Latest news with #AlexLogan
Daily Record
30-04-2025
- Business
- Daily Record
Shipyard workers 'not to blame' for CalMac ferry fiasco as union calls for more orders to boost fleet
Shipyard workers are not to blame for the CalMac ferry fiasco and more new vessels are needed if services are to improve, a trade union has warned. The GMB said Scotland's ageing maritime transport network needed to be substantially rebuilt to provide more reliable links to island communities. The union represents workers at the Ferguson Marine yard in Port Glasgow which has been at the centre of a long-running political scandal involving the building of the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa ferries. Only one of the boats has so far entered service and there is no firm completion date for the other. The wild cost overruns of their construction pushed Fergusons into the red and resulted with the yard being nationalised by the SNP Government in 2019. Alex Logan, the union's convenor at the Port Glasgow shipyard, told delegates at the STUC conference today that Scotland's ferry system should be restructured. He argued such a move is needed to protect island communities with Fergusons becoming 'a cornerstone of an industrial strategy to provide Scotland's publicly-owned ferry fleet.' He said: 'There have been serious mistakes made with Rosa and Sannox but they were not made by the workers. Our yard has been building good ships for more 100 years and, with vision and ambition, we could be building them for 100 more.' Fergusons failed to win a £175m contract for seven small CalMac ferries awarded to a Polish yard, Remontowa, last month despite the Scots yard building a third of CalMac's current 36-strong fleet. Logan said: 'In an island nation like Scotland, why is a publicly owned yard not building ships for a publicly owned ferry company? "Why are ministers in Edinburgh allowing contracts to be sent to Poland when they have a skilled, capable and committed workforce along the M8? "It is absurd but only the latest example of how our public procurement system works. There is no joined up thinking on our ferries as politicians outsource decisions to unaccountable quangos where islanders and workers struggle to be heard.' The West Coast ferry network is currently overseen by three organisations, Transport Scotland, acting for the Scottish Government, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL), and CalMac but critics claim the system has failed to deliver for islanders or taxpayers. GMB is calling for a review to establish if ferry operator CalMac should be merged with CMAL, which owns and commissions ferries and terminals, and take sole charge of the fleet while working closely with Fergusons to commission and deliver small ferries.
The Herald Scotland
30-04-2025
- Business
- The Herald Scotland
Call for review over future of CalMac and CMAL in ferries revolution
And it is calling for reform of the maritime transport network claiming a simpler structure will improve services and accountability while creating skilled jobs. There has been concern over the management of ferries being cocooned inside three levels of Scottish Government-controlled bureaucracy. This features the Scottish Government agency Transport Scotland as funders, CMAL as state-owned ferry and port owner, service providers Calmac. Add to that Ferguson Marine, the shipbuilding company that came under the control of Scottish ministers in August, 2019 when it fell into administration under tycoon Jim McColl's control. GMB says that the critics claim that the network has "failed to delivery for islanders or taxpayers" It is understood that ministers have felt there was "merit" in a move to scrap CMAL to be merged into a new national body as part of a revolutionary culture change in the way lifeline services are provided by ferries. It comes after an overview of a series of consultation meetings produced by the Ferries Community Board - formed as part of CalMac's franchise bid for the Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services (CHFS) contract to be the voice of the communities - for the Scottish Government. It said that a strong case has been made for including the ferries division of the Transport Scotland agency into a new merged body involving CMAL and CalMac. It has been suggested that would involve scrapping both Scottish Government-controlled ferry and port owner CMAL and the operator CalMac. Alex Logan of GMB Scotland (Image: GMB) Now GMB Scotland has told the Scottish Trades Union Congress in Dundee today the expected award of a new ten-year contract to ferry operators Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac) is an opportunity to deliver better services for islanders and secure Scotland's maritime and shipbuilding industries. The call for change comes amid escalating