Shipyard workers 'not to blame' for CalMac ferry fiasco as union calls for more orders to boost fleet
The GMB said Scotland's ageing maritime transport network needed to be substantially rebuilt to provide more reliable links to island communities.
The union represents workers at the Ferguson Marine yard in Port Glasgow which has been at the centre of a long-running political scandal involving the building of the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa ferries.
Only one of the boats has so far entered service and there is no firm completion date for the other. The wild cost overruns of their construction pushed Fergusons into the red and resulted with the yard being nationalised by the SNP Government in 2019.
Alex Logan, the union's convenor at the Port Glasgow shipyard, told delegates at the STUC conference today that Scotland's ferry system should be restructured.
He argued such a move is needed to protect island communities with Fergusons becoming 'a cornerstone of an industrial strategy to provide Scotland's publicly-owned ferry fleet.'
He said: 'There have been serious mistakes made with Rosa and Sannox but they were not made by the workers. Our yard has been building good ships for more 100 years and, with vision and ambition, we could be building them for 100 more.'
Fergusons failed to win a £175m contract for seven small CalMac ferries awarded to a Polish yard, Remontowa, last month despite the Scots yard building a third of CalMac's current 36-strong fleet.
Logan said: 'In an island nation like Scotland, why is a publicly owned yard not building ships for a publicly owned ferry company?
"Why are ministers in Edinburgh allowing contracts to be sent to Poland when they have a skilled, capable and committed workforce along the M8?
"It is absurd but only the latest example of how our public procurement system works. There is no joined up thinking on our ferries as politicians outsource decisions to unaccountable quangos where islanders and workers struggle to be heard.'
The West Coast ferry network is currently overseen by three organisations, Transport Scotland, acting for the Scottish Government, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL), and CalMac but critics claim the system has failed to deliver for islanders or taxpayers.
GMB is calling for a review to establish if ferry operator CalMac should be merged with CMAL, which owns and commissions ferries and terminals, and take sole charge of the fleet while working closely with Fergusons to commission and deliver small ferries.
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