Prospect members at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) are moving to strike action after two months of action short of a strike, say the union, “have failed to produce any meaningful movement from the company”.

Members will walk out for 24 hours starting on Wednesday 24 January 2024 at 07:00.

Action short of a strike commenced on 13 November and will continue up until strike action is taken and will re-commence at 07:01 on 25 January 2024.

Mike Clancy, General Secretary of Prospect, said:

“Our members at AWE who maintain the UK’s nuclear deterrent have been left with no option but to strike. We have done all we can to facilitate negotiation, but the employer continues to neither bring any meaningful change to the table, or indeed explain any of its previous decisions on pay in a satisfactory manner. There is already a recruitment and retention crisis at AWE. If nothing is done to improve pay then the company will be unable to compete for skills and risks being unable to fulfil its critical role in safeguarding our national security. There is still time to avoid this action if the employer comes back to the table with an improved offer and a genuine commitment to open engagement.”

Tom Dunlop
Tom has spent the last 13 years working in the defence industry, specifically military and commercial shipbuilding. His work has taken him around Europe and the Far East, he is currently based in Scotland.

21 COMMENTS

  1. I appreciate a lot of those buildings are historic but the footprint of the site and the budgets have always amazed me, given how few weapons are now deployed and maintained.

    I suspect the unit cost would go down a lot if we had more units?

        • We stopped using WE.177 many years ago, I always wondered why we did that, The US and France still retain this capability, I wonder if we could buy the US B61 ?

          • We have the world’s biggest stockpile of plutonium so buying someone else’s bombs would be an expensive way of creating that capability!

          • Yes, but we would need a new build programme which would probably be rather costly… like every other UK defence programme.

          • Why we are in the process of modernising and upgrading them the existing programme would just need tweaking.

          • Can’t buy other people’s warheads under the terms of the NPT, so if we bought a tactical delivery system we’d still need to integrate the warheads ourselves. We have plenty of delivery systems of our own that could carry modern warheads.

        • Why would you want a free fall bomb when there are Precision Stand Off Missiles available that can adapted ? The Holbrook is pretty well a clone of the US MK76 Warhead, and it’s lighter and smaller than a conventional BROACH warhead that is carried by……….
          And it isn’t like we don’t know that they can penetrate the AD of our likely enemy’s.

          • I did make the point re a certain missile before and was shouted down.

            I quite agree on not needing free fall these days.

          • I remember the discussion. It was about how to reply to a rogue Nation, using a singular nuclear weapon on the UK. Using Trident would be a bit pointless. As you’d have to debomb the carrier, so that it only carried one re-entry vehicle. Which if a sub wasn’t in the right time frame, would also mean calling back the CASD, to rearm it with the “Special Trident”. Which could take a week or so.

            A more responsive and proportionate method is required. AWE are more than capable of re-using the Holbrook weapon and modifying to fit in a cruise missile. France have a ready made carrier. However, it is very unlikely that France would sell us their air-sol moyenne portee (ASMP) missile or its successor, for us to fit a UK manufactured weapon to. A move that would be politically unsavoury.

            As we all agreed, a version of Storm Shadow would be the ideal off the shelf solution.

          • The French disposed of their Silo based missiles as they added very little to Strategic Deterrent and had zero Tactical use. But they kept and are placing their Tactical ASMP.
            Their reasoning is both inciteful and thought provoking, it called “dissuasion du faible au fort”.

            If there is a conventional war and the opening threatens to use Tactical Nuclear Weapons France can show resolve and determination by threatening to retaliate like for like.
            Which is the Small or Feeble response. But it’s a response.

            Then the opponent has to think about a Tactical exchange that wipes out a lot of their conventional forces as well as ours.

            That is essentially a break point for calmer minds to prevail.

            We don’t so we have 2 possible replies take the hit on the chin and lose or go all out Strategic.

            I find it interesting that when Putin rattles his Tactical,Nuclear Sabre he always sites the UK but not France. Wonder what would happen if we just upgraded 20 / 30 Storm Shadows and declare them to NATO ?