concern over the age and reliability of the CalMac fleet and ongoing controversy over rising costs and delays to two ferries, the Glen Sannox, which is now in service, and Glen Rosa, which is still to be completed. GMB Scotland, the biggest union at Ferguson Marine, the publicly-owned yard building the ferries, said the relentless focus on the troubled contracts has become a diversion from wider concerns around the organisations shaping Scotland's lifeline maritime transport links. Ferguson Marine came under new fire as it emerged that is completing a revised build plan for a second already wildly delayed and over-budget ferry - leading to further concerns over soaring costs. It comes a year after wellbeing economy secretary Màiri McAllan said nationalised Ferguson Marine considered the latest delays and costs forecasts - which had the ferry ready to use in September - was the "final position" after the firing of chief executive David Tydeman. Glen Rosa and its sister ship Glen Sannox were both due to be online within first seven months of 2018, to serve Arran. In the midst of the delays and soaring costs, Ferguson Marine, under the control of tycoon Jim McColl, fell into administration and was nationalised at the end of 2019 with state-owned ferry and port-owning agency Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd and the yard's management blaming each other. Read more from Martin Williams: Alex Logan, the union's convenor at the Port Glasgow shipyard, told delegates Scotland's ferry system should be restructured to protect island communities with Fergusons becoming 'a cornerstone of an industrial strategy to provide Scotland's publicly-owned ferry fleet.' He said: 'There have been serious mistakes made with Rosa and Sannox but they were not made by the workers. Ferguson Marine (Image: Newsquest) 'Our yard has been building good ships for more 100 years and, with vision and ambition, we could be building them for 100 more.' Ferguson Marine failed to win a £175m contract for seven small CalMac ferries awarded to a Polish yard, Remontowa, last month despite the Scots yard building a third of CalMac's current 36-strong fleet. Mr Logan said: 'In an island nation like Scotland, why is a publicly owned yard not building ships for a publicly owned ferry company? 'Why are ministers in Edinburgh allowing contracts to be sent to Poland when they have a skilled, capable and committed workforce along the M8? 'It is absurd but only the latest example of how our public procurement system works. 'There is no joined up thinking on our ferries as politicians outsource decisions to unaccountable quangos where islanders and workers struggle to be heard.' GMB is calling for a review to establish if ferry operator CalMac should be merged with CMAL, which owns and commissions ferries and terminals, and take sole charge of the fleet while working closely with Fergusons to commission and deliver small ferries. Logan, addressing delegates at the Caird Hall in Dundee, on the final day of the STUC Congress, said: 'There is a clear opportunity for Ferguson Marine to serve as a cornerstone of Scotland's manufacturing base and ferry supply chain. 'The workers who have been used as a political football for a decade now deserve that opportunity to be seized. 'It makes sense for our islands, for taxpayers and for the future of shipbuilding in Scotland.' Delegates unanimously supported the GMB Scotland motion calling on the Scottish Government to make a direct award of the next small ferries to Ferguson Marine; reform procurement rules to ease the commissioning of ships from Scots yards; and review CalMac, CMAL and Transport Scotland to establish if restructuring could improve services for islanders and bolster maritime industries. The responses to a Scottish Government-commissioned consultants' study into the future of ferries says that from a business perspective many felt that issues over the ferries were leaving many firms "unsustainable". It calls for a single ferries board to be formed to oversee the function of ferry provision including the role of Transport Scotland. The Competition and Markets Authority has previously expressed concern about the "potential risks" of state control over the way ferries are operated, run and paid for. CalMac's £975m eight-year Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services contract expired in September 2024. It had previously won the contract for six years in 2007 – after ministers were forced to tender for routes to satisfy European competition rules. It was given a year extension to the contract to allow a decision over the feasibility of a direct award approach to the contract from a financial, operational and legal perspective. The aim was to have the new arrangement in place by October 1 last year, but there has been a delay.
