 Good morning to everyone. Welcome to the seventh meeting of the Economy, Jobs and Fair Work Committee. I would ask everyone to remember to turn off electrical devices where the sound or the device may interfere with the working of the system. Today we are looking at fair work and we have a number of guests with us. First of all, item 1 on the agenda is a decision to take items 3, 4 and 5 in private. Are we all agreed? Thank you. We will then move into item 2 on the agenda, which is the round table session with our invited guests. The format is that if anyone wishes to come into the discussion if they indicate by raising their hand, there is no need to turn your microphones on. That is dealt with by broadcasting. To my left are the parliamentary clerks and parliamentary assistants. I could ask everyone simply to introduce themselves by giving their name, the organisation they are from and it might also be helpful, I think, for everyone if the committee members give their name as well. I am Gordon Lindhurst MSP, convener of the committee. John Mason MSP for Glasgow Shetleston and Fife, convener. Dave Watson from Unison Scotland. Ash Denham MSP for Edinburgh Eastern. Peter Welsh, GMB Scotland. Richard Leonard, Labour MSP Central Scotland. Anna Ritchie-Allen, close the gap. Gordon MacDonald SNP MSP for Edinburgh Pentlands. Aden Lockhart, Scottish Conservative MSP for Mid Scotland and Fife. Patricia Finlay, fair work convention. Gillian Martin MSP for Aberdeenshire East. Andy Wightman MSP for Lothian. Lynn Henderson, Public and Commercial Services Union. Liam Kerr MSP for the North East region. Jackie Baillie, Labour MSP for Dunbatten. Stephen Boyd, STUC. Gil Paterson MSP for Clive Bank and Moghai and a chunk of Beir's Den. Ben Llywodraeth. Thank you very much. Perhaps I could start with a general question, which members who are, sorry, guests who are here might wish to come in on. The UK Government funded commission for employment and skills study came to the conclusion that there will be a continued reduction in skilled trades, manufacturing and civil service employment over the next decade. I'm just wondering if our guests have any comment to make on whether or not that will have implications for fair work and the various issues that arise out of that. Anyone like to come in on that? Dave Watson. I mean, I think that that's largely right. If we look at the numbers in Scotland, I think it really does impact on fair work. We know that by 2020 we're going to need just under 20,000 IT jobs, 20,000 construction, 20,000 professional services, whereas manufacturing is going to decline by about 15,000. Of course, the big hit is that we're going to have to find 65,000 health and social care staff by 2022. If we look at that, it's a move away from manufacturing, from agriculture, from public administration into areas some of which are well understood like IT and construction, but certainly health and social care brings with it massive implications for fair work agenda. Health and care includes childcare as well. We know from the Scottish Government report this week that 80 per cent of staff in the private and voluntary part of childcare are earning less than the Scottish living wage. I was giving evidence last week with the health committee talking about the challenges facing social care. These are areas of work which are where low pay, poor conditions, insecure work is endemic. Therefore, if they are going to be the areas where we need to recruit large numbers of new workers and retain them, that's not going to be achieved while those are essentially regarded as poor jobs that people don't want to take up. Fair work is absolutely crucial to the Scottish Government and public body's workforce planning to achieve the numbers that we need in them. Any of our other guests who would like to come in on that. Patricia Finlay. I think that there is an issue about the extent to which we tend to focus a lot in Scotland on bad jobs at the lower end of the labour market, but there is a huge concern around what is the transition for good jobs. If you think that those are sectors where the characteristics of fair work are more prominent or more frequent, then a reduction in those sectors becomes problematic. The issue about what jobs replace those. If you look at it, we know that there is a polarisation in the Scottish economy, so we know that growth and employment is much higher in the lower pay deciles and in the higher pay deciles. We have a very U-shaped pay distribution. That is not just a problem for the growth in the low paid sector that Dave has alluded to, but it is also a real issue for progression. If you have fewer and fewer jobs in that intermediate-skilled level, that is really problematic in terms of how you move people on from low pay and poverty. I think that Lynn Henderson would like to come in. I will follow on from the point that both speakers have made. In relation to the civil and public services sector, there has been significant job reduction over the last 10 years. We have seen more than 100,000 jobs lost from the sector in the UK as a whole in Scotland. Across the UK and the Scottish Government departments, we have certainly taken its fair share of that help with 20 per cent of Scottish Government jobs being cut. What we see at the moment is a job reduction programme at a UK-level impacting on Scottish civil service jobs. The most well-known one will be the HMRC office closures that is taking place across Scotland up until 2017. What we also see is a number of transfers around civil and public services at the moment as a result of devolved powers coming to Scotland and civil servants finding a degree of uncertainty about who they are going to be working for, where they are going to be working and what the terms and conditions of that transfer is going to be. If you couple that with the implications of Brexit, there may be, on the surface, an increase in civil service servants will be required, but there is a very high degree of uncertainty across the sector at the time of what the future will look like in this sector. Thank you. Anna Ritchie Allen. Anna Ritchie Allen. Anna Ritchie Allen, thank you. Just to follow up with a particular point on what Lynn has been talking about, the public service there, but just to point out that two thirds of public sector workers are women, so they are disproportionately impacted by spending cuts. Also, working in the public sector, you are more likely to be getting equal pay. You are more likely to be working flexibly, and you are more likely to be able to access clear progression pathways. Those cuts disproportionately impact women, as does the wider welfare reform and austerity agenda. Peter Wells. The projections and the reduction in the skilled trade invariably impact on manufacturing and the decline that we have seen in recent years of manufacturing will continue at pace. That will invariably have an impact on quality jobs, and they will be largely unionised jobs as well. The wages that the workers will enjoy through the union premium will be impacted by that as well. I think that we need to give consideration, but with impact going to be moving forward is going to be on income inequalities, with the loss of the skilled jobs and invariably the better paid jobs as well. Do you have any ideas as to the answers to the loss of those jobs? I'll have a few. I would start with going back to some of the points that were made in the fair work convention that we have spoke about about quality of job, job security, voice for workers. Fundamentally for ourselves at the GMB, it comes back to the issue of collective bargaining, and we would like to see more of a promotion around collective bargaining and the value that that can bring to the economy. We should be seeing it as an economic tool, not just a tool for workers' voice, which it obviously is, but also a tool that can be used to tackle some of the income inequalities and greater inequalities that are built on the labour market across Scotland. Can I just echo that in terms of the need for collective bargaining, and indeed sectorial bargaining, which is a key part of the effective voice part of the fair work convention? However, I do think that that kind of development needs to be underpinned by some real legislative moves. I understand that the Scottish Parliament is obviously constrained in terms of limited powers, in terms of employment law etc, but I'm just wondering, I mean somebody didn't mention Brexit, I'm just wondering if the post-Brexit scenario should point towards this committee and indeed the Parliament itself revisiting how it can use procurement to influence these things. I mean we were told and the Scottish Government were advised when the procurement bill was passing that they couldn't be put in clauses in basic rights like banning zero hours, delivering the living wage, given standards of training etc because of EU restrictions. Well if those EU restrictions are either going or we are going to get into some kind of discussion about what EU restrictions would remain, then this would appear to me to be an opportune time to revisit those kind of things. Thank you. I think that Gil Paterson had a question. On a different subject, convener, if you're happy with that. Did any of our guests wish to come in on the point that has been made? John Mason. Yeah, I mean I was going to ask about this because I mean the general feeling is there's been a lot of protection for workers through being in the European Union and therefore that protection might go if we left the European Union but that's right. I've also been wondering is there the opportunity to, for example, local authorities could then bring the living wage into contracting requirements and all that kind of thing. And I think earlier on Patricia Findlay said about using different levers to promote fair work and it wouldn't just be the convention. So I just wonder if these are some of the levers that we could potentially use? Yeah, certainly. Patricia Findlay. I think we're very clear that procurement is an important lever. It is currently the case that the procurement guidelines for the Scottish Government have a clause on fair work in them. So it does say that part of what you'll be tested on as a potential supplier is your commitment to fair work and that's not particularly more detailed specified than that but it is there. So procurement is, I think, a very important lever. I think there's also broader levers around the kinds of things that the