Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

afloat headers RORC

Displaying items by tag: UNITE

Leaders from trade unions in the North are appealing to the new UK prime minister Boris Johnson to nationalise Belfast’s historic Harland & Wolff shipyard to save it from closure.

As The Irish Times reports, unions have warned the yard, where the Titanic was built, is just “hours and days” from closing its doors and is struggling to find a buyer.

Susan Fitzgerald, Unite’s regional coordinating officer, said Mr Johnson should step up to save jobs and the shipyard, whose giant cranes dominate the Belfast sky line, but which currently has no contracts. The operation, whose majority Norwegian owner filed for bankruptcy in June, has been in existence for 158 years.

Ms Fitzgerald said: “Harland & Wolff – with the world’s sixth-largest dry dock – is facing insolvency next week. If that happens, the skills of the workers, as well as the yard’s infrastructure, will be lost, diminishing the economy’s potential now and into the future.

More on the story can be read here.

Published in Belfast Lough

THE RORC:

  • Established in 1925, The Royal Ocean Racing Club (RORC) became famous for the biennial Fastnet Race and the international team event, the Admiral's Cup. It organises an annual series of domestic offshore races from its base in Cowes as well as inshore regattas including the RORC Easter Challenge and the IRC European Championship (includes the Commodores' Cup) in the Solent
  • The RORC works with other yacht clubs to promote their offshore races and provides marketing and organisational support. The RORC Caribbean 600, based in Antigua and the first offshore race in the Caribbean, has been an instant success. The 10th edition took place in February 2018. The RORC extended its organisational expertise by creating the RORC Transatlantic Race from Lanzarote to Grenada, the first of which was in November 2014
  • The club is based in St James' Place, London, but after a merger with The Royal Corinthian Yacht Club in Cowes now boasts a superb clubhouse facility at the entrance to Cowes Harbour and a membership of over 4,000