Manufacturing - recovery plan: equalities impact assessment

36.5% of the manufacturing workforce are aged 50+⁶.

Apprenticeships for younger people may be impacted.  11.4% of the manufacturing workforce are aged 16-24.  Data from the Resolution Foundation states that more than one in three 18 to 24-year-olds are earning less than before the outbreak⁷.

An aging skilled workforce poses a future risk to the ability to safely train young people and apprentices and the ability for young people to learn a skilled trade.

Annual Population Survey 2019 (APS)

Industry representatives

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes proposed actions aimed at encouraging employers to retain, adopt and retrain apprentices and to promote progressive Fair Work practices.

The plan also proposes actions to mitigate the impact of graduate unemployment, creating meaningful work experience, training and employment across the manufacturing sector.

Implementation of the plan will ensure the ongoing recruitment, skills development and training of the future workforce.  This will reduce the possible risk of a reduced future skilled workforce and prevent any resulting skills vacuum where there would be a lack of skilled workers available to safely train young people and ensure young people’s careers can be progressed with skills being passed down. 

11.6% of workers in the manufacturing industry are recorded as having respiratory, cardiovascular, diabetes or other long term progressive illness.  A further 25.6% have undefined long term conditions/illnesses⁸

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing is currently not available in any format other than written English.  This poses a risk that people with impaired sight or blindness are unable to access the content of the document, and may be unable to take part in the consultation on the plan. 

APS

Scottish Government

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes a commitment to Fair Work principles and reflects equality issues and statutory requirements under equality law.  It includes a series of actions aimed at improving recruitment and workforce development in the manufacturing sector.  These actions are informed by Fair Work practices and seek to embed these practices throughout the sector.

This provides an opportunity to address any issues which may become apparent affecting people in this group.

We recognise that there is a lack of accessibility to Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing and are looking at solutions. In the meantime, should an alternative format be requested, such a braille, BSL, or a community language, this can be arranged through Scottish Government 

76.6% of the manufacturing workforce are men with only 23.4% women. This is significantly lower than for Scotland as a whole – where 48.8% of the workforce are women.⁹

In 2015, only 20% of manufacturing apprentices were women.¹⁰  

Women are more likely to be in non-manufacturing specific associate professional roles such as accounting, finance and IT.  Men are more likely to be working in manufacturing engineering professional occupations.  This is reflective of the wider labour market, where skilled trades are male dominated, while women are concentrated in administrative, sales and customer service roles

Women are over represented in routine-level work, with over 1/3 of women working in production or elementary roles.

Women are employed across the manufacturing sub sectors but are concentrated in food and drink, textiles, machine and equipment and chemical production manufacturing. 

Women are scarcely represented in maintenance works, engineering technicians, chemical activities, goods handling and storage.  

Women are much more likely to work part time than men.  Part time working tends to be higher in non-manufacturing specific occupations.

The Scottish manufacturing sector gender pay gap is 14.1%, compared with 3% in Scotland overall¹¹

This would indicate that any intervention in the manufacturing sector will disproportionately affect men. It also may be indicative that there is a lack of opportunity for women in the sector and this could be addressed in the implementation of the proposed actions.

Close the Gap

Close the Gap

ONS 

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes a commitment to Fair Work principles and reflects equality issues and statutory requirements under equality law.  It includes a series of actions aimed at improving recruitment and workforce development in the manufacturing sector.  These actions are informed by Fair Work practices and seek to embed these practices throughout the sector.

This provides an opportunity to address longstanding issues in the gender balance of employment in the sector. 

6.9% of employees in the manufacturing sector are women with dependent children (aged 0-16) compared with 15.4% of the Scottish workforce as a whole.¹²

APS

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes a commitment to Fair Work principles and reflects equality issues and statutory requirements under equality law.  It includes a series of actions aimed at improving recruitment and workforce development in the manufacturing sector.  These actions are informed by Fair Work practices and seek to embed these practices throughout the sector.

This provides an opportunity to address any barriers faced as a result of pregnancy or maternity leave.

An evidence gap has been identified around the likely impact of Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing on people in this group.

There is no evidence to suggest that there are any differential barriers to this group.  

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes a commitment to Fair Work principles and reflects equality issues and statutory requirements under equality law.  It includes a series of actions aimed at improving recruitment and workforce development in the manufacturing sector.  These actions are informed by Fair Work practices and seek to embed these practices throughout the sector.

This provides an opportunity to address any issues which may become apparent affecting people in this group.

An evidence gap has been identified around the likely impact of Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing on people in this group.

There is no evidence to suggest that there are any differential barriers to this group.  

