Europe trains professional building workers for lifelong careers. If we fail to match these standards, we will fail to achieve green targets
Last week saw the parliamentary launch of a new campaign, Cut the Carbon, to promote construction skills in the specific area of low-carbon building. Green building requirements relate to all aspects of construction, including design communication, contractual relations, site management and operative skills. But this is an industry beset with big problems: large-scale subcontracting, never-ending supply chains, casual and "bogus" self-employment, and a poor health and safety record, to name a few. Above all is the lack of any comprehensive system of vocational education and training, with large swathes of activity such as concreting, formwork and groundworks having very little, if any, training provision.
For many years I have been involved in research on construction labour and training across Europe, including comparisons of productivity, innovation and skills. I have wondered at the well-organised sites in Denmark, where highly skilled workers are given rights and responsibilities hardly imagined in Britain; where vocational education and training is a minimum of three years, and trade unions play a pivotal role.
I have visited fantastically well-equipped training centres in the Netherlands and Germany, where the industry is divided into broadly defined occupations, agreed on by trade unions, employers and educationalists together.
In these countries it is all but impossible to work on a building site without going through a "dual" system of training – developing the capacities of the trainee for a career, not just imparting traditional skills to meet immediate employer requirements. I know there are some notable exceptions, but why in general does Britain compare so badly?
Construction is one of the largest industries in this country, and employs nearly 1.9 million workers. It should be providing thousands of young people with an interesting and valuable career. Instead it increasingly relies on those who have benefited from the training systems in other European countries – including for flagship projects such as Heathrow Terminal 5 or the Olympics.
Low-carbon construction is a big challenge. It cannot be solved with "bite-sized" training schemes and quick technical fixes. The comprehensive spending review only adds to the uncertainty, with question marks over the future of Sector Skills Councils and budget cuts to local authorities, which play a key role in vocational training.
A paradigm shift from conceiving green buildings as a niche market to an industry standard is required. This cannot happen without a major rethink of construction education and training and without the involvement of all those concerned, including trade unions and educationalists as well as employers.
• Linda Clarke is professor of European industrial relations at Westminster Business School