AWE members to vote on industrial action over botched restructure

Prospect members at the Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) are to vote on industrial action after a litany of errors and poor consultation from senior management at the organisation, which builds and maintains the UK’s nuclear deterrent.

The ballot will open on 19 January 2026 for three weeks, and will ask if members are willing to take strike action, and if they are willing to take action short of a strike. The ballot covers staff working at AWE sites including at Aldermaston and Burghfield.

In November AWE told staff it would be embarking on a restructuring programme with about 7,000 roles in scope for 400-500 redundancies, while a further 750 posts are being recruited for. AWE has since increased the number of potential redundancies to 800, but have refused to provide Prospect with the information necessary to understand and challenge the restructure.

Prospect are calling on AWE to stop the flawed process they have been running and fulfil their responsibilities for proper consultation and information sharing so that there can be a constructive dialogue on the future of the organisation.

Prospect members work in specialist roles as scientists and engineers across AWE and are vital to the UK’s atomic weapons programme and to our security, providing unique and irreplaceable skills. These workers include world-leading scientists who are proud of the vital work they do on behalf of the nation and our allies, but have been pushed to the brink by the repeated errors from AWE leadership.

The government recently committed to a historic £15bn investment in a new nuclear warhead programme, but Prospect warns that this crucial investment risks being derailed if this restructure continues to cause internal chaos. If strike action were to go ahead it would add to this disruption, and potentially cost AWE millions of pounds. However the union argues that a failed reorganisation could have much greater consequences for the future of the organisation.

This chaotic reorganisation has caused widespread dismay among AWE staff and comes on the back of number of other management failings around staffing issues which have damaged morale at a critical time for the organisation.

Specific failings include:

• Failing to provide a rationale for the reorganisation of AWE
• Failing to provide a comprehensive plan for the future shape of the organisation
• Failing to provide key documents related to safety
• Drip-feeding relevant information to the union over the course of weeks, so full consultation is impossible
• The widespread use of Non-Disclosure Agreements and security classification of information, making consultation with affected staff impossible
• Repeatedly changing the numbers of people they say are in scope, and the numbers of people they plan to make redundant.
• Refusing to recognise Prospect as the union for Band D staff and refusing to share details of the Band D reorganisation with Prospect.

Mike Clancy, General Secretary of Prospect, said:

“There are few more skilled and qualified people in the UK than the nuclear specialists at AWE, they deserve to be treated with significantly more respect by their employer and not subjected to shambolic processes such as this reorganisation.

“AWE is like a family for those who work there who take huge pride in the job they do protecting the country. Systematically excluding staff from any meaningful input into the process of reorganisation inevitably causes them they worry about the very future of the organisation.

“These are highly skilled experts who know their bit of the operation inside out. Every day they make critical decisions on issues of national security and nuclear safety, but they have been driven to the brink by the way their leaders have behaved in recent months.

“Our members deserve to be treated like the highly skilled and intelligent adults that they are, not kept in the dark about key issues that affect their future. If AWE do not agree to our reasonable asks then we will have no choice but to proceed with industrial action.”