News / Tavish wades into ferry strike row
SHETLAND MSP Tavish Scott has slammed transport union RMT for turning islanders into “pawns” in a national dispute over public services as a strike on the northern isles ferry service looms.
The union immediately hit back by accusing the Liberal Democrat of “political point scoring”.
The latest twist in the ferry row broke out as RMT national secretary Steve Todd travelled to Aberdeen on Tuesday to meet with Serco NorthLink management to resolve the dispute over job losses and changes to working practices.
This follows pressure from Scottish transport minister Keith Brown for both sides to get back around the negotiating table to resolve their differences after the RMT announced the strike last week.
On Tuesday Scott echoed the Scottish government when he questioned the need for industrial action when Serco had already found the 36 staff they were looking for to take redundancy.
“We are in a situation where I think we are being used as a pawn in a wider dispute between the RMT and the governments in London and Edinburgh,” Scott, a former transport minister himself, said.
“This is really about the CalMac service to the western isles and other Serco contracts across the UK.
“This is the last shopping weekend before Christmas. We have enough challenges living in Orkney and Shetland, without a blinking union using us as a pawn in a wider political row.”
Describing the strike as a “cynical blockade”, Scott added: “The union couldn’t care less about Orkney and Shetland. This is all about (RMT general secretary) Bob Crow’s ego and I’m not having it.”
An RMT spokesman retorted that Scott’s words were only to be expected from a Liberal Democrat politician.
“They are part of a government in power at the moment that supports wholesale privatisation of public services,” he said.
“These comments are true to form from a Liberal Democrat and don’t help the issue at all, it’s just political point scoring by an MSP trying to get his name in the press.”
Meanwhile on Tuesday Labour transport spokesman Richard Baker said he had written to the Scottish public services ombudsman calling for an inquiry into the actual tendering of the northern isles ferry contract.
He said his call followed a similar demand for an inquiry into the tendering of the Gourock/Dunoon service in Argyll by local MSP Mike Russell, the education secretary.
Baker said the government had refused to reveal the process by which both contracts were awarded, and refused to answer freedom of information requests about the legal advice the government received.
“If Mike Russell is happy to support an investigation into the Gourock to Dunoon ferry tender, he should have no hesitation backing this call as well,” he said.
However Scott said Labour were raising a side issue. “An inquiry is secondary to calling off the strike. We can have all the inquiries we like but only after the strike is called off,” he insisted.
Serco has said there is no threat of compulsary redundancies on the NorthLink routes after the 36 staff they were looking for applied for voluntary redundancy, and all remaining seafaring staff are being offered a 4.25 per cent pay rise this year and next year.
Managing director Stuart Garrett said: “Our aim is to minimise disruption to the public and we fail to understand why the RMT is continuing with industrial action.”
However the RMT accused the company of “bully boy tactics”, threatening to dump staff at distant locations and to run “understaffed and unsafe scab services in a risky and desperate attempt to break the action”.
National secretary Steve Todd was in Aberdeen on Tuesday to meet the company and his members “to try and press the company to end the bullying and to start talking”.
The Shetland to Aberdeen service will be hit by strike action starting on Friday 14 December. The following two Fridays and three Sunday night services will see no sailings in either direction unless the dispute is resolved.
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