First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was last night challenged to “repay a debt” to the people of Fraserburgh – and help save hundreds of fish factory jobs.
A union chief at the Young’s Seafood plant in the port threw down the gauntlet to the SNP leader as workers prepared to hold crunch talks with their bosses today.
The town was rocked last week when the processing giant unveiled plans to shut its factory in Watermill Road along with a smokehouse in the Highlands.
The announcement followed the loss of a huge contract to supply supermarket Sainsbury’s with salmon.
Up to 900 workers are now facing being made redundant.
Senior Young’s management, including chief executive Pete Ward, will meet staff in Fraserburgh today to begin a consultation process.
But last night, Alex Moonan from the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers, urged the first minister to step in and safeguard the jobs.
Mr Moonan said: “We’ve put out an open invite to Nicola Sturgeon – because when you wanted us to vote for independence, Fraserburgh was there for you.
“When you wanted us to vote for the SNP in the government elections, Fraserburgh was there for you.
“Now that the workforce of Young’s needs you, and the town of Fraserburgh needs you – will you be there for us?”
Mr Moonan added: “Tomorrow we start the consultation process, this is the beginning of talks.
“We’ve had a few meetings today to find out the feelings of people. There are a lot of questions to ask Pete Ward tomorrow.
“The main question being ‘what has turned things on their head in the last three weeks?’.”
The union representative warned that failure to protect the hundreds of jobs could force workers to leave the area, collapsing the housing market and leaving Fraserburgh to “disintegrate”.
Responding to Mr Moonan’s invitation to Ms Sturgeon, last night a Scottish Government spokesman said: “The first minister strongly backs all efforts to secure jobs and businesses in Scotland, and supports the Young’s staff in their bid to stay in work.”
He described the workers in Fraserburgh as “skilled and dedicated” and said the government’s priority was “to secure the continued productive use” of the site.
“The Scottish Government continues to work directly with the company and key partners including Scottish Enterprise, Aberdeenshire Council and Highland and Islands Enterprise, to help in any way that we can.”
Young’s Seafood confirmed that senior officials would visit Fraserburgh today for the first in a series of staff consultation meetings.
Mr Ward said: “This process will not be easy, but we have to face some tough decisions and we believe the proposals could deliver a significantly more sustainable manufacturing footprint than other potential consolidation options.
“As we move forward, we continue to be focused on providing our customers and consumers with high quality, good value fish and seafood and we will talk, in detail, with employees about options for the future.”
In February, Young’s revealed plans for a multimillion-pound investment in Fraserburgh by submitting plans to the local authority for a new freezing centre at its Watermill Road site.
At the time, the project was hailed as having the potential to create new jobs and make Fraserburgh a “centre of excellence” for white fish processing.
But the company now says the factory will be left “significantly under-utilised” when its salmon contract expires.
Young’s Fraserburgh operation employs 500 staff and 400 agency workers.
A notice circulated to the workforce last week said production at Watermill Road was “likely” to continue into early 2016.
Young’s lost a £100million contract to supply Sainsbury’s with salmon earlier this year, and its Spey Valley Smokehouse at Grantown, which employs about 25 people, is also under threat.
Marine Harvest will supply Sainsbury’s through its Rosyth plant.