Ferguson Marine job cuts are, on their own terms, a reasonable piece of industrial management. When a shipyard finishes one contract and has nothing confirmed behind it, you trim the payroll or you burn through cash you don’t have. The logic is elementary. What is not elementary is how Scotland’s last commercial shipyard on the Clyde arrived at this position, and what that says about the Scottish Government’s relationship with its own promises.
The yard is cutting 70 posts through voluntary redundancy. Of its current workforce of 247 core staff, 31 agency workers and 32 apprentices, that is close to a quarter of the total headcount. Those who volunteer to leave will receive £1,000 per completed year of service, capped at £10,000, on top of statutory entitlements.
CEO Graeme Thomson told The Scotsman that the yard’s immediate focus remains ‘the safe, high-quality handover of Glen Rosa in Q4 2026.’ Once MV Glen Rosa is delivered, Ferguson’s has nothing confirmed to build next. The sub-contracting work for BAE Systems on Type 26 frigates is complete. The yard sits idle between contracts, with no anchor order in sight.
Ferguson Marine Job Cuts and the Promise Gap
The bitter irony is that the orders supposedly do exist. On 3 March 2026, the Scottish Government announced to parliament its intention to directly award Ferguson Marine contracts for four vessels: two small CalMac ferries, a fisheries research ship and a marine protection vessel. The Scottish Government’s own news release described the plan as providing ‘a guaranteed five-year pipeline of work’ to protect hundreds of skilled jobs.
Duncan Anderson, Chair of Ferguson Marine, said the direct award ‘underpins our future, improves our resilience and confirms our strategic importance to the country.’ Ships Monthly reported the announcement in February 2026, though the Scottish Government’s official release is dated 3 March 2026; the government document is the authoritative record.
Five months on, not one of those four contracts has been signed. Ministers continue to cite ‘due diligence.’ A BBC Scotland report on union pressure over the promised orders quoted the government saying it is working through ‘necessary due diligence, legal, commercial and subsidy control assessments.’ That final category, subsidy control, hints at the actual complexity: a direct award to a state-owned yard must navigate UK subsidy rules that post-Brexit procurement law did not simply dissolve.
BBC Scotland also understands the Scottish Government has not yet formally contacted the Competition and Markets Authority for guidance. The then Economy Secretary Kate Forbes said in March that ‘engagement with the CMA would be required.’ Her successor, Stephen Flynn, says the intention to directly award four vessels ‘continues to undergo full due diligence.’ That is not a timeline. It is not even a hint of one.
Even if contracts were signed tomorrow, the yard would need at least a year of design work before it could start cutting steel. The redundancies are, in that light, almost an admission: management knows the gap is real and lengthy, whatever ministers say in public.
GMB Scotland secretary Louise Gilmour did not mince words. ‘Skilled and experienced shipbuilders are being encouraged to leave as those in charge send contracts everywhere but here,’ she said. ‘Shipbuilders need ships to build, so where are those promised to Ferguson Marine? If they ever come, who will build them?’ It is a question the government has not answered with any specificity.
The Cost of Competing
The structural problem runs deeper than ministerial delay. The Society of Maritime Industries notes that foreign yards typically undercut UK shipbuilders by 10 to 20 per cent, driven by cheaper labour costs and more generous state support. Two years ago Ferguson’s lost an order for seven small CalMac ships to a Polish firm on price, despite praise for the quality of its bid.
The yard has long argued that ‘social value,’ the wider economic benefit of building ships in Scotland, should factor into procurement decisions. Caledonian Maritime Assets Ltd maintains it is constrained by pre-Brexit procurement rules that require equal treatment of all bidders. That argument will not survive contact with public opinion if another tranche of Clyde shipbuilding jobs disappears while publicly funded contracts go abroad.
The £14.2 million modernisation fund, promised more than two years ago, remains partly unlocked. Ground investigation work is under way to prepare for new equipment and software. The apprentice programme, at least, continues: 34 trainees are in training and 10 more are about to begin their first year.
My read is this: the redundancies are a symptom, not the disease. The disease is a government that announced a rescue plan it has not yet legally cleared to execute, against a clock it appears to have underestimated from the start. The workers heading for the door deserve a more honest account of how that happened.