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes a commitment to Fair Work principles and reflects equality issues and statutory requirements under equality law.  It includes a series of actions aimed at improving recruitment and workforce development in the manufacturing sector.  These actions are informed by Fair Work practices and seek to embed these practices throughout the sector.

This provides an opportunity to address any issues which may become apparent affecting people in this group.

Census data shows that 98.51% of employees in manufacturing identify as White compared with 96.73% of employees in the Scottish workforce overall.¹³

8.19% of people with a White background who are employed in Scotland are employed in the manufacturing sector. This compares with only 3.29% of people with an Asian background, 5.59% of those with a Black Caribbean background, 3.8% of those with a Black African background, 4.5% of those with a mixed background and 5.41% of those with a different ethnic background.¹⁸

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing  is currently not available in any format other than written English.  This poses a risk that people whose first language is not English are unable to access the content of the document, and could lead to unsafe working practices, localised transmission of the virus within a workplace and result in community transmission of the virus. 

Census

Scottish Government

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes a commitment to Fair Work principles and reflects equality issues and statutory requirements under equality law.  It includes a series of actions aimed at improving recruitment and workforce development in the manufacturing sector.  These actions are informed by Fair Work practices and seek to embed these practices throughout the sector.

This provides an opportunity to address any apparent barriers which may be preventing people from certain ethnic backgrounds from seeking employment in the manufacturing sector.

We recognise that there is a lack of accessibility to Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing and are looking at solutions.   In the meantime, should an alternative community language format be requested, this can be arranged through Scottish Government.  

Census data shows that the percentage of people working in manufacturing who identify as Christian is slightly higher than in the Scottish workforce overall with 53.56% of manufacturing workers identifying as Christian versus 52.05% in the overall workforce. Among workers identifying as Christian the percentage identifying as Church of Scotland and Roman Catholic is slightly higher than for Scottish workers as a whole (32.23% versus 30.56% and 17.21% versus 16.15% respectively) while numbers for other Christian denominations are slightly lower (4.12% versus 5.34%).¹⁴

The percentage of workers in manufacturing belonging to non-Christian faiths is lower across the board with 0.16% of the workforce identifying as Buddhist versus 0.25% overall, 0.16% identifying as Hindu versus 0.34% overall, 0.07% identifying as Jewish versus 0.11% overall, 0.41% identifying as Muslim versus 1.04% overall and 0.07% identifying as Sikh versus 0.17% overall.²¹

0.2% of manufacturing workers belong to other, not listed, faiths which compares to 0.33% overall. 38.85% of manufacturing workers report that they belong to no faith group compared to 39.44% in Scotland’s overall workforce and 6.51% did not state any response in the census compared with 6.28% in the overall workforce.²¹

Census

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes a commitment to Fair Work principles and reflects equality issues and statutory requirements under equality law.  It includes a series of actions aimed at improving recruitment and workforce development in the manufacturing sector.  These actions are informed by Fair Work practices and seek to embed these practices throughout the sector.

This provides an opportunity to address any apparent barriers which may be preventing people from certain faith groups from seeking employment in the manufacturing sector.

83.3% of employees in the manufacturing sector earn the Living Wage, compared to 84.8% of workers in Scotland overall¹⁵.  

The Scottish manufacturing sector gender pay gap is 14.1%, compared with 3% in Scotland overall.  This could be as a result of the fact that 23.4% of Scotland’s manufacturing workforce is female, compared to 48.8% of Scotland’s overall workforce.¹⁶

38.7% of manufacturing jobs are classed as low or medium skilled, compared to 44.7% of all Scottish jobs.¹⁷

97.3% of employees in manufacturing were securely employed (defined as either permanent or temporary and employee did not wish to be permanent) compared to 96.5% for Scotland overall.

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes a commitment to Fair Work principles and reflects equality issues and statutory requirements under equality law.  It includes a series of actions aimed at improving recruitment and workforce development in the manufacturing sector.  These actions are informed by Fair Work practices and seek to embed these practices throughout the sector.

The Fairer Duty Scotland Impact Assessment  has been produced to identify and mitigate/eliminate any negative impact.

This provides an opportunity to address any apparent barriers which may be preventing people from certain faith groups from seeking employment in the manufacturing sector.

There is a theoretical possibility that couples who are married or are in a civil partnership may work for the same employer in the manufacturing industry.  

Anecdotal

There is no evidence to suggest that there are any differential barriers to this group.  

Making Scotland’s Future: A Recovery Plan For Manufacturing includes a commitment to Fair Work principles and reflects equality issues and statutory requirements under equality law.  It includes a series of actions aimed at improving recruitment and workforce development in the manufacturing sector.  These actions are informed by Fair Work practices and seek to embed these practices throughout the sector.

This provides an opportunity to address any issues which may become apparent affecting people in this group.