Ferry strike called off after assurances from Sturgeon

Nicola Sturgeon has stepped into the row, an RMT union leader has said

Nicola Sturgeon becoming "personally involved" in a dispute about ferry workers' jobs halted a planned strike, a union leader has said.

Members of the RMT within Caledonian MacBrayne and Argyll Ferries were preparing to hold a 24-hour strike on Friday.

The union called off the action late on Wednesday.

Gordon Martin, of the RMT, said the government had given assurances that workers' demands would be looked at.

CalMac has welcomed the suspension of the strike and said it was "working flat out" to normalise its timetables for Friday. It had been preparing to run nine of its 27 routes.

The company has been contacting all passengers transferred to a different sailing to move them back to their original booking.

The dispute was triggered by the tendering of the contract for CalMac's Clyde and Hebrides ferry routes.

The Scottish government has agreed to delay the tendering process - but not the start date of the new contract - to allow further negotiation on the key issues of jobs, staffing, conditions and pensions.

Mr Martin, the union's regional organiser, told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme that the dispute should have been resolved much earlier.

Just nine of CalMac's 27 routes were to be operational if Friday's strike had gone ahead

He said: "The first minister has personally got involved and we have received assurances that the reasonable demands that we are looking for to protect our members - job security, pensions, terms and conditions - will be favourably looked at.

"The invitation to tender will now not be published tomorrow and will be delayed to the end of July and that gives everybody a bit of breathing space to reach a reasonable resolution to this ongoing issue."

Transport and Islands Minister Derek MacKay told Good Morning Scotland the involvement of the first minister was not a sign that the situation had been handled badly by the government, but "surely a good thing".

He said the government was looking at "the art of the possible and being reasonable" in satisfying the demands of the unions.

Mr Mackay said: "You can work around how you come up with an agreement process to reach a conclusion on changes to terms and conditions for example.

"So you can set up a process that doesn't involve a veto as such, but you can better involve trade unions in terms and conditions and those are the kind of issues that we'll work through, that we have been working on, and we'll continue to work through."

CalMac said it was working hard to normalise its services having made arrangements for fewer sailings on Friday

CalMac's operations director Drew Collier said further talks will be needed to find a permanent solution to the dispute.

He added: "In the meantime, we are pulling out all the stops to try to get back to our published timetables as quickly as possible.

"We would like to thank all our customers for their patience during this period of uncertainty and hope they can understand the difficult logistical task this last minute call off is presenting us with."

Serco, a company competing against CalMac for the new contract, said it was continuing to work on its bid.

Bid director Jonathan Riley said: "We received the draft invitation to tender for the Clyde and Hebrides Islands Ferries from the Scottish government in June and we have started work to develop our outline bid, which we look forward to submitting in due course."

Staffing concerns

Like CalMac, Argyll Ferries is owned by the state-owned David MacBrayne Group.

CalMac's contract to run Clyde and Hebrides ferry services comes to an end next year.

The Scottish government put the contract out to tender, in line with European rules.

Private company Serco - which already runs the Northern Ferries routes to Orkney and Shetland - is competing against CalMac for the contract.

Unions are concerned that, regardless of who wins, the new contract will see changes in employees' current terms and conditions, with a reduction in staff numbers and pensions also among the key areas of concern.

The RMT has asked that the government guarantees in the new contract that compulsory redundancies do not happen and existing terms and conditions are continued.