          • I believe you have a very valid point. But also, if the French can do it, then why can’t the UK? The decision to retire WE177 in 1998 and scrap its replacement was a poor and ill thought out decision.

            The logic of the time said that if a rogue power detonated a nuke on UK territory. Then the UK would respond in kind with a Trident equipped with a singular warhead. So if that reasoning stands, then perhaps to this day our CASD is carrying such a loadout.

            However, I would definitely caution against its use for this kind of scenario. Trident has a unique exhaust signature. Which I’m sure both Russian and China will be monitoring 24/7 for. After all the USN also operates the missile! The launched missile cannot at any point come near to or cross over their territory. As this might be misconstrued as an attack on them. Especially when the missile and its warhead’s flight time might be less than 3 minutes. Quick decisions need to be made. Which therefore requires our Prime Minister to contact both Country’s leaders and make sure they understand the weapon is not aimed at them! Trust me it’s not for you!

            Having a second means of delivering a nuclear weapon would alleviate this problem. Especially if was delivered by an air launched cruise missile.

    • Unit cost of what? As I recall when the US was mass-producing warheads they were costing ~$1 million each. But for a strategic deterrent capability additional resource has to be spent on counter-countermeasures, modelling explosive effects, the application of deterrence theory itself, R&D around delivery systems and future warhead design. Ordinary maintenance and disposal activities are also unusually expensive because of the involvement of radioactive material.

      • Unit cost per warhead.

        I agree the total operating cost of the site wouldn’t be massively different if it was doing 10x the volume.

        Tiny production runs of anything are super expensive.

  2. Until recently I was a member of Prospect and like many of my ex colleagues I had been a Union Member since a shop steward took the latest intake to canteen to buy us a Bacon Butty and Mug of Tea. It was a ritual get your start date, wait for vetting and then go in sign your Contract and get collared.

    Over the following years Unions Amalgamated changed names and became more Political than most us were comfortable with.
    Odd situation paying into Union that financially supports CND, Greenpeace etc etc, who actually wanted to make us all redundant.
    But we stayed in just in case we had a little Ruck or got into a spot of bother.

    Then a few years ago Prospect arrived, completely non political, non affiliated to TUC and run by a bunch of grown ups.
    A lot of joined and it was like a breath of fresh air, negotiations re H&S, T&C’s became very different and when the c group of Union Reps went into a meeting they just sat there and let Prospect Talk.

    The moral to this if Prospect are actually contemplating a Strike then there are very serious problems on the Management / HMG side.
    Not funding decent pay in the RFA, Army, Navy and Airforce is bad but not being able to recruit or retain the folks who design and build H bombs is seriously freaky.

    When my daughter started her employment in another HMG funded business she asked me about joining a Union and the biggest was Prospect. As she was having to buy a house “Down South” she was skint, so I paid her subs for a year up front 🤔

    God Bless the Royal Bank of Dad

    • I used ti be the site rep and a branch member fir prospect when I was in MoD/DERA/Qinetiq and they were very much against strikes as they were absolutely last resort. When we became Qinetiq there were some very dodgy situations with the new management that was resolved quickly because I was part of the union simply because they were very professional and knew HR rules much better than management.
      If prospect is striking it must be pretty bad.

    • It’s certainly disappointing both main political parties didn’t realise shutting down the economy which restricts supply then pump in billions would cause high inflation, its kinda inflation basics 101. Now they can’t afford the inflation linked pay rises caused by their actions due to the debt the government created which was fully endorsed by the opposition party.

  3. If you want to see why AWE is failing badly take a look at their salaries for their level 2 (intermediate) apprentices (£16K):

    https://www.awe.co.uk/careers/early-careers/apprenticeships/level-2-intermediate/

    Have a look at the degree level apprentices (£20K):

    https://www.awe.co.uk/careers/early-careers/apprenticeships/level-6-degree/

    Doesn’t this worry anyone that we pay so low for highly technical jobs? You can earn sometimes more at a supermarket stacking shelves….now that does worry me…..

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