Workers at the Ferguson shipyard have warned that time is running out to give the shipyard a future as it seeks to move on from the ferry controversy.
GMB union representatives said work at Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa was tapering off and Port Glasgow Shipyard was now in dire need of new orders.
They argued that employees were not to blame for design or past management errors that led to huge cost overruns and delays in building the CalMac ships.
The warning came as new economy minister Kate Forbes attended a cross-party summit on how best to support nationalized shipyards.
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The shipyard hopes to win a contract to build seven small, all-electric ferries for CalMac, similar to the ships it has built on time and on budget in the past.
Speaking to BBC News after the summit at Greenock Town Hall, Mr Forbes said he would like to see boats built in Scotland, albeit subject to procurement laws.
She said the garden had a future and she wanted to hear from the union and understand what opportunities there were.
“At the end of the day, we want a good outcome for taxpayers, a good outcome for garden workers, but also a good outcome for Islanders, and as a government, we want to make sure that the decisions we make are the best.” “We need to balance all these issues to ensure that it's in the country's interest,” she said.
Shipyards are still working to improve productivity, and unions are pushing for contracts to be awarded directly rather than through competitive bidding.
GMB shop stewards John McMunagle and Alex Logan said the additional costs of building ferries in Scotland would be more than offset by the economic benefits to local communities, which have lost 1,200 jobs in the past 18 months. It is claimed that
“Given what happened in Inverclyde, we've lost jobs in EE, we've lost jobs in Amazon, we've lost jobs in polythene factories and we can't afford to lose that,” Mr McNagle said.
“If I lose this [shipyard]This area is finished.
“I think it's time to start sounding the alarm. Time is running out.”
The Scottish Government has said it wants to support shipyards, but warned there are very limited circumstances in which direct awards can be made.
Ferguson Marine is also awaiting decisions regarding new investments that will help it compete for future contracts on the public market.
A request for £25 million for new steel cutting lines and software was refused in November last year, but ministers are now considering amendments.
Half of the 10 large vessels in the current CalMac fleet are built in Ferguson, and many are operating well beyond their expected useful lives.
But the 2015 contract for the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa, the first liquefied natural gas (LNG)-fueled ferries built in the UK, was a fiasco, with the ships more than six years late and at least four times over budget. did.
Glen Sannox is expected to be delivered later this year, with much of the remaining work involving specialist external contractors handling the LNG system.
Lessons learned from the first ship were applied to the construction of Glen Rosa, which has progressed rapidly over the past year.
The ship was successfully launched from the slipway last month in a much more complete state than when Glen Sannox launched it in 2017.
At Glen Rosa, the steelworkers' work is nearly complete, although the docks still have a year to complete.
“What we're doing now is leveraging the workforce, but they're not working in their chosen profession,” McNagle explained.
“They work as laborers or maintain gardens.”
Shop stewards said they had great sympathy for islanders affected by the delays and had recently had a positive meeting with the Isle of Arran ferry user group.
But past failures were not the workers' fault, they said, and the quality of their welding and fabrication work has often been praised.
Many of the additional costs and delays are due to design errors or other changes that require work to be reworked repeatedly.
“There wasn't proper drawings, there wasn't proper planning, there wasn't proper management,” Alex Logan said.
“We need people to have some faith in us. We know the workforce can do that. It has to be managed well and planned well.”
Cross-party summit on Mr Ferguson's future was hosted by GMB
Deputy Prime Minister Kate Forbes, who represents the government, previously worked with Ferguson as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
BBC News has reported that she will be following the departure of Tim Hare, the £2,500-a-day “regeneration director” who left Mr Ferguson's office in 2022 after workers threatened a vote of no confidence against him and his management. I understand that I have contributed.
Inverclyde Council leader Stephen McCabe, local MSP Stuart McMillan, Ferguson's interim chief executive John Petticrew, and Scottish Conservative and Scottish Labor MSPs were also in attendance.
McCabe said the region cannot afford to close the yard.
“It was a positive meeting, but I'm not counting my chickens because difficult decisions need to be made and they need to be made within weeks, not months,” he said.