Uneasy feeling about Harland & Wolff

It has been a good week for the staff and management at Harland & Wolff shipyard in Belfast. First, the 1,350 shipbuilding staff voted to accept a revised package of pay and conditions designed to help secure the company's future.

A day later, the £300 million sterling (€501 million) deal to build four vessels for a Scandinavian ferry operation was signed.

Why, then, is one left with an uneasy feeling? Maybe it is the fact that 500 of the staff did not even bother to turn up to debate and vote on the pay deal which will see wages frozen for three years, the introduction of a no-strike deal, provision for short-time working and related strictures. Worse still, even if the deal were accepted, it was and is likely that around 350 shipbuilding jobs will go anyway.

Those who did turn up voted by the most slender majority - 35 votes from a turnout of 850 - to accept the deal, which had been presented as an ultimatum. Resentment during and after the meeting was plain for all to see and might yet undermine the whole process.

The question is, why so? Without the deal, however unpalatable it may be, the evidence from Britain is that all the jobs would go with the demise of the once-great shipbuilding industry. Given the pivotal economic role of such yards, not only to the workforce but to the wider community, it is unsettling that only a minority of the workforce voted to accept the deal.