The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
401 jobs slashed on black day for Fife
250 Rosyth dockyard posts go, as do 151 at Dunfermline depot
There will be little Christmas cheer for 250 Rosyth dockyard workers whose jobs were yesterday consigned to the scrapheap.
Staff were stunned by the extent of the cuts announced by Babcock as local MP Douglas Chapman slammed it as a “crushing blow” to the skilled workforce and called on the Defence Secretary to come to the base to “tie down” potential contracts.
The announcement came on a dark day for Fife as 151 redundancies were announced at the Dunfermline depot of distributor Palmer and Harvey, which has gone into administration.
Unite Scotland said it would fight to stave off compulsory redundancies at Babcock, while Usdaw said it would do everything possible to protect members’ interests at Palmer and Harvey.
Rosyth was left reeling as the axe fell on 250 dockyard jobs yesterday.
The jobs – 104 blue-collar posts and 146 support and office staff – are being axed as the £6 billion programme to assemble the Royal Navy’s two Queen Elizabeth Class aircraft carriers draws to a close.
HMS Queen Elizabeth, which left Rosyth this year, will be formally commissioned by the navy next week while HMS Prince of Wales is expected to carry out sea trials in 2019.
Some employees told The Courier they had known for some time that work at the yard was drying up.
But a spokesman for Babcock stressed the prospects for its Rosyth operation remained good, adding the last decade of the carrier programme had been “an outstanding success story”.
With around 1,650 core staff at Rosyth, the firm said it was looking to the future having recently taken on its yearly intake of apprentices and graduates.
One worker leaving the site after his shift said employees had been given the option of voluntary redundancy.
Another said there had not been enough transparency from management and morale was low.
He said: “Some days they come in and say the work’s going to start dying down after Christmas and people will be paid off. The next day they come in and say everything’s fine.
“You never know if you will be employed next week, next month or next year. “It’s not good for morale.” Dockyard workers were given the news at a meeting in the morning.
One of the workers being made redundant said: “Things come and go. It’s the nature of the work.
“At the end of the day, the ship is not going to stay there all the time.”
Babcock stressed its employees “are our priority”.
“We understand how unsettling this news may be and we will work closely with those affected and our trade union representatives through this consultation period to redeploy or relocate as many employees as possible within our wider organisation and support those who wish to take this opportunity to move on,” a spokesman said.
“We remain committed to providing a safe and secure environment for our workforce that supports both our current and future operational needs.”
Less than 24 hours before the shock announcement, local SNP MP Douglas Chapman had asked the Secretary of State for Defence what reassurances he could give to workers at Rosyth following the departure of the carriers.
Mr Chapman said: “In reply to my question the Secretary of State said he was ‘incredibly grateful for the amazing work’ the Rosyth workforce have done on the carriers – but people in my constituency cannot live on a Tory minister’s platitudes. They need followon contracts.”
Labour’s Shadow Scottish Secretary Lesley Laird said the job losses were “a bitter blow for workers in Rosyth”.
And she called for a “proper shipbuilding strategy which avoids these fluctuations in the workforce”.
Mrs Laird added: “Coming in the week that the UK Government announced an industrial strategy it shows that protecting jobs for the long term has not been high enough up the agenda.
“This underlines the need for the Government to play a much bigger role in our economy, creating and protecting well paid, highly skilled jobs for the long term.”
Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie called on the Government to “work harder” to prevent large scale job losses.