Wightlink has launched a consultation with its workforce as it prepares for continuing difficult trading conditions because of the COVID crisis.
A day after the company announced the suspension of its FastCat service between Portsmouth and Ryde Pier and reduced sailings between Lymington and Yarmouth because of falling passenger numbers during lockdown, the ferry operator maintains it must become a more sustainable business to cope with future financial risks and to make sure services and jobs can be protected.
Wightlink lost £20 million in revenue at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country is now back in lockdown with non-essential travel banned and passenger volumes are not expected to return to normal in the foreseeable future.
The company