In the first of a series of Brexit briefings, it makes a number of recommendations aimed at helping businesses manage the UK’s exit from the single market and the likely changes in immigration rules.
UK manufacturers currently employ 300,000 EU citizens (around 10% of the workforce), according to the UK statistics authority.
In the A new model for migration briefing paper, EEF argues that EU workers in the UK at the point it leaves the EU should retain their treaty rights.
Manufacturers should also be able to recruit highly skilled and experienced employees from the EU where the job is at graduate level with a salary threshold to be agreed with industry and a light-touch authorisation process, it recommends.
Additional recommendations include allowing employers to recruit intermediate level employees where professional or technical staff are not readily available in the UK at salary thresholds agreed with industry, and allowing UK-based staff to be able to move to and from the UK and EU states for training purposes with minimal restrictions.
Tim Thomas, director of employment and skills policy at EEF, said: “The UK continues to struggle with chronic skills shortages and manufacturers will need to continue to be able to employ suitably qualified people from the EU when we leave.
“Our initial recommendations aim to support the government to enter negotiations to achieve managed and fair migration into the UK after we leave the EU.”
He continued: “The UK will of course enter negotiations expecting reciprocal treatment from the EU, and it would be reasonable to assume that UK nationals travelling to the EU would be subject to similar restrictions to EU nationals entering the UK.”
