TUC calls for more training at work

Competitiveness may suffer unless firms do more to develop the skills of their staff

Firms are not providing enough IT training and other basic education for staff, and the government should increase investment and introduce laws to tackle the problem, according to a report released last week by the Trade Union Congress (TUC).

The report, entitled “2020 vision for skills”, anticipates the Treasury's imminent Leitch Review to predict the skills needed for 2020. It claims that over a third of employers do not offer training to their workers, leaving 8.5 million staff without such opportunities.

A TUC spokesman said that basic training is underfunded and the amount of IT training offered to staff is insufficient, particularly given the growing importance of technology to many employers.

"Firms claim they are putting a lot of money into training, but much of it is the calculated value of their employees' time, basic induction training and legally required health and safety training," he argued. "The claimed expenditure is grossly overstated and relatively little is spent on improving skills."

The report recommends that the government should help tackle the problem by investing more in training schemes and ensuring its existing sector skills councils, such as IT training body eSkills, "include a new regulatory dimension to drive up employer investment in training".

The report follows recent calls from the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) for the government to do more to ensure school leavers develop basic skills, after around half of students failed to gain a C grade or above in Maths and English GCSE. The CBI said this failure to produce school leavers with basic skills means a third of firms have to offer remedial training in numeracy and literacy.

But the TUC report insists employers should still invest more in improving the skills of employees. It notes that 70 percent of the country's 2020 workforce has already completed compulsory education, so more must be done to enhance the skills of current staff alongside any improvements to the education system.

"Employers should stop complaining so much about the skill levels of their staff and spend more on training them," said TUC secretary general Brendan Barber in a statement. "And the government must legislate to make sure that workers get paid time off to train."