Oil and gas industry leaders think in numbers: how many millions will it cost to drill a well, how many billions can be made or lost if the price goes up or down.
Offshore workers think in numbers too: how many hours to the shift, how many weeks on and off, how many jobs at risk if the oil price stays lower for longer.
The oil price today is less than half what it was two years ago. In that time, thousands of oil and gas workers have been laid off, and tens of thousands of jobs have been lost across the wider economy.
For the first time since the era of Piper Alpha, offshore oil workers are taking strike action this week to protect their terms and conditions. They have good reason to feel insecure in the current climate.
Shift patterns have been changed for many of those who work offshore, meaning for example an increase from working two weeks on to a three-week shift. At the same time, some of those taking industrial action face a significant cut in their take-home pay.
There are wider issues too.
At a time when employers are looking to cut their costs by “letting people go,” many workers tell their trade unions that they are afraid to raise safety concerns on platforms for fear of putting themselves at greater risk of redundancy.
Cutting costs is clearly essential to secure the oil industry’s future, but it would be folly to do that simply by cutting wages for the offshore workforce, just as it would be folly to compromise safety or asset integrity in order to reduce costs.
The oil and gas industry has been here before. In the two big downturns in the mid-1980s and at the end of the 1990s, thousands of people lost their jobs. Then, when demand for oil and gas recovered, companies complained bitterly about not having the people with the skills they needed.
That must not happen again, and we need to avoid the older workers with the most experience being driven out of the industry by longer hours, lower wages or employers “letting people go.”
Those same workers know more than most about how waste and duplication in the workplace can be reduced, to cut costs and improve efficiency. Rather than being made to feel expendable, their knowledge and experience should be turned to advantage in these tough times.
Operators demanding huge savings from service and supply companies, and those companies passing on the pain to their workers, will not secure the industry’s future.
Instead, we need to see employers, trade unions and government at every level working together to increase investment, protect jobs, ensure safety and support the wider economy.
Direct state investment, a proactive regulatory regime and forward planning for a decommissioning strategy and industrial diversification all have a role to play.
That way, instead of workers being asked to pay the price of the downturn, they can take their rightful place as partners in the recovery.
Lewis Macdonald is a Labour MSP for North East Scotland, and a member of Unite the Union.
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