public sector spend money on. So the kind of delivery, the money that's delivered through Scottish Enterprise or through Skills Development Scotland for example as aids to businesses are also quite important levers. So I think there is a debate to be had around procurement irrespective of the debate around Europe because I think there has always been a view expressed in different quarters that perhaps the procurement regulations could have been used a bit more proactively and that's something I think that we would support. An exploration of how procurement can support fair work. You said that fair work has to be considered at the moment but is it in practice really a major consideration or is it just there being given a token respect? I wouldn't know because I'm not part of the people who asses those contracts. I suppose one point to bring in on the back of John's point is the Prime Minister's comments in her speech about that existing workers' legal rights will continue to be guaranteed in law. So I suppose if that is the case the big question of the issue is how workers' rights are developed going forward from the point that we are at when we leave the European Union. Dave Watson Just on John's point on the procurement front I do think there are procurement guidelines that we are involved in drawing up we FOI'd every local authority in Scotland to ask them how they were using it and I have to say they all said they went which is not a very encouraging starting point for using the guidelines. The second problem is that the guidelines is a bit messy it's a bit complicated but there is a route within those guidelines to deliver on the fair work agenda. I think we're more concerned that people are not using that local authorities and others are not using what they need to do is to set a very clear policy and then essentially measure against that. However there are a couple of areas which historically local authority and other public bodies legal advice has said there have been difficulties and I think we do need to address one of those has been state aid which has been pled by on a number of times by Scottish Government legal officials as reasons for not doing things so I think obviously there is an opportunity in Brexit to look at that and the other one particularly in the living wage context has been the posted workers directive which now my own view is that both of those have been used overly cautiously or the legal advice has been overly cautious from law officials on these issues and there are clear ways around them but nonetheless they have been pled as reasons for not doing fair work stuff so I think we do need to look at that as an opportunity post Brexit. Patricia Finlay. I can also make one point in response to the convener's issue of employment law I mean we need to bear in mind that not all employment law emanates from Europe or has been transferred into UK law from Europe so there are important protections for example around unfair dismissal which are within the gift of the UK Government so it's not simply an issue about what protections stay or go post Brexit, some of those areas have been around for a long time they're in UK law there are significant reductions for example if you look at the eligibility for unfair dismissal has now been increased from one year to two years that's a challenging issue for people to ensure security in their jobs. Gil Paterson's point. It's actually a Brexit question it's just a wider implications on Brexit for fair work but more importantly or in particular how the labour market is likely to be affected by the people that you represent. Stephen Boyd I just think it's impossible to answer that question with any degree of certainty until we know what Brexit looks like and until we know what the UK Government's preferred approach here is trying to ascertain what the impact at Scotland will be in a sectoral level I think it's just very very difficult to think in very broad terms I think withdrawal from the single market and customs union which looks increasingly lightly is unlikely to do anything to boost manufacturing in Scotland and I think Trish has already covered the issues around about employment regulation I would just maybe quickly go back to the procurement issue again until we know what the approach is here I think we have to introduce a wee note of caution and kind of assuming that Brexit will necessarily open the door to doing interesting things around about procurement and state aid I think we don't really know that if we are going to be in the EEA again which looks increasingly unlikely but also if we are going to negotiate a comprehensive trade agreement with Europe and even under WTO rules you'll see some pretty heavy restrictions about how we can subsidise national industries both what the post-Brexit scenario looks like I think we just have to be a wee bit cautious about assuming there's going to be a lot more scope to do interesting things around about state aid and procurement Dave Watson I agree with Patricia on the legal aspects of it that I think that a lot of them are in there and we need to be clear and clear that the state aid was not unhelpful in that regard I think in terms of the labour market the problem is frankly just an absence of data on the day after the referendum I walked in my office, grabbed my team together and said we'd better find out how many EU nationals we've got in Scotland's public services and about to say by the end of the day we were not much the wiser the honest truth is there's very little data even in areas where you'd expect to have decent data like NHS Scotland there is an annual ethnicity survey but it's voluntary and a lot of workers frankly don't fill it in we might worry why they don't want to fill it in but often they don't fill it in and say what the background is we've done some work within unison we reckon we've got about 6,000 to 7,000 EU nationals in membership but that's obviously only within membership it doesn't tell us the bigger numbers there what we do know is that we may not have hard numbers but ourselves and the employers in for example the health and care sector do know that we have an awful lot of EU nationals and other overseas workers working in that sector particularly in the most of our members would be in the residential care sector and that's true for nurses as well as it is for other grades of care workers if migration is not resolved given the numbers I gave you earlier about the huge numbers of additional health and care workers we're going to need to recruit in Scotland without migration that's going to be an enormous take out of every years school leavers unless we get the jobs right at least school leavers are not going to go there but even if they did we're simply not going to have the numbers so I think Brexit has very serious consequences unless we get the migration elements of whatever post Brexit looks like out of the way My school leavers do you mean school leavers within Scotland? Yes, I think it's about 56,000 a year something like that school leavers each year now the other issue of course linked to that is that these jobs are gender segregated as well at the moment health and care jobs particularly childcare but also in the social care sector are predominantly female segregated jobs unless we tackle that you can halve that number straight away in terms of the available workforce and then you've got to train them up and do the other things the announcement about 1500 extra doctor places is fine but it takes 7 years plus to train the doctor so we're talking long term workforce planning issues to address that Just to clarify what you mean by gender segregated I mean that in health and care are predominantly regarded as women's jobs the workforce is predominantly female whereas in other sectors like construction the workforce has been predominantly male now if the new jobs are in segregated workforces then we're going to have a real challenge so part of the strategy has to be to break down that segregation So it's a matter of perception not that these jobs are intended to be gender segregated but they have been for donkey's years and we haven't been successful so far in breaking them down and you referred to there being a gap between the numbers available if you take even the full number of school leavers and the jobs that will require to be filled in these sectors can you give a figure on the jobs required to be filled? If it's 65,000 extra jobs in health and care by 2022 that gives you a flavour of the numbers I can recall I spent a couple of years on succumbent in the health department of the Scottish Government I remember we did some workforce planning back then and I think my colleagues on the workforce planning on the nursing side worked out virtually every because of the segregation virtually every woman leaving school was actually going to have to go into nursing or healthcare if we were going to fill the jobs that hasn't happened because of migration essentially the gap has been plugged by EU nationals and I have to say in Scotland's case there are other overseas nurses and others so that's how we plugged the gap similarly I have to say in some other areas I can remember Scottish Waters capital programme was going to expand and still is very very large and again there was a question of not having the schools quickly enough so migration has actually plugged the gap even in in that case more traditional male dominated areas so it's a bigger challenge in health and care but it's not limited to that sector and does it also mean that if migration means simply bringing in workers from elsewhere to plug the gap as you put it it means that there's less emphasis or thought given to forward planning or encouraging people who are here coming out of school to go into those jobs in fairness I think thought was given to that and there was an increase in the number of places made available for example in nursing schools to recognise that we're going to need these back in the early nauties when we were doing some of the initial planning post-evolution so I think thought was given there but the scale of the change given the demographics in Scotland and the population hasn't been increasing that rapidly in terms of the indigenous population therefore migration has plugged gaps which probably would have happened however good our workforce planning was and if we're honest about it there's not been a glorious success in recent years because it's often quite difficult to do Lynn