Trade Union Unite Scotland has announced the Save Off-Shore Jobs campaign, an initiative to protect jobs and workers’ rights in the offshore sector as the Covid-19 pandemic continues to spread uncertainty throughout the industry.
The union announced the campaign alongside its parent organisation, the Offshore Co-ordinating Group (OCG), an umbrella group for a number of unions in Scotland. As part of the project, the union will petition the UK Government to invest in the offshore industry, through low-interest loans to operators, and accelerate a plan already in place to maintain North Sea employment at 135,000 jobs by 2035.
The news follows the publication of a report, ‘A crisis behind a crisis’, by the OCG last month, which predicted that up to 3,500 offshore workers could lose their jobs by September this year due to crashing oil prices and uncertainty in industrial sectors following the spread of Covid-19.