During a visit to the picket line, one striker said 165 workers had mounted picket lines at four pier heads, bringing Caledonian MacBrayne's ferry service to the southerly islands off Scotland's west coast to a standstill. "Nothing's been sailing on the Clyde," reported another ferry worker at the pier head on the Clyde river estuary, west of Glasgow. "We're totally solid," said the picket, who declined to be named fearing company reprisals.

With the end of the strike the Glasgow Herald reported that the new tentative contract "gives Clyde pier staff a reduction of one hour in their workweek and gives the Clyde crews parity with their Western Isles counterparts in terms of pay and conditions."

Ferry workers union leader Steve Todd told the Herald that the settlement "represents a significant victory for RMT [Rail, Maritime and Transport] members." The ferry workers have returned to work and will vote on the agreement in early January.

The strikers' union, has been pressing for the last year for a reduction in hours worked before overtime rates are triggered. These negotiations over pay and conditions should have been settled last April.

"We do an average of 56 hours a week, but only get overtime rates after 44 hours," explained a picket at the Gourock pier head. "At the end of the day we should be like most other workers and get overtime rates after 39 hours."

"I don't think anyone else in the public sector is working a 44 hour week," said union leader Steve Todd. In newspaper ads slandering the strikers, the company is claiming the issue is the union's refusal to accept a 3.5 percent pay raise, but the pickets insist the real issues are the long hours and their demand for the extra hours they work to be reflected in their basic pay rates. They point out that wages for ferry workers with the same company sailing to the Western Isles are consolidated. "It's divide and rule. We have to work 400 hours more a year to get the same wages," one of the pickets explained.

Advertisements placed by the company in Scottish papers explain the bosses can make concessions to the strikers, but any improvements have to be "self-financing," meaning the strikers have to give something up in return.

The ads also claim that significant numbers of strikers want to return to work. One of the pickets at Gourock challenged this, pointing out that he was not one of the 95 who originally voted for the walkout but now, like most others, is united behind the fight. In response to company statements seeking a "no-strike" deal with the union, several pickets said such a move would take away "our fundamental tool--the right to strike."

The pickets' anger at these misrepresentations of the issues by the state-run company also extends to the role of the Scottish executive, the parliamentary governing body of this country. "The Scottish executive says they won't interfere in a company-union issue, but they own it!" protested a picket a Gourock.  
 
 
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