Henderson wanted to come in on to come back in on the point about gender segregation I think we need to be absolutely clear as Anna pointed out public services in Scotland and the UK are heavily dominated by women at the bottom grades of almost all sectors of the public sector in civil and public services there's more than 60 per cent female staff and they are concentrated in the lowest grades mostly with very little opportunity for progression up to into any real significant career pattern you will find people many of my members who have been in some of the lowest administrative grades for 20, 30 years with very little in the way of opportunities opening up to move in to team leading positions roles and very little pay progression so when you look at fair work and you think about our public services in the white collar sector there is a significant problem in the distribution of skills and pay within that sector thank you and Anna Richie Allen just to follow up on that as well I completely agree with Lynn what she said there but looking more widely at lower paid sectors in general they tend to be dominated so that is more women than men are in low paid work women make up two thirds of the workers that are below the living wage more likely to be on insecure contracts and in temporary contracts more women than men are on zero our contracts as well so there is a gender dimension to fair work and the need to drive up standards and job quality and so I certainly urge the committee in developing its work programme to consider women's experiences of work and how they predominate in lower paid jobs and in lower paid sectors and how the committee can take a gender analysis and any work at developments on fair work thank you and I think Patricia Findlay would like to come in could I just pick up on two points that have been raised in the discussion I think that Lynn's point earlier about the reduction in work in the public services and its relationship to fair work is quite significant we know for example that that's a loss to particular groups it's actually also a loss of skills that have been invested in so if you work in the public sector you're more likely to have higher levels of qualification you're more likely to have had training through your working life and so therefore there's a social loss in a transition from those jobs to jobs that might be of lower quality can I also make a point without my fair work hat on but in the sense of my university hat on to the university sector notwithstanding and agreeing with Steven's point that we don't know what Brexit will look like the reality is that the universities in Scotland are a great success and they are global players and they draw on a global labour market and my own university is already starting to collate and I'm sure others are information on people who are about to come and take jobs in Scottish universities who have decided not to in the context of the post Brexit terrain so there are big issues that we recruit globally and there are really big issues for our sector Can you give us any indication of the numbers even in rough percentage terms of who the people are that are at your university from EU and non EU countries No, I don't, I mean obviously there will be a breakdown in terms of both students and staff but we tend to have higher levels of international staff than, I couldn't give you the figures but higher levels of international staff than some other organisations and that's the nature of the global research market part of that is that people have seen the Brexit vote as creating the kind of uncertainty that people have talked about earlier also unfortunately as a signifier that as a country the UK is not open or will not be an accommodating home for them as academics and so we're already starting to see some of the impacts of that very practically Peter Wells Question 4, Prisysia Is there any indication so far about the funding impact that is going to be on universities and then the impact that that will then cascade on to the quality of the skills that's coming out of universities and how that will in the longer term could affect the labour market in Scotland? Can answer that, again the universities are trying to collate that information at the moment so the formal position is of course that people can continue to make for example funding applications to EU sources of funding the reality is that people are being asked to remove themselves from projects I think the more worrying thing might be that people are not invited to take part in projects because of the nature of the uncertainty and notwithstanding there may be some arrangements in the future that might allow the academic community in Scotland in the UK to participate in those sorts of global funding arrangements or EU funding arrangements we just don't know what the reality of that is Richard Leonard Thank you, I'd like to go back to something Stephen Boyd said earlier on where he said withdrawal from the single market and the customs union won't do much for manufacturing was that a gross understatement or were you being judicious we know that half of our export earnings come from manufacturing so that if failure to remain in the single market and some form of customs union couldn't have quite profound implications for our manufacturing base both Peter Welsh Dave Watson in his assessment of future projections on labour supply and demand suggested that there was some almost inevitable decline about manufacturing are there those around the table that maybe have a different view that there could be with the right policy support a renaissance in manufacturing industry and employment I think the consequences for Scottish manufacturing of a hard Brexit are profound and I think some of what we've been hearing over the last few days about the opportunities that lie out with the European Union I think is just fanciful and I think the gravity effects of trade are massive and hugely underappreciated i.e. you trade with those closest to you and we've been profoundly unsuccessful about trading our manufactured products beyond Europe over the last few years and we've heard the UK Government Trump put some pretty significant percentage increases in a share of our manufacturing going to China but that's in a very low base so the percentage increases massively overstate the scale of what's actually happening here so yeah I mean I would agree I think the consequences are really profound and damaging to answer your other point I mean as you know we've published extensively over the last few years on what can be done to support Scottish manufacturing again I would be a wee bit cautious and I don't think we should assume as we go forward that if we are successful in boosting manufacturing's share of output we will necessarily see a similar growth in employment I think the rate of productivity growth is such that even if we increase the share of output we are unlikely to see a significant growth in employment and I think we should all be quite realistic about that I think absolutely boosting manufacturing is a I think a goal pretty much shared across the political spectrum now but we should not assume we're going to see very significant employment effects I have the floor if I could just come back to a couple of other issues I mean I think a lot has been said so far about the Scottish labour market much has been said about sectoral employment and wages I think we have to be very clear in what we don't know in both respects our sectoral employment data is very very poor every month the ONS publish a Scottish estimate derived from the UK workforce job survey it's not credible it does not reflect what's happening in the Scottish economy as far as wages go when we've seen Gary Gillespie publish his latest state of the nation address in June I think he was using waste statistics which are the best that we have for the year to April 2015 so I think we have to be very clear in anything the committee can do to I think promote the lack of credible data around the Scottish labour market and help to address that deficit I think will be very much appreciated just the last point I would make again I think we can be a wee bit too pessimistic about forecasting sectoral changes in the economy worrying ourselves about how we are going how employment in certain sectors is going to be filled over time we see very significant sectoral shifts in employment we don't have to go that far back to 40% of Scottish workers when engaged in manufacturing and if in 1965 you were to suggest to somebody that it would be 10% people would be really quite dramatic change but over time again due to relative differences in productivity growth in various sectors we see employment shifts and I don't think we should cast ahead a few years and say this is a problem that is irreconcilable I think we tend to see these things kind of work out over time now that's not to say the income effects that Peter mentioned earlier on for losing manufacturing jobs and seeing growth and low-paid service jobs don't have a macroeconomic effect because they certainly do Thank you Stephen Does anyone else wish to come in on that particular question panterson? It's been missed out entirely on how it will impact and if there's going to be a shortage as David suggested in terms of the healthcare sector what happens to the agricultural sector if we're already taking up the slack or we don't even have enough for the health service How does it impact in rural Scotland and the notion that children would pick berries or pick fruit How does that work in the scheme of things in Brexit? I'm not sure which Tories you're referring to or that you have your quote right but I think I think we understand the point of the question I think Dave Watson He'll make a point about rural areas in particular one of the things that we've identified in terms of the current problems in terms of recruiting and retaining social care staff in particular is that the contractors who are providing much of the service in Scotland struggle doubly in rural areas and there's a whole range of reasons for that the travelling time and for workers in that sector it's even worse we've got members who are paid for six or seven hours a day but are working 12 or 13 hours particularly in rural areas because they're not getting paid for travel time as they go around or they're on some form of split or double split shifts where essentially they're told well your next work is in two hours time but if you're in a