Sunday Post
27-04-2025
- Politics
- Sunday Post
Ferguson workers 'deserve chance after fiasco not of their making'
Get a weekly round-up of stories from The Sunday Post: Thank you for signing up to our Sunday Post newsletter. Something went wrong - please try again later. Sign Up From Lochinvar and Lord of the Isles to Hebrides, Mull, Lewis and Arran, Alex Logan helped build them all. His shipyard, Ferguson Marine, has launched a third of the 36-strong Caledonian MacBrayne fleet ferrying islanders and visitors around the West Coast today. 'People have short memories,' said Logan, a plater who arrived in the Port Glasgow yard straight from school and remains there 47 years later. 'Before all this, we built ships and we built good ones. Given the chance, we still can.' Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa criticism Despite all the ferries to launch successfully from the last commercial yard on the Lower Clyde, its reputation for excellence has been holed by two more: the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa, both hugely delayed and over budget. The slow and troubled progress of the ferries towards the slipway has been the focus of more than a decade of political and media scrutiny. Logan, the GMB Scotland convener at the yard, understands why but cannot hide his frustration at the relentless onslaught of criticism. © Supplied He said: 'I have been at Ferguson's all my working life and it is tough to see it getting battered day after day. You would never guess it from the coverage but the workforce here knows how to make good ships. 'All we read about are 'ferry fiascos' as if we don't know one end of a ship from the other. We've been here for more than a hundred years and, given a chance, could be here for many more. 'Mistakes, serious mistakes, were made with these ferries but they were not made by the workers. They were not made on the shopfloor.' Logan believes the biggest mistake was ever taking on Rosa and Sannox after Ferguson's was pulled out of administration in 2014 following 112 years of building ships on the Lower Clyde. Engineering tycoon Jim McColl took over, with the support of then first minister Alex Salmond and his deputy Nicola Sturgeon, but the workers' relief was short lived when the takeover was followed by a contract for two huge CalMac ferries the following year. Logan said: 'We had a good reputation for building small ferries but these two were far bigger than anything we had done before and the plan was for us to build them side by side? 'I didn't think that was possible and said so. Anybody that knew anything about building ships said so too. Nobody was listening though, nobody in charge anyway.' 'We want to turn the page' More than a decade later, Sannox is finally on the water, seven years late but now sailing to Arran, with good reviews, while Rosa is delayed again and still waiting for a completion date. Logan said: 'Nobody wants to finish this job more than us. We want to turn the page. 'An awful lot of money has been spent on these ships and that needs to be explained but, as a yard, as a place of work, we need to move on.' © PA The future of Ferguson's is still uncertain after it failed to win the contract to build seven new ferries for CalMac as part of the Scottish Government's small vessels replacement programme. Instead, the £175 million contract went to the Remontowa yard in the Polish city of Gdansk. GMB Scotland, with the backing of Inverclyde politicians, campaigned for the direct award of the work to Ferguson's, which has a thriving apprenticeship scheme, and is now calling for the second phase of the small ferries programme to go straight to Port Glasgow. At the STUC Congress, starting in Dundee tomorrow, the union will hail the skills and commitment of the Ferguson workforce and urge delegates to back calls for the yard to become a 'cornerstone of an industrial strategy providing Scotland's publicly owned ferry fleet'. 'Ferries are a lifeline' Logan believes that is possible as part of wide-ranging reform of how Scotland commissions and builds its ferries with Ferguson's, now state owned, playing a central role. He said: 'We were given a contract to build two big ferries that we were not equipped for. That has been a disaster for taxpayers and this yard. 'Then a contract for small ferries, exactly the kind of ships we successfully built for years, goes to Poland? We are told there are rules that mean there can be no direct award but when civil servants say rules, we hear excuses. It makes little sense.' It made even less sense, according to his union, when it emerged that the wider economic and social value of the contract to the communities of Inverclyde was not even considered by Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL), the owner of ferries and harbours, before sending the work to Poland. Logan said: 'The ferries serving our islands are not a luxury, something nice but not essential. 