Aircraft carrier workers strike at Rosyth

Hundreds of workers building the new supercarriers staged a ‘wildcat strike’ on Monday in Rosyth.

It is understood they are prepared to walk out again next week if the situation is not resolved.

Local media reports that the workers were protesting over the “perceived treatment” of a worker, allegedly blacklisted by Babcock and barred from working on the site.

A source at the site told us:

“We want to get back to work but we can’t ignore what’s going on, I don’t think this will go away.”

The UK Defence Journal have contacted Unite the Unite but have not received a reply.

The Ministry of Defence have recently clarified the details surrounding the Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers and their complement of F-35 aircraft, no doubt in response to the plethora of claims that the vessels will sail with “no aircraft”, “no crew”, no sandwiches in the galley etc.

There has been speculation in the media that there has been a change in the delivery programme for the F-35B that may result in delays to the roll out of the Carrier Strike capability and that US jets may fly from the Carriers until the UK F-35 fleet is ready.

This is not the case.

• It was always the intention to take a phased approach to ordering F-35.

• The UK is committed to both the F-35 and the Queen Elizabeth Carrier programmes, both of which are on track to enter initial maritime operating capability in December 2020 as planned.

• Queen Elizabeth will commence sea trials in 2017, and UK F-35 aircraft will be used for first of class flying trials in 2018.

• US aircraft will augment British jets on coalition operations, not replace them and they will not fly from the vessel first.

The Queen Elizabeth class mark a change from expressing carrier power in terms of number of aircraft carried, to the number of sortie’s that can be generated from the deck.