Has your manufacturing business been hit by skills shortages?
Have you recently recruited for engineering posts only to encounter candidates lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills?
If the answer is yes then WM needs your help to lobby manufacturing minister Mark Prisk to start a parliamentary debate over skills concerns.
Sign up if you support our letter to mark (below) which follows the minister’s appearance at the wm leaders forum.
Dear Mark,
We were delighted to hear how keenly you value british manufacturing and our importance in driving economic growth at the WM Leaders Forum.
However, we remain deeply concerned that a dramatic shortfall in core skills could seriously threaten our ability to achieve this goal.
All of us, despite the hostile economic climate and rising unemployment afflicting the uk, are looking to recruit particularly at apprentice and junior level.
We can offer hugely rewarding careers within our businesses but only to candidates who have the fundamental skills to meet the challenge. Such candidates remain in frustratingly short supply.
We have serious concerns that the education system is producing too many youngsters who lack basic literacy and numeracy skills, who are inarticulate and display poor work ethic. It’s unfair and unsustainable to expect businesses like ours to carry the burden of bringing these candidates up to an acceptable standard.
We call on you to table a parliamentary debate via an early day motion to discuss how industry and government can work together to remedy this toxic shortage in core skills.
There are currently 25 signatures for this petition: