Scottish Sea Fisheries Employment Report

5. Retention: Length of Service

Data on length of service of crew on their current vessels shows that the longest serving crew members are overwhelmingly likely to be British, with non-British workers tending to have much shorter lengths of service. (Fig. 9). This would indicate that non- EU workers started in the Scottish industry between 6 - 12 years ago and potentially some have remained employed by the same vessel throughout this time. However figures on the shorter periods (<1, 1 to 3 and 3 to 6) are less easy to interpret as they could indicate that more non- EU workers are coming into the industry or that current non-British workers are more mobile between vessels and therefore have had shorter employment periods on a number of vessels.

Figure 9: Length of service on current vessel by British, EU and non- EU member nationalities ( n = 820)

Figure 10: Percentage of crew's lengths of services (years) in key fishing sector ( n = 792).

Figure 10 presents the length of service of crews by fishing sector, which shows that demersal (>24m, seiner pair trawl), demersal (<24m) and scallop dredge have relatively even distribution across all periods of service, whereas pots and traps and Nephrops trawls are skewed to the right and left respectively. This indicates that people working pots and traps (creels) are less likely to move from boat to boat or work for a short time in the industry as most crews have been present on their vessel for 6 to 12 years. For Nephrops trawls, this does not appear the case with the majority of crews more mobile, having served on their vessel for three years or less. Demersal <24m also has a high proportion of crew having served on vessels for under 3 years, but this is balanced with more long serving crews.

Figure 11: Mean length of service by position in each sector. Dotted lines are to assist in interpretation of the data points ( n = 792).

Scallop dredge and Nephrops trawls had lower rates of retention across the majority of positions on vessels compared to pots and traps whilst both categories of demersal vessels have the highest rates of retention (Fig. 11). This excluded skippers on the <24m demersal vessels who have the lowest service time of all gear groupings. In general across all fleet segments, length of service increases with seniority.

The methods of recruitment are presented in figure 12 by British, EU and non- EU nationalities. Local networks are still common for the recruitment of British crews (asked by skipper, family/friend and inherited) whilst agency is the dominant method for recruiting non- EU crews and equally agency and local networks (asked by skipper) for EU crew.

Figure 12: Methods of recruitment by British, EU and non- EU member nationalities ( n = 727)

Overall this data depicts a relatively stable workforce, particularly among British crew members and those holding more senior positions. The mean length of service is 6.4 years which drops to 4 years if measured by the median compared to 9.5 years mean and 6.3 years median for the Scottish workforce as a whole ^[4] . The data shows that job tenure is shorter for the fishing industry and figure 9 suggests for foreign crews this is potentially shorter still although it is unclear if this is because of more frequent movement between jobs or simply reflects the recent arrival of foreign crews in larger numbers.