Exclusive:Nicola Sturgeon has 'brass neck' to claim North Sea workers are being misled, says union
GMB Scotland said the former first minister “misled and betrayed” workers by “driving their industry to a cliff edge while promising new jobs that never came.”
Nicola Sturgeon has been accused of having a “brass neck” after she claimed North Sea workers were being misled about new oil and gas drilling.
GMB Scotland, one of the biggest unions in the energy sector, said the former first minister “misled and betrayed” workers by “driving their industry to a cliff edge while promising new jobs that never came”.
Speaking at an event in Westminster on Wednesday evening, Ms Sturgeon said “we are in danger of perpetrating a con on people working in the North Sea” by suggesting that green-lighting new fields would protect jobs.
She added: “Unless we get real about building for life after the North Sea now, we’re letting these workers down.”
But the GMB said the biggest con was the “repeated but empty and broken promise” of a just transition founded on new jobs in green energy.
Louise Gilmour, GMB Scotland secretary, said: “Nicola Sturgeon first promised a just transition in 2018 and would repeat that hollow promise every few months for the next five years.
“She has a brass neck to talk of oil and gas workers being let down and conned now when she spent years driving their industry to a cliff edge while promising new jobs that never came.
“The workers left in our oil and gas industries are not being conned today but have been misled and betrayed by the empty and broken promises made by politicians like the former first minister year after year.”
Announcing the creation of a Just Transition Commission in 2018, Ms Sturgeon said “there was nothing to fear and everything to gain” in new jobs, higher skills, and better wages.
But the GMB has warned that job losses offshore and in supply chains outstrip by far the new jobs in renewables with most UK green energy infrastructure made abroad.
Ms Sturgeon was speaking during a debate with former Tory minister Michael Gove in Westminster, which was hosted by trade body Offshore Energies UK (OEUK).
It comes before the politicians appear on TV together in a docudrama on Sky called The Wargame.
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Ms Gilmour said: “The former first minister may have a book and now a TV show to promote but her public comments should still retain some link with reality.
“She apparently thinks now is the time to get real to protect communities built on oil and gas but is at least a decade too late.
“She had years to get real when she actually had the ability to deliver new jobs not just talk about them.
“This has been no just transition only a jobless and rushed rundown of an industry that powers our country and underpins the lives of workers, their families and communities.
“Our governments on both sides of the border are still promising new jobs tomorrow while industrial calamity unfolds today.”
Ms Sturgeon was approached for comment.
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