rural area you're not going to get back home do what you need and then go back out again so this is where not just zero hours contracts but nominal hour contracts in this sector but I do think it's worth looking very carefully at rural areas I gave an example to the health committee of talking to a social worker before I gave evidence and she said that she was given a list of six contractors to provide a care package for an elderly person in their area four of the six said we don't do rural areas that was the answer to her so I think there is an issue there and I think there is a broader one agriculture I accept Stephen's caution on all labour market statistics I'm just quoting the ones that are there as estimates they probably won't be right but the only ones we've got agriculture is deemed to come down and we know obviously that Scotland relies more heavily on farm payment systems than does the rest of the other parts of the UK particularly in England so I think there are obviously ways to add to that and how the agriculture industry responds to that and how the UK Government in transferring the money to Scotland member the Barnett formula won't help us there in terms of agriculture because we need greater than the Barnett formula to reflect our current take up of those types of subsidies Thank you and I think Ash Denham you wanted to come in with a question I just wanted to return to this point about polarisation Patricia Findlay mentioned this a little bit earlier so that's the idea that there's this hollowing out in the middle of the workforce so lots of high pay, high skill jobs at the top and then a sort of increasing number of low pay, lower skilled jobs at the bottom so I was just wondering if our guests consider that this is inevitable or is there something that could be done about this? Patricia Findlay What I quoted to you was an issue around pay desiles so it was looking at the particular issue of pay and the argument about whether if you look at skills profiles there is a much clearer whether there is so clear a hollowing out but there's certainly a hollowing out in terms of pay it's actually really quite important because we used to rely on the ability for at least some people to progress within the labour market organisations particularly big organisations in both the public and the private sectors used to operate internal labour markets where progression was an opportunity and that's important because that allows people to develop their skills to the maximum of their talents that's really important but we've seen much less of that and that's not just a feature of the UK economy it's also a feature of other advanced industrial economies like the US so it is an issue not just in terms of what that means for pay progression but it's also an issue in terms of whether or not people can get the fulfilment from work that we've argued in the convention is an important element of fair work Do you think there's anything that the Government should be looking at strategies that we could be adopting to try to help this situation? I'm not sure there are necessarily strategies for government I mean one of the things which governments do across the advanced nations is that they invest very heavily in skills skills and qualifications all levels of education and indeed support for adult skills and skills within the workplace and there's been an assumption for a very long time that if you invested in those skills they would somehow automatically have had no impact for example in productivity whatsoever so I think there's been a recognition in Scotland much earlier than in other parts of the UK that there's something going on that stops that and where that happens is in the workplace so there's something in the workplace about whether or not people get to use the skills which we have spent a lot of money in investing in to their best effect and that has no con implications not just for individuals but it has no con implications for businesses so my argument is a very I'm sometimes thought of as a very simple person my argument is a very simple one the resources you have in your business are the resources that you have those are the fundamental assets of your business you can either use them to a maximum or you cannot and the reality is that there are some business models where people don't use those skills particularly well and therefore you don't get the implications for progression of course we know that there are lots of businesses where businesses do precisely that so they invest in talent they nurture that talent they train it and they get the benefits of that talent being deployed but we have some business models where that's not the case and where you've got organisations where people are really stuck at the lower rungs and as both Anna and Linda have pointed out often it's women who are stuck at that lower end so are we talking particularly about management and leadership sort of models are we needing to move forward in that or skill up I think we're talking about management and leadership and business models so one of the things we've been very clear at as a convention and I am certainly very clear from my own academic work is we're certainly not trying to suggest that being a fair work employer is the only way to make money because of course we now know of lots of very common examples and very public examples of how you can make lots of money by being a very unfair employer but I think the argument is about choosing business models and forms of management and approaches to management and leadership which are about building fair work in by design and I think the argument from the evidence is if you do that you are not necessarily worse off than any other business you may well be better off than businesses. Now sometimes you've got a market driver to do that so say you're producing a high quality professional service you have a market driver and you'll invest in your people because the market is telling you that you need to. Where you don't have the same level of market driver where you have some sort of market failure then that's about the design by people and those are choices and I think one of the things where I'm reluctant to always talk about how the public sector or government can do these things is a lot of the outcomes in this area reflect choice and I think part what we want to do is our advocacy as a convention is to try and influence that choice and specifically to think about the full costs and the full benefits of certain types of business models and employment practice. Thank you. One of the points that's been mentioned was about I think the public service and the what appears to be a failure of the public service to live up to some of the gender pay equality for example principles and I'm just wondering because cannot the public sector lead by example particularly where the public sector is an area where perhaps longer term planning may be possible rather than the private sector if we think of industry dropping from 40 to 10 percent and things changing fairly rapidly in the world in terms of modern technology and so forth is that something you have thoughts on? I think you need to both recognise that the public sector is an example quite often when I teach groups of women students I talk about where you're more likely to have a career that's successful as a woman and you're more likely to have a career that's successful in the public sector that doesn't mean the public sector is perfect but the reality is and I'm sure Anna will come in on this the reality is that you're more likely to progress as a woman in the public sector than you are in the private sector so yes the public sector has an important exemplar role because and it also has levers associated with their diminished but more reliance on internal labour markets where if you can make sure that your career is open and accessible then you can improve equality within the public sector right Anna-Alan Richie sorry Anna Richie Alan I do beg your pardon it's different I know just coming on the public sector so the public sector qualities you to requires public authorities to do certain things in relation to the pay gap so reporting on the pay gap reporting on occupational segregation and also publishing gender disaggregated employee data as well as other data relating to protected characteristics which to come back to Dave's point about public sector employers not having data on how many EU nationals they have working for them is an example of how the public sector quality duty is failing just now we've had two rounds of reporting to date and close the gap on placement work looking at a sample of public sector employers on both reporting cycles we've seen overall performance to be very poor in relation to employment and gender in particular and we've seen in the second round of reporting a regression for most of the organisations that we've looked at over the four years many don't publish their gender pay gap at all and of those who do publish information relating to the gender pay gap no analysis, no narrative to accompany that and more importantly no actions to address any pay gaps so we are keenly awaiting the next round of reporting in April which will be the end of the four year period but generally what we're getting in when we talk to other women's organisation as well is that the public sector quality duty is just not working in Scotland as it relates to Scottish specific duties Dave Watson wanted to comment on that I'm taking your broader point about what the public sector can do in this area and we talked about public procurement I think that's important we've briefly touched on sectoral bargaining we think that the clear Scottish Government could lead in areas like for example in the social care sector to me like 95% of the funding in that sector comes from Government so Government has real levers if you wanted to tackle for example the hospitality sector it would be a lot more difficult for the Scottish Government to do it in the social care sector it could we're talking about gender segregation and pay a good example, the same report I quoted earlier, the early start report in financing of childcare showed that I think it was 50% of managers in the childcare business when getting live discussion to be waged now if you compare that with managers in male dominated occupations that simply wouldn't be the case even I have to say in other traditional jobs dominated by women for example you don't see that level of change