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sign of the times
© 大象传媒 2004
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The Yard |
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Harland and Wolff was the single biggest employer for many years in the Province and with so many employees, the shipyard could be compared to a microcosm of Ulster life. Except that the main catchment area of Harland and Wolff has historically been East Belfast, a vastly predominant, protestant community. Over the years, this geographical constant may have been responsible for labeling H&W with the tag of having a biased workforce.
As usual in Northern Ireland, geography or more particularly, where you live, is enough to suggest from which side of the community you come from, or “which foot you kick with”, and ones workplace naturally reverberates to social and political events.
The strict personnel and human resources departments of today are very different from the hiring practices of the first half of the 20th Century. Potential employees could gain employment when a shipyard worker “spoke” for them, and family members tended to follow in their relatives footsteps. This trend was not unique to the shipyard – mills and engineering works adopted a similar approach.
The Partition of Ireland (1920 ) , two World Wars, worldwide economic depression of the 30`s -where shipyard worker`s wages could be halved without consultation - and increased competition tested H&W to the limit. The crucial decline of the late 1940`s – 1970`s stretched the company even further. Hundreds of redundancies emptied long serving workers in to the streets and onto the unemployment queues.
Major Decline
- Britain had 81.7% of the the world shipbuilding market in 1893.
- That figure dropped to nil in 1993.
- The major period of decline was between 1950 and 1970 when UK production fell from over 40% to 6% of the total world output.
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Harland and Wolff in the 21st Century is all about consolidation and diversification. The now Norwegian-owned company offers civil and structural engineering, as well as ship design and repair. A great deal of pride is still conveyed to potential customers about the company’s prestigious history and is used to entice large orders, although more recently, they are in the form of oil rigs.
If Edward Harland went surfing around Harland and Wolff`s website today, I wonder what he would have made of “3D CAD modelling for visualisation and space management”?
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