Productivity at shipyards still 'very low'

Shipyard employees currently work for an average of just two-and-a-half hours of the daily eight hours they spend at the 'yard, Malta Shipyards chairman John Cassar White said.

Speaking in a telephone interview, Mr Cassar White, who is currently overseas, said there could be employees who were putting in more but, overall, productivity remained very low and this had to be improved for the 'yards to survive.

"The shipyards are not a factory where one knows what one will be doing the moment one reports for work and it is therefore acceptable that there are losses of about two hours a day because the 'yard is large and workers have to travel from one job to the next. Time is also lost while they are assigned work by their foreman. But the average working time for each employee is far too low. It needs to go up to at least four-and-a-half hours a day so that we can begin to compete," he said.

Mr Cassar White was reacting to comments by GWU shipyards section secretary Alfred Cassar in reaction to remarks made by Mr Cassar White in a newsletter, which were also carried by The Sunday Times.

The chairman had insisted on the need for a change in work practices, complaining that productivity was low, overtime was too high and, as a result, the shipyards' losses would not be reduced despite an increase in turnover this year.

The GWU official said there are grounds for a change of work practices at the shipyards adding, however, that the changes the management has suggested so far only affected the benefits the workers enjoyed. He said the chairman had said nothing about expensive equipment bought a year ago and which remained unused by Malta Drydocks, the exaggerated salaries to executive managers and the squandering of money on the leasing of machinery and tools instead of the shipyards' own equipment being repaired.

The shipyards were also repeatedly engaging foreign workers who did not pay tax on their salaries, while they took work from the Maltese.

But Mr Cassar White said yesterday that a leasing agreement for scaffolding and aqua blasting was a temporary one, until the 'yard got its own equipment, and the leasing agreement had, in fact, now been terminated.

He said that whenever foreign workers were brought in, the union was always informed and the foreigners were only engaged for work which Maltese workers refused to do, such as asbestos work, even when provided with safety equipment.

Specialised workers, such as electricians and electronics engineers, were sometimes brought in, while ship owners at times insisted on bringing staff themselves for particular jobs. The dockyard could not refuse this as it would be risking losing contracts, he said.

Mr Cassar observed that the chairman had attributed the increase in turnover to an improvement in market conditions and the hard work of the marketing department but did not have the decency to say that part of this success was also attributable to the enthusiastic input of the workers, particularly in the peak of summer. Indeed, he would not be surprised if the chairman did not realise this because he came from a very different sector.

Reacting, Mr Cassar White said some workers were doing their bit but production levels on the whole were still not being reached.

Mr Cassar said he was pleased that the cruise liner Marco Polo would return for repairs at Malta Drydocks and he hoped the workers would not be blamed if the liner again turned back. (The liner had turned back following incidents before the USS La Salle first came to Malta for repairs three years ago).

He said Malta Drydocks also used to do such work on cruise liners at the time when it was run by the workers and it used to have some three cruise liners for a general refit every year.

Referring to the chairman's comments on overtime, the union official said Mr Cassar White appeared to have forgotten that the number of workers at the shipyards had gone down. The smaller the workforce, the bigger the need for overtime if the same volume of work was to be performed.

But Mr Cassar White countered yesterday that overtime, or increasing the number of workers at the shipyards, were not a solution. "The Maltese 'yard is one of the largest in terms of the number of employees and productivity is very low while labour costs are high," Mr Cassar White said.

The GWU official also criticised the management over the fact that it had not quoted for the building of two ro-ro vessels, because of cheaper rates at Chinese shipyards. It had been the GWU which had introduced those shipowners to Malta, Mr Cassar said. The reason why Malta had not submitted a bid for the contract was that the number of shipyard workers had been cut so much that the present workforce could not handle work of this nature. Indeed, the workforce had dwindled to such an extent that instead of repairing super tankers, Malta Drydocks had become a yacht repair yard.

But Mr Cassar White said there were enough workers to build the vessels but no one could compete with Chinese prices.