so I think there's a real opportunity there for Government to drive change using sectoral collective bargaining and we've seen the changes that Government's tried to make good changes like introducing the living wage for care workers the implementation of that has been muddled largely because we don't have the sectoral collective bargaining framework which frankly would have avoided us getting into the problems we've got today the third suggestion I'd make is that one of the reasons the public sector in my view in Scotland doesn't always deliver on some of the early ambitions is that we have a very fragmented system of tackling workforce issues we've argued for some time remember the Christie commission talked about the necessity of a joined up vision for the public sector workforce they even talked about they used the example of public sector workers in Lanarkshire for example to have this silo working that historically we have we think there's a case for a national workforce framework which has some common features it's not about one form of bargaining for the whole of the public sector but it's about having some common frameworks which make it easier for people to move between sectors to make that mobility easier to start to break down some of the gender segregation we've talked about you could ensure for example as Anna said the public sector project was properly applied and the problem is we've got too many people reinventing the wheel in this fragmented way so what we need to do essentially is have a national framework for workforce issues but then leave the real important decision which is about local service delivery at the local level where it should be but take away some of the burdens of reinventing the wheel that we get in our rather fragmented system so it does require some big culture changes but that's one of the ways to make some real steps forward right, thank you Lynn Henderson to come back in on the public sector paying and sexual collective bargaining I think there is a real issue in the central government sector in Scotland where whilst we have through union pressure member pressure achieved no compulsory redundancy guarantees a Scottish living wage for all government employees we have had as unions to negotiate these employer by employer across 46 bargaining units with some public sector employers covered by Scottish public sector pay policy covered by ministerial guidance refusing to budge and taking some years to actually put these policies into practice now that's due to a lack of sectoral collective bargaining in that sector it's an easy win for ministers for ministers and unions to work together under the fair work agenda to come together in a sector where there is a political commitment to do something and rein in some of these employers some of this also relates to what Anna has described as the problem of an understanding of the equality public sector equality duties by perhaps human resource officials within many of these employers who will do the minimum each year to identify the gender equality and all the equality pay gaps and tick a box and say yes we've addressed we've told you how many women work for their organisation we've told you what they're paid but they won't identify disability or they won't identify race and other equality duties I think it's really important that sufficient training so that they understand the requirements which is requirements under legislation to publish that information we need this as union officials in order to bargain around that agenda but there is a lack of awareness and training amongst a number of senior officials in the Government sector on this issue If we could move on now Dean Lockhart Just to pick up a couple of points made by our guests it's in relation to skills gap and the transition of the economy the on-going transition of the economy which I think Dave Watson mentioned and Patricia Findlay If we are going to be seeing such an on-going and significant transition of the economy how can we plan for that in advance we know what's going to happen we might not know exactly the size and shape of how the economy will look in 2020-25 we know the sense of direction how can we plan for having the necessary skills available for the economy in 10 years' time is it skills development Scotland or is it a more holistic approach we need to identify Which of our guests would like to tackle that first? I mean I'll first bash at it I think the firstly I think it boils I know I think probably a lot of witnesses come to committees like this and tell you we don't have the data and we've not disappointed you in saying the same things we were talking about Brexit earlier Audit Scotland who are probably our best number crunchers were based their Brexit numbers on the 2008 survey which I think tells you all you need to know about the problems we've got with data so I think we do need to start with better data we do need to start therefore look at the sort of workforce numbers we need and I do think if we had we would call it sectoral collective bargaining but at least if those sectors were talking more effectively the beauty of sectoral collective bargaining is not just about wages we would also be talking about workforce planning in those sectors so if you took the social care sector you'd have Scottish care and the voluntary sector and ourselves sitting around the table and we would start to talk about this and we would be inputting in an open way the data that we have the surveys we do of our members the data the employers got and we would then start to produce some numbers and some data and some analysis which means something at the moment frankly there are a couple of civil servants doing a bit of very general workforce planning and they would be the first themselves to admit they don't have the basis for doing that they ring you up and they say what have you got and it's very limited and I think would be an important way forward the third thing I think we need if we're going to if we then recognise that we're going to have a shortage in certain areas and that you know I've highlighted that that self evidently is going to be in the health and social care area largely because of demographic change then what you then have to say well okay we can't I mean I've got big good quality voluntary sector providers at the moment have 25% turnover rates in social care now they're on 25% turnover rates now just think where we're going in the future now so therefore you then say to yourself right how are we going to make these jobs attractive and it's not just about paying important though that is we talked about qualifications childcare for example in the local authority sector we've done a lot of very good work around improving qualifications in the council sector your early years professionals are going to be qualified managers are going to be up to degree level standard now we've done stuff there it now makes it a more attractive profession, you can see a progression there and also it's about valuing jobs you know I did a piece in the Scots from a couple of weeks ago and I was pointing out that our members don't even own up that their social care workers and they've talked to pals in the pub you know that's how bad it is now you're not going to recruit thousands of people into the sector unless we can change that culture so you have to start thinking about how we make certain jobs new jobs more valued and the fourth and last thing I think then you do at the end of that you do the traditional bit which is about how do we how do we ensure we've got enough people trained and qualified and that's where more traditional workforce planning comes in when you say right we're going to need x thousand more what qualifications do they need is that going to be about FE colleges upskilling is that about universities and so on and you do that traditional bit so what I'm trying to persuade you is that there are three stages before the traditional stage that we're not doing very well in Scotland at the moment and that's what we need to do to get to that new area I think I would agree on pretty much all of those points that you know there are clearly agencies and bodies charged with identifying future demand for skills so you've got skills development in Scotland, you've got Scottish funding council looking at the university sector and looking at professional level there are skills investment plans for Scotland and those are supposed to do exactly what Dave has suggested which is to convene people together to bring together the best forms of expertise I think in process terms it's really important we're a relatively small country it's really important that we bring people together to get the best evidence and I take on board Stephen's point about the availability of data but we do have lots of people who have lots of insights and lots of understanding of key sectors and what those sectors are likely to need in the future it would be much better if we expanded our energy on doing that rather than engaging in the sometimes futile futurology of what the world will look like 20 years from now because it's not terribly insightful, it's not terribly helpful to make in that transition I think the key issue around making those jobs in areas where there will be a shortage attractive is crucially important there are some social care organisations who have turnovers levels of 30, 40, 50 per cent they simply cannot keep people in those jobs because those jobs are really challenging very very demanding and with very low returns at least in an extrinsic level the last point I would make is that one of the things which we do a lot I think both in academia and in the policy community and again across practitioner groups is we spend a lot of time talking about trends and a bit less time talking about patterns so for example there's significant replacement demand for manufacturing in Scotland which is becoming a smaller part of the economy but it's not disappearing overnight and so some of the issues for some sectors is that if there's a discussion around that's a declining sector it makes it even more difficult to bring people into the sector and so the issue of trends and patterns and replacement demands I think needs to be factored into the discussion of the kind of changes that we'll see in terms of sectoral shifts Thank you, Stephen Boyd I agree with everything Trisha and Dave have said but I think it can't be overstated too much what a difficult and uncertain process trying