Jobs linked to loan, analyst says
Whole crews sitting around at night with no work: employee
Some Halifax Shipyard hands say they aren’t labouring in their respective trades and others aren’t being given enough to do, which has them questioning whether their employment is linked to a $260-million forgivable loan from the province.
Darrell Dexter’s former NDP government loaned Irving the money in 2012, but the company must meet yearly employment targets to avoid paying it back. The shipyard is currently in compliance with those requirements, said Emily Neil, who speaks for Nova Scotia Business Inc.
And that doesn’t surprise those working in the yard.
“I have Snapchats of whole crews sitting around at night with no work,” said a current employee, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“I wish I could show the public . . . how much taxpayer money is wasted.”
Another employee who quit recently described the frustration of showing up for work but not being assigned tasks at the yard.
“They expect you to stay busy when they got nothing for you to do, then try to write you up because you are standing around,” he said.
Another former employee quit recently to pursue what he described as a more challenging job.
“You go crazy just sitting there all day doing nothing,” he said.
A former employee who left the yard last year was surprised when Irving hired him to work in one trade, then switched him to a different one.
“There was a shortage in my trade, so they trained me in another,” he said. “But it wasn’t
what I went there for.”
All this is news to Irving. “From our standpoint we’re very busy building the future fleet of combatant ships,” Irving spokesman Sean Lewis said Friday, noting there are no current production problems.
Employment levels at the yard are based on production requirements, he said. The loan contract stipulates Irving needs to have 1,726 employees this year. Next year that’s supposed to climb to 2,624 people.
Irving Shipbuilding currently employs 1,800 with hopes to employ 2,800 by late 2020.
The most important question is, can Irving create 4,000 jobs in Nova Scotia by 2041? asked defence analyst Ken Hansen, a retired naval commander living in Dartmouth.
“And any time workers are sitting idle is bad for business,” Hansen said Friday.
“Something is going on internally.”
The yard laid off 83 employees in April 2012, less than a month after receiving the loan, due to a gap between projects.
But Hansen doesn’t see layoffs in the near future.
“I’ve talked to (Irving Shipbuilding president) Kevin McCoy and that’s absolutely the last thing he wants to do because it’s an indicator of a more serious problem. And the problem is the loan guarantees. The province does not want to get cold feet as the deadline approaches watching Irving shrink its labour force.”
Right now the yard is building Arctic and offshore patrol ships for the navy.
It will need more workers to build the replacements for the Royal Canadian Navy’s frigates, Hansen said, but he doesn’t believe the hiring process for that work has begun.
The rate of unionized people leaving the yard recently isn’t high, said another current shipyard employee. But he believes that will change when demand heats up in Alberta’s oilpatch.
“This place will be hardpressed to find people,” he said. “As soon as someone sees an opportunity to get out of here, they’re all over it.”