UNITE Chemicals & Pharmaceuticals Conference – October 2025
The conference is a forum where workplace reps have an opportunity to input to UNITE’s strategy. Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals is just part of the Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals, Process & Textiles Sector (CPPT) in UNITE, which has about 50,000 UNITE members and is headed by Tony Devlin as National Officer, with Bill Hodgson as CPPT Chair and Cliff Bowen as the CPPT representative on the UNITE Executive Committee.
UNITE have an agreement with the Chemical Industry Association (CIA) and they work together on common issues such as skills. One of the themes of the conference was Skills, especially apprenticeships. How can apprenticeships be strengthened and are they working as well as they can? My concern is that depending on who wins the next general election, the apprenticeship system could quickly dry up and blow away, so we must strengthen them to protect them and get the most from them. Justine Fosh, the CEO of Cogent Skills presented. Cogent Skills is a charity which does many things in the field of science & technology skills, including running apprenticeships, developing skills standards and awarding skills qualifications. They recently worked on defining skills needed for hydrogen generation and CO2 capture, for example. Their interesting factsheet on the changing UK Life Sciences workforce is available here, and they are also behind the Not Just Lab Coats science & technology careers website.
A just transition to Net Zero was the next theme. One of the big challenges here with politicians and other leaders is to change the narrative which is currently about creating clean jobs, with the implication being that they will replace dirty jobs. Some of these jobs already exist, the skills needed to support hydrogen generation, for example, are skills already very familiar in existing chemical manufacturing.
Use of AI is the next theme, including negotiating agreements for its use.
The last theme was the impact of Private Equity. Many companies are heavily in debt to and/or owned partly by Private Equity. The detail of this is usually hidden or impenetrable, making it hard to find out how well a company is really doing. The impact on pay negotiations and jobs can be enormous, with companies moaning that they can’t afford much because they are in so much debt. When a company has shareholders there are good standards of transparency – you can find out how many shares are out there, and who the larger shareholders are. Not so with Private Equity. Perhaps we need thorough transparency standards for Private Equity.