'They are lifelines for island communities and should be an absolute priority for Scottish ministers. 'Is it really beyond us to have a single company commissioning and operating ferries, working hand in glove with a nationalised yard capable of delivering a steady stream of new ships to replace those going out of service? It does not seem beyond other countries. 'Ferguson's should be a centre of excellence, a yard building the ferries Scotland needs, a yard to be proud of. It has been before and can be again.' State-owned ferry company would be major opportunity for our islands and industries © Shutterstock / D MacDonald By Brian Wilson, Former Labour trade minister who lives in the Western Isles The workers of Ferguson Marine should have been listened to 10 years ago and they should be listened to now. If ministers and quangos had heeded concerns raised in Port Glasgow over the Glen Rosa and Glen Sannox, the damage inflicted in recent years could have been avoided. Island communities have been badly failed and the reputation of a skilled workforce needlessly damaged. Given all that, the status quo cannot be allowed to continue. A new unified state-owned ferry company working in partnership with Scottish shipbuilders would be a major opportunity for our islands and our maritime industries. Ferguson's had, for decades, built fine vessels for Caledonian MacBrayne (CalMac) and there is no need to build our ferries in Turkey or Poland when our own workers, properly equipped and supported, are more than capable. The Scottish Government is soon expected to award the west coast contract to CalMac for another 10 years but this must come with fundamental change to the governance of our ferry network. The tripartite arrangement involving the civil servants of Transport Scotland, Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd (CMAL) in charge of infrastructure and procurement, and CalMac running operations has been an unmitigated disaster for island communities and taxpayers. It was claimed that procurement and operations had to be separated to meet European Commission competition rules, but there has never been genuine competition as CalMac kept the contract as 'a client' of Transport Scotland and CMAL. A new long-term contract award can finally close the book on that fiction and allow CMAL and CalMac to be unified in a single publicly owned company. With 10 years of stability and an orderly procurement schedule, the opportunity exists to forge a new partnership between our ferry company and our maritime industries. The new CalMac should operate at arm's length from ministers and its board should include statutory representation from island councils and workers making it, above all, accountable to the communities it serves. In 2020 the Scottish Government commissioned consultants, very expensive consultants, to examine a way forward for our ferries. International comparisons are rarely straightforward but in British Columbia, Canada, they found a publicly owned company responsible for both ferry procurement and operations, working with autonomy within parameters set by ministers and striving to be properly accountable to the island communities it serves. It may not be perfect – nothing is – but it seems to work. Is it unreasonable to believe Scotland could have one too?
Telegraph
17-03-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
SNP faces backlash as Scottish shipyard loses out to Poland on state ferry contract
The Scottish Government has triggered outrage after revealing that a £175m ferry contract has been awarded to a Polish shipyard instead of struggling local manufacturer Ferguson Marine. A contract to build seven electric vessels for ferry operator CalMac has been handed to the Remontowa yard in Gdansk, which triumphed over four other bids including one from Clyde-based Ferguson Marine. The Scottish yard was brought under government control by the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) in 2019 and has received hundreds of millions of pounds of state aid. Russell Findlay, leader of the Scottish Tories, said the decision to send business overseas rather than support the struggling state-owned shipyard was a 'hammer blow' for employees and a result of SNP 'incompetence'. The contract was awarded by state-controlled procurement firm Caledonian Maritime Assets (CMAL). CalMac has also been under the direct control of the Scottish Government since 1990. Unions also criticised the decision. Alex Logan, the convenor for the GMB union at Ferguson Marine, said: 'This contract should have allowed the yard to seize back a reputation for excellence unfairly torn away. We had a worldwide reputation for building small vessels and sending this work overseas makes no sense.' Mr Logan questioned the logic of the SNP failing to award the contract to Ferguson Marine after pledging to invest in the modernisation of the yard. He said the Ferguson Marine workforce had been 'used as a political punch bag' over a number of years. Sue Webber, the Scottish shadow transport secretary, said the decision could prove to be 'the death knell' for Ferguson Marine. She said: 'It should be a given that a nationalised shipyard wins a Scottish Government contract. It's a measure of how badly the SNP have mismanaged Ferguson's that ferries, which should be built on the west coast of Scotland, are to be made in eastern Europe.' Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish transport secretary, said the decision represented a milestone in modernising the fleet of CalMac. CMAL said the five bids were assessed against various technical and financial criteria by its own experts and outside marine specialists. Kevin Hobbs, the procurement company's chief, said it was required to select a yard that would both serve the needs of islanders and 'deliver the best value for the public purse'. Delivery delays Ferguson Marine handed over the first of two new CalMac vessels six years late in January. Remontowa has built vessels for CalMac before, though not for more than a decade, having most recently delivered the MV Finlaggan in 2011. CMAL also overlooked a bid from Birkenhead-based Cammell Laird and one from Cemre of Turkey, which is in the process of building the next four ships due to join the CalMac fleet. Cemre recently revealed that the first delivery, originally expected this month, had slipped to June, depriving remote islands of vital links upon which their economies depend going into the tourist season. The seven electric ferries to be built in Gdansk will be deployed on short sea crossings to islands including Bute, Mull and Gigha.
Yahoo
17-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
SNP faces backlash as Scottish shipyard loses out to Poland on state ferry contract
The Scottish Government has triggered outrage after revealing that a £175m ferry contract has been awarded to a Polish shipyard instead of struggling local manufacturer Ferguson Marine. A contract to build seven electric vessels for ferry operator CalMac has been handed to the Remontowa yard in Gdansk, which triumphed over four other bids including one from Clyde-based Ferguson Marine. The Scottish yard was brought under government control by the ruling Scottish National Party (SNP) in 2019 and has received hundreds of millions of pounds of state aid. Russell Findlay, leader of the Scottish Tories, said the decision to send business overseas rather than support the struggling state-owned shipyard was a 'hammer blow' for employees and a result of SNP 'incompetence'. The contract was awarded by state-controlled procurement firm Caledonian Maritime Assets (CMAL). CalMac has also been under the direct control of the Scottish Government since 1990. Unions also criticised the decision. Alex Logan, the convenor for the GMB union at Ferguson Marine, said: 'This contract should have allowed the yard to seize back a reputation for excellence unfairly torn away. We had a worldwide reputation for building small vessels and sending this work overseas makes no sense.' Mr Logan questioned the logic of the SNP failing to award the contract to Ferguson Marine after pledging to invest in the modernisation of the yard. He said the Ferguson Marine workforce had been 'used as a political punch bag' over a number of years. Sue Webber, the Scottish shadow transport secretary, said the decision could prove to be 'the death knell' for Ferguson Marine. She said: 'It should be a given that a nationalised shipyard wins a Scottish Government contract. It's a measure of how badly the SNP have mismanaged Ferguson's that ferries, which should be built on the west coast of Scotland, are to be made in eastern Europe.' Fiona Hyslop, the Scottish transport secretary, said the decision represented a milestone in modernising the fleet of CalMac. CMAL said the five bids were assessed against various technical and financial criteria by its own experts and outside marine specialists. Kevin Hobbs, the procurement company's chief, said it was required to select a yard that would both serve the needs of islanders and 'deliver the best value for the public purse'. Ferguson Marine handed over the first of two new CalMac vessels six years late in January. Remontowa has built vessels for CalMac before, though not for more than a decade, having most recently delivered the MV Finlaggan in 2011. CMAL also overlooked a bid from Birkenhead-based Cammell Laird and one from Cemre of Turkey, which is in the process of building the next four ships due to join the CalMac fleet. Cemre recently revealed that the first delivery, originally expected this month, had slipped to June, depriving remote islands of vital links upon which their economies depend going into the tourist season. The seven electric ferries to be built in Gdansk will be deployed on short sea crossings to islands including Bute, Mull and Gigha. Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
