A restructuring plan for the Viana do Castelo shipyard in Northern Portugal has met with opposition from workers, including strikes in May and June 1998.
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A restructuring plan for the Viana do Castelo shipyard in Northern Portugal has met with opposition from workers, including strikes in May and June 1998.
The shipyard located at Viana do Castelo in Northern Portugal is currently the subject of restructuring measures, in an attempt to secure their economic viability. The move will eventually involve setting up an operating company which will take over all shipbuilding activity, and the involvement of a strategic partner - a German company which is expected to ensure the shipyard's financial viability. The shipyard will focus on repair, rather than construction.
Although ship repair is generally a more lucrative business than shipbuilding, focusing on it tends to result in unemployment. The shipbuilding sector often operates at a loss and for this reason is subsidised in most countries, especially in Asia. However, as a public corporation, the Viana do Castelo shipbuilding concern is not eligible for subsidies. Regional advocates supporting the retention of shipbuilding capacity at the Viana shipyard state that is the only Portuguese concern able to build large sea-going vessels for the renewal of the navy and the intra-European maritime transport fleet without the "jarring effects and dubious longevity and success of the multinationals."
The shipyards are directly and indirectly the Alto Minho region's largest employer and perform a vital role as a motor for economic activity. It is feared that the restructuring initiative will break down the area's already fragile economic fabric, and local authorities have already appealed to the Prime Minister and national and European parliamentary groups.
Workers believe that the shipyard's forthcoming restructuring will mean privatisation and are seriously concerned that their jobs will be jeopardised. In recent decades, the enterprise has withstood the difficulties felt by both Portuguese and European shipbuilding industries and has remained in production. It has improved its technological capabilities in the past two years to the extent that it has been able to garner an appreciable list of client orders due to the quality of the work. According to workers (whose average age is 42) the positive results are also due to the moderate nature of worker demands.
The shipyard's workers' commission has complained that Law 46/79 regarding information and consultation has been bypassed in the restructuring process. In its estimation, the Government should have requested an opinion from the workers' commission before implementing any measures, even though the issue at the time did not raise a great deal of controversy. The workers went on strike in May and June 1998, and further pressed their demands by contacting the State Secretary for the Economy, a move that involved the National Federation of Metalworking Trade Unions (Federação Nacional dos Sindicatos da Metalurgia e Metalomecânica).
For purposes of comparison, in Setúbal, another region where the shipbuilding industry operates, the Setúbal Confederation of Trade Unions (União dos Trabalhadores de Setúbal) states that since 1984 the major cause of loss of jobs has been privatisation. Moreover, metalworking was the sector hardest hit, with 30,000 redundancies. Structural unemployment in this sector has been attributed to the process of privatisation and not current international trends.
Eurofound recommends citing this publication in the following way.
Eurofound (1998), Restructuring at Viana shipyards, article.
