Shipbuilding charter launched in bid to secure jobs

TRADE unions, industry bodies and East Belfast MP Gavin Robinson will come together today to launch a new shipbuilding charter in a bid to secure the future of jobs and skills in the city.

The delegation, including Manufacturing NI, the Confederation of Shipbuilding and Engineering Unions, Unite and the GMB, will unveil the charter at City Hall after touring Belfast’s shipyard. The charter comes as unions hit out over the absence of the shipbuilding sector from the draft £1bn city deal proposal for Belfast, which was unveiled on Monday.

Speaking yesterday, Unite’s regional secretary for Ireland, Jackie Pollock, accused consecutive administrations of not giving the shipbuilding industry their full backing.

He said: “The industry has been allowed to contract, to the point that it is today facing a bat- tle to survive. Belfast offers one of the very best natural harbours in the world — essential to facilitate the large vessels which dominate the sector today.

“The workforce here has the skills needed to compete and win globally and there are huge opportunities for diversification into the expanding renewable energy sector.

“The success of Belfast port in the cruise liner market shows we can succeed,” he said.

“Unfortunately the ambition Jackie Pollock of the Unite union of workers and the industry is not reflected by our political representatives to date; a fact attested to in the way in which our shipbuilding sector was completely left out of the draft city deal published just days ago.”

Unite regional co-ordinating officer Susan Fitzgerald added: “The Charter places our ambition for the shipbuilding industry front and centre for politicians.

“We need to see delivery before it is too late.”