expressed its concerns regarding the Home Office’s repeated decision to provide windfarm companies with time-limited waivers from work permit requirements for the crews of vessels operating around our coast.
What is more, Nautilus has previously raises questions over an immigration waiver for Irish fishing fleet migrant worker permits, which received heavy criticism in a United Nations independent expert report, for potentially breaching the rights of migrant workers and contributing to ‘modern slavery’.
Mr Dickinson mentioned:
Nautilus finds it deeply disturbing that the government has once again extended the concession to immigration rules for non-European Economic Area (EEA) nationals who are joining vessels involved in the offshore wind industry to 21 April next year
He added that, in the case of the windfarm exemptions, Nautilus’s concerns are about the lack of any credible evidence to show that there is shortage of UK maritime professionals to take these jobs, and because of evidence that the waivers have led to the use of foreign labour paid well below UK rates.
The continued laissez-faire approach to the sector conflicts with the government’s wider policy objectives of increasing employment and training in the maritime sector, and also presents a very real threat to the long-term sustainability of an emerging and important industry
Mr Dickinson concluded.
