Escalating strikes at Clyde shipyards risk more delays to Royal Navy warships
Escalating strikes by shipyard workers risks more delays to Clyde-built warships, according to GMB Scotland.
The union said support staff suppling tools, materials and equipment for BAE Systems shipyards on the Upper Clyde will walk out next week as a pay dispute deepens.
The workers, employed by GXO Logistics, overwhelmingly backed industrial action claiming a three-year pay offer does not match the deal secured by BAE staff or close the salary gap between them.
Workers will strike at shipyards in Govan and Scotstoun from midnight on Wednesday, 24 June, until midnight on Monday, 29 June, and at BAE Systems supply hubs at Linwood, Renfrewshire, on Thursday and Eurocentral, Lanarkshire.
The logistics staff provide support for shipbuilders and the union warns, strikes will risk disrupting the already-delayed construction of HMS Glasgow, the first of eight Type 26 anti-submarine frigates for the Royal Navy.
The strikes follow walkouts earlier this month and Rory Steel, GMB Scotland organiser, warned the failure of GXO to engage in new talks risks the dispute escalating further threatening severe disruption at the shipyards.
He said: “The employer could easily resolve this dispute by seriously engaging with our members’ concerns and finding a fair way forward.
“Instead, GXO seems intent on risking even further disruption to these important shipyards.
“If the company’s managers are unwilling to acknowledge those risks or act to ease them, BAE Systems must make clear to them what is at stake.
“These yards are built on the experience, expertise and commitment of our members and their role must be properly recognised and fairly rewarded.
“Our members can’t accept being underpaid for the work they do. Management must ensure the long-standing pay gaps between GXO colleagues and BAE workers is first calculated and then closed.”
GMB members rejected a three-year pay plan that would increase wages by 3.5% in the first year and 3% in each of the following two years saying the offer is below the award to BAE staff and fails to narrow a long-standing pay gap between outsourced support staff and BAE employees.
The union said defence spending is rising amid growing demand for naval shipbuilding and claimed, to close the pay gap, any rise offered to store workers, transferred after GXO took over Wincanton two years ago, must be above that offered to workers directly employed by BAE.
GMB Scotland said the pay offer should have been agreed in January but negotiations have dragged on for months and have now involved three different management negotiating teams. The results of an official ballot revealed 97% of the workers backed strikes with a turnout of 84%.
