Brexit poses “enormous challenge” for plastics industry’s workforce

The Chairman of the British Plastics Federation’s Brexit Taskforce has said that ensuring the industry has enough skilled staff in the future is an “enormous challenge”.

Mike Boswell made the comments following the findings of a recent survey pointing to a heavy reliance on workers from the EU.

The UK plastics industry is the third largest manufacturing sector in terms of employment, employing 166,000 people, of which, roughly 18,000 are non-UK EU citizens and 4,000 come from the rest of the world. EU workers account for roughly 11 percent of the entire workforce in the industry and one in five of all factory floor workers.

Following the referendum and ahead of Brexit negotiations, respondents to the survey said that the uncertainty about free movement of people in the future has caused them to consider automating some roles, as well as upskilling existing staff.

Before the referendum, roughly half of UK plastics companies were having trouble recruiting. January’s BPF Business Conditions Survey showed that this has increased, with just under two-thirds of plastics companies now reporting difficulty filling key roles.

The more recent survey, specifically about EU workers, shows that 10 percent of companies feel they are having trouble filling vacancies as a direct result of the EU referendum whereas 58 percent do not feel the result has affected their overall workforce.

The survey shows that factory floor staff and engineers are the toughest roles to fill and in order to plug the potential gap left by EU workers, 61 percent of companies say they may employ UK workers, 39 percent may train existing staff, while almost a third (29 percent) are also looking into the possibility of automating the roles.

“Our industry has for some time experienced difficulty in finding the right staff for key roles and unfortunately Brexit appears to have made this situation worse. This survey has underlined the importance of EU workers in our industry,” Boswell explained.

“If companies that rely on temporary workers to fulfil their orders lose access to almost half of the temporary workforce, this will pose an enormous challenge. It is important that at this point companies are exploring all feasible alternatives, including investment in upskilling the existing workforce as well as the development and implementation of technology to automate roles, for which we will require further assistance from the UK Government.”