to quantify the future demand for skills is I mean to give you an example of that I'm a member of the First Minister's energy advisory board so a few years ago they were really comprehensive piece of work, SDS-led working with Scottish Enterprise in the private sector to try and quantify what the demand for skills was likely to be 10 years hence but then what happens you see the productivity growth in US shale increase at a rate that was completely unanticipated massive structural change in the global sector and what five years ago seemed to be the most pressing issue regarding future demand for skills is completely turned on its head so I mean I think it's just in terms of what is possible here I think we just all have to be quite levelheaded about secondly we can't allow ourselves to think about this as being a public sector issue it's about what the public sector can do to support the wider economy the role of employers here is absolutely crucial and I think we have to ask ourselves a number of quite difficult questions are the employer community in Scotland organised in such a way that they can coherently articulate their needs in this area I'm not convinced they always are although I think sectorally that changes and the third point I would make is working to live in through a period where we hear a lot of quite excited stuff about what the impact of technological change is going to be and we hear an awful lot there are a 47% figure of US occupations that are likely to disappear in the next 20 years and I think since that research was published in 2013 what we've actually learned is what we need to be mindful of is what tasks can be optimised or digitised rather than what occupations are going to disappear because there's not a clear crossover between them both and I think we also have to understand that even though some tasks can be automated it's not always economic for that change to happen we kind of assume that that will always be economic and I think what we've seen in terms of the trajectory of the UK product to have it over the last few years shows us pretty clearly that that is not happening as yet now we need to be mindful of that I think I said when I spoke to the committee at the LA Day I think a piece of work looking at what the impact of technological change in Scotland mindful of our current sectoral make up what that path is likely to be but I think again becoming too pessimistic about what we're going to lose 47% of our jobs over the next 20 years doesn't really serve as well for trying to soberly assess where things are likely to go I'm going to take Andy Wightman defining how many questions he has also perhaps take a question from Jackie Baillie and then open it up to our guests thank you convener my questions fairly straight forward to ask the guests what examples of real innovation in fair work you have noted in Scotland or in the rest of the UK or in other countries that could inspire the efforts that are being made to promote fair work in Scotland and Jackie perhaps we could have a question from you as well at this point it builds on what's already been asked and I hear a plea for sexual and collective bargaining I'm very conscious that probably nobody in this room would disagree with the conclusions of the fair work convention but whatever the best will in the world nine people positively advocating is not going to create the step change that we all want to see so I suppose my question is what is it you expect government to do and then accepting that government is not solely responsible for this would you expect businesses to do and do you think the vehicle is the business pledge given that all we've got is 289 businesses out of a potential 360,000 signed up so I'm looking for practical things that you want to see happening whether it's government or business or indeed anybody else right who would like to respond from our guests Jackson Cullinan in terms of the innovative approaches I have to say that I would be struggling in terms of the UK and not just in Scotland but in an international dimension I think there are examples that we should be looking at I was quite interested I know I was late for the breakfast session this morning but I was quite interested that the question was asked I believe by some of the Scottish Enterprise about employee ownership and if you're looking at people having a state, having a say, having a voice then there are examples across the world there have been 82,000 people in the vast region in terms of your Mogradon 43,000 people in Emilia Romana and Italy as a consequence of the McCoralaw now we have examples in terms of the United States where one of our sister unions the USW are involved in establishing employee-owned businesses in Ohio etc so there are examples on that international basis and in fact when you look at it in that dimension Fodds is actually quite behind in this across the globe this is a forum of ownership which is really taking off in virtually every country and arguably through the rest of the UK it's ahead of us I mean I've seen stats which show that this sector has booked a trend at sort of 20% growth in the last couple of years so those kind of things are things that we should be looking at because I think this does lead into some of the other stuff that's being discussed about manufacturing strategies etc we are never going to have a strategy for the economy unless people are prepared to intervene and try to use the leverage and the powers that they have to influence the position and I suppose that leads to Jackie's question what do we expect people to do I don't think that we're going to make much progress I think we'll make some progress but I don't think we'll make much progress in terms of just leave it to a voluntary approach to be honest there are good employers out there who are willing to listen to these things there are plenty examples of the Fair Work Convention are looking at them of employers who have done good and progressive things but there are also too many out there who are simply driven by the profit motive and will use all kinds of manoeuvres in order to maximise that so we do need things to be underpinned by positions coming from government that means having basic employment rights but it also means back to the point that I made right at the very start it means organisations and levels of government beyond the UK and Westminster level using the leverage and the powers that they have to try and influence the position so we are talking about things like procurement and interestingly this is something that even local government can begin to look at I would be making a plea and have made a plea to several local authorities that they should begin back to the days when they saw themselves as a local developer of the economy and thinking about things that they can do to try and influence things and encourage things and even last week Red Fisher councillor was adopted by the Instruction Charter which was a clear attempt to influence procurement with contractors who do building work for the council so that they honour basic things that are reflected within the Fair Works Convention so I do think that we do need that mix of a voluntary agreement for employers but it needs to be underpinned by legislative change Anna Ritchie Arlan Thank you I agree with Jackson in that particularly from the perspective of gender equality that voluntary initiatives don't work if we look at Think Act report which was the UK Government's voluntary initiative to try to encourage gender pay gap reporting that was a flop to see the least when only five companies published their pay gaps out of 200 that had registered to do so and only two had done it by grade which was the main aim of the initiative so I think that we've been somewhat underwhelmed by the business pledge we would, I think it's been a bit unclear, there is one component that relates to gender equality but my understanding is that the number of companies that have signed up to do anything on gender equality is a handful, minimal so we have concerns about that the concerns about the way that it's administered in that it's Scottish Enterprise who's developed the components and we don't think that the account managers there and particularly that function of Scottish Enterprise historically has lacked the gender competence in order to sell it to businesses and actually to demonstrate what the economic case is for gender equality so and also the measurement of it is unclear so the data that's gathered, what companies have to demonstrate that they're doing is lacking somewhat so it's difficult to see how any progress will be measured and this goes back to a point about conditionality that was made elsewhere was that the Enterprise agencies there's some sort of conditionality attached to businesses that are using the account management service of Scottish Enterprise and high and they have to demonstrate companies that access this public money what they're doing to advance equality and to advance the fair work agenda as well. Thank you Peter Walsh I've already addressed examples of fair work it's a generic question but if you look at the hallmark of some of the more fair economies in Europe particularly the Scandinavian bloc a larger proportion of workers are covered by a collective agreement and I don't think that's something that should be overlooked it's no coincidence we've spoke about sector forums sector agreements as a tool to help achieve fairer work in Scotland it won't be a panacea in itself quite frankly nothing will it will take a multifaceted approach but what we would like from government is the active promotion of that to work with trade unions and other stakeholders across industry to pull that together to make the case for that and the benefits that it can bring and as Jackson also said of where we can underpin that through legislation and that's the brass tacks of it you wouldn't expect the trade unions on the United Front when it comes to collective bargaining but it does do a demonstrable amount of good I thank Andy Wightman for a question that had a positive turn on it because I think innovation in the fair work agenda is extremely important and an element that has been there from the beginning and one that I am personally very proud of because my union raised us at the STUC and it's come through the agenda is around a collective bargaining agenda the representation of workers around the equalities agenda and also around the environment agenda is a significant feature of the fair work agenda that there should be trade union representatives for equalities and also for environmental reps in workplaces to raise these issues at a workplace level and begin to have an engagement with managers and employers around these issues at every level not just at the sectoral collective bargaining table so I see that as a challenge to the reunion around the table we've all been doing a number of good positive work over the years we now have an opportunity that is not present in the UK Government sector for my members in the UK Government where our facility timers to union representation is being reduced we have an opportunity to raise these issues in a new and innovative way and at a shop floor level so I think that's a really important aspect of the fair work agenda that we need to we need to say it's innovative in Scotland because you could lead the way and take it as forward Thank you, now I wanted to bring in Gillian Martin and then Gordon MacDonald so perhaps we could take questions from Gillian and Gordon Largely, what I'm going to ask has already been touched on by some of my colleagues but it's apparent to me that the private sector is going to be key and that the economic case has to be made quite strongly to private companies in terms of the gender pay gap and all the fair work as well and I just wonder that widely how we can make that economic case you mentioned Scottish Enterprise and you obviously have your criticisms of them but I'm just interested to see here what people think about it because if there is going to be a decrease in public sector employment and there seem to be the jobs that offer the fair work agenda quite strongly we are going to have to make that economic case to employers because otherwise if it's voluntary, which it is it's just not going to happen so I'd like your thoughts on that I've a similar nature there's no doubt that the fair work framework can deliver benefits to employers whether it's reduced absence levels, retention of staff or productivity but how do you get that message across to SMEs the vast majority of private sector employers are small businesses who don't necessarily have any trade union representation in their company or don't necessarily have an HR department so how do you engage with SMEs to adopt the fair work framework and given that most of employment law is reserved how can we implement any change if we don't have any control over employment law most not all trade unions but the SMEs and a lot of trades are in favour of devolving employment law and we think that would help the fair work agenda and clearly it's on our post Brexit shopping list as well to make progress there but I think there are practical things we can do there are there is innovation out in Scotland and good examples that we can use to persuade employers one of those that we point to obviously is the national health service in Scotland that has an award winning academic study found that its partnership approach to industrial relations was one of the most advanced in the western world having their pin policies which set good standards and I think it's the sort of thing I was talking about earlier in relation to the workforce framework how we get to other innovation of that type Jackson talked about United Construction Charter we've been trying to do the same with ethical care for example the number of local authorities this month will sign up to that as being a good model getting to smaller employers which is a challenge for the reasons that Gordon indicated I think one of the models is a good one and Scotland has led the way and this one is the Scottish Living Wage Accreditation Framework Scottish Government has put its hand in its pocket and supported that in terms of us being able to put people out into the into the field there so we've now got people working doing that what they do is when they talk to businesses they don't just say it's a nice thing it's a business case for the Living Wage and I often when I go to employers and make the presentation or go with them actually, bizarrely for me produce Boris Johnson as a nice picture to go there because actually Boris Johnson as mayor of London didn't abandon the Living Wage and London in fact went on and supported and promoted it so not someone you might certainly we might not associate with a pro wage approach but nonetheless it demonstrates the fact that there is quite a lot of cross party and broad understanding that there is a business case to be made. What accreditation staff do is they make that, they explain it they do it. I have to say I don't think that on its own is enough we also have to do some of the hard stuff so as we see it we think there are three stages what the first stage is that you actually have to name and shame bad practice Government doesn't like doing that but we're not averse to doing it Sport Direct of course has been the most recent example of doing that where there is really bad practice and despite all attempts to change it then frankly naming and shaming shouting about these people highlighting bad practice has to happen but the character if you like is the second stage which is using the good examples and promoting good practice and showing how these businesses have not failed because they pay good wages and do other things so we promote that and then the third stage is that is you do the sort of things I mentioned that Government can do to support that with procurement and the national framework etc so the business pledge is to answer Jackie's question the business pledge I think is part of that type of process it shows ambition it shows willingness but the living wage I think is a better model because it has accreditation it has to meet behind it so if you drift you will lose your accreditation and it's tough to get it so you have to do the things that you need to do and I think that's the way ahead to get into the wider economy I'm sure Boris will be delighted with your commendation of his fair work approach Anna Ritchie Allen Thank you Certainly our experience of advocating for more progressive employment practices in relation to gender we found SMEs it requires a different approach to working with larger employers in particular and we found that SME employers are less persuaded of the business case for gender equality and which is concerning because women are more likely to work in smaller workplaces and as you'd mentioned less likely to have a separate HR function which means that employment practices is poorer as well the research also says in terms of trying to progress gender equality that most employers where they do not take action is because of firstly a sense of undue complacency in that they perceive that they're already providing equal pay, that they run fair workplaces and the other reason they don't do is a lack of priority which is often what we hear from SME employers in that we don't have time for this we don't have the resources we're just trying to get to the end of the day and plan for the next one and one of the pieces of work that Close a Gap has done is to develop an online self-assessment tool which is called Think Business Think Equality which was designed specifically for SMEs and it enables employers to go through a series of very short multiple choice tests that take about five minutes and it gives them a tailored report based on their answers which provides them with an action plan where they can take steps because the research has shown us and evaluations of other work that we've done is that SMEs don't want somebody from an equality organisation or some other organisation to come in and tell them what to do but to agree with what David said something else that the employers have told us from the evaluation of that work is that they would value some sort of accreditation along with it because so that they can demonstrate to their staff but also competitors in order because they don't see the point of going through that process or doing any work if they can then show it off to everyone. Thank you. Liam Kerr, do you have a question? Yes, thank you, convener. Just following on from that point the way that we're defining fair work arguably increases the overhead and the cost to business of doing business so what do any of our witnesses think is the impact of that on the global competitiveness of the Scottish economy in the 10-year horizon that Dean is talking about for example and SME competitiveness going forward? Just the second thing I wanted to speak about following on from Jackie Baillie's question about what the witnesses want to see government doing so I'm interested in zero-hours contracts because I noticed the Scottish business pledge talks about not using zero-hours contracts the Scottish Government talks about no unnecessary use of zero-hours contracts and Jackson Cullen and earlier on talked about banning zero-hours contracts so what is actually wanted here what do people want done on zero-hours contracts? Well I'll hand over to Stephen Boyd who's been wanting to come in on I think a couple of points if you'd like to Stephen. Yeah I'll quickly come back to the previous questions when we're first in SMEs I know Trish has been doing a lot of work in this area and she might want to come in but I think it's very important to stress that although the vast majority of businesses are small businesses the majority of people are employed in medium and large organisations so just for the purposes of this conversation it's important to bear that in mind in terms of making an economic case and I think that's hopefully comes on to your question as well William that I think we need to understand the limits of what's possible here I mean sports direct have been mentioned a couple of times at no point were sports direct going to be convinced by an economic case I just wouldn't get that, I'm not interested in that the UK environment at the moment is we've got the second most deregulated product market in the developed world and the third most deregulated labour market and that allows a lot organisations to make a reasonable amount of money existing on a low-skill, low-pay, poor employment, equilibrium trying to tell them that other organisations do things better it's very unlikely to convince them but you know taking the next step on to competitiveness we've been doing a lot of work in the oil industry at the moment it will not surprise you to know there's a widespread recognition that the industry has to change and has to change very quickly so there's different ways in which you can do that now I would argue the operator that's done that most successfully up until now is Nexon now Nexon have done that by engaging comprehensively with her workforce throughout the company involves a chief executive going offshore regularly speaking to people face to face and they have seen a big productivity dividend as a result of that and they've seen very few job losses and where they've seen them they've been handled very sensitively indeed but again it's the structure of that industry in Scotland such that the lessons that we can learn from Nexon be applied elsewhere can we even talk to the people who will be making the decisions of a group of offshore unions with Oil and Gas UK with Oil and Gas Authority all the senior people will be meeting industry agree with us about the direction of change but if you are one of the big American multinationals where you can't make a cup of tea without foreign hosting to get the okay for a decision what is the chance of you learning the lessons about what's happening elsewhere in Scotland to apply to your industry I mean it's just tremendously difficult so we can sit all day presenting for Nexon and there's a couple others as well when questions will be one trying to do things in a different way but we are not going to reach the people who can drive the behavioural change in the rest of the sector in Scotland a sector that's been used to operating at a hyper competition at every strata of that sector so I mean came to the new approaches that seek to engage a workforce to talk about collaboration with other operators really difficult getting attraction with the sector as a whole and in Scotland they all absolutely agree with you about the direction of change so I think it's very different but the lesson from that is I think you know what we are talking about here fair work I think is commonly understood should be a driver of competitiveness I mean the Scottish Government believe it isn't an economic strategy I've gained should scepticism about the global surveys we have of competitiveness I think there's an awful lot wrong with them but you know they're all we've got to work with we've got to look at the companies that consistently perform well when they are in western northern Europe they are countries with very high levels of collective bargain high levels of trade union density you know who treat workplace issues much more seriously and we do who invest in the stock of skills but also invest in mechanisms to make sure that stock of skills is productively used within the workplace so they go about things very differently and I think it's very very difficult to argue that fair work is in any way a barrier to international competitiveness Patricia Findlay I mean to pick up on the last couple of questions I think we do a great disservice to businesses in Scotland if we suggest that we can't find good examples of good practice you know if you ever get an opportunity you should listen to John Reid the Managing Director at Michelin and indeed talking about how they collectively with their trade unions with their workforce, with their management team turned round a business, a global business a part of a global business which was on its knees and made it the second best performing part of the Michelin group and we also do a great disservice to SMEs if we suggest that somehow they are atypically represented in unfair employment SMEs are incredibly heterogeneous lots of them are in the position when they are individually or family owned to decide not to profit maximise and back to Jackson's point I actually don't have a problem with the profit motive I have a problem when the profit motive externalises costs to the wider society so people make a profit which is unduly burdensome on the rest of society so I think that's a unit of analysis issue but we have lots of good innovative fair work employers in Scotland and I think looking at those examples in a positive way to think about how do we learn practice rather than saying that those people are exemplars so the first time something goes wrong in their business they are held up and pilloried for not being exemplars any longer I think it's quite important to say what did company X do in circumstance Y where they adopted a practice that made something a bit better and I think that's really an important way to try and learn lessons I quite often think about the work of the convention and my own broader academic work is a normal distribution and you know what a normal distribution looks like so on the one hand you will have businesses at the top end of that distribution that are doing very good things that for market or other reasons have decided and engaged in fair work practices and are gaining the benefits of that at the bottom end you'll have businesses and I think that's Stephen's point where you will never persuade them the business model is such that you'll just never persuade them to be any different your only lever in those circumstances we don't have that regulator lever in Scotland and the convention has therefore not discussed that or sorry has not put in part of the framework that there should or shouldn't be one the reality is that there isn't one until such times and if such times there is one it's not an issue that we can discuss so what do you do with those companies that are in the middle of the distribution we've taken the view that using a variety of different levers and building from a very small base Jackie is absolutely right to the coalition of the willing so trying to find people who would advocate who would act as role models, act as ambassadors who would talk within their own networks to try and push forward those businesses who are quite happy to think about how to do something differently and happy to do that in a way that not only benefits their businesses but to come back to Liam Kerr's point can benefit businesses not only benefits their employers so I have worked with a lot of small businesses in an initiative which I lead called Innovating Works which is focused on improving work and workplaces how do you make business performance better at the same time as you make job quality better and I worked in the first phase of that with a bundle of SMEs who were in a right range of sectors lots of whom said things like we want to run a business which is fair to our employees and fair to our community we think that makes us successful but we take the view that even if it dented our profits we would still do it because it was the right thing to do so if some businesses you will bring on an ethical argument or a moral argument some businesses you will bring on an economic argument some businesses you will encourage or discourage using different kinds of incentives and levers for example conditionality from services from the public agencies or the role of procurement or the support or otherwise of government in a variety of different ways so there's lots and lots of different levers and to think of this as a problem solved by a single lever is I think problematic I absolutely concur as it does with the convention that having a voice for employees in workplaces and in organisations is absolutely crucial to that but there is very little evidence that being a good employer damages your competitiveness either at the level of a particular business or a particular sector or indeed at the level of national economies there's just no evidence that suggests that's the case well thank you very much that's a good place to stop I think or did you want to come back in Liam with one final question no not a question I just wondered if I was going to get an answer on the zero hours contract piece ah yes Jackson Cullenan did you want to come back on that point I'm glad you have come back in Liam actually I mean I agree with everything that Patricia has said about the benefits to the business to the wider economy and everything else quite frankly I see this for the context of humanity and democracy if you're on a zero hour contract what does it mean it means that you don't know when you're going to be working it means you cannae plan your life it means that your income is going to be it's going to go up and down it's going to flow it means that if you've got an economic problem which invariably comes when you're on a zero hour contract you don't get access to loans because people will only give you one because you don't get a regular income we've ever had cases of people on a zero hour contract it means that people are absolutely in terms of their own self-esteem absolutely at the beckon call and under the control of other people now if you think about fair work for me that's what fair work should be as people having a say as people being treated as human beings who contribute to something for too many people in this country when you go to work somebody else tells you what today when today it, how today it what you're going to get in return for it all we're asking for here is for people to have a say and to have a voice and I don't think in this day and age it should be too much to ask that people know that if they go to work they know how long and what the hours will be where they're actually going to be asked to be at work what about self-employed people well I'm glad you've asked that as well because there are people who make a choice to be self-employed but there are also far too many people in this country who are bogus self-employed in the construction industry you have tens of thousands of people who are employed through employment agencies or umbrella companies who are ripping off their national insurance every day and more importantly are taking absolutely out with the realms of any kind of employment law protection one of the reasons why you've got a blacklisting problem in this country is because people in the construction industry being employed and their bogus self-employed contracts when they take that employer to court when they have been blacklisted and things have happened and they've been unfairly dismissed they can't even win their case because under employment law they are only deemed to be an employee so it's a major gap that needs to be blocked to you right well I think we will close the session at that point because we could go on in some detail I think about a number of these issues so thank you very much to all of our guests I'll close the session there and we'll reconvene once the public gallery I think it's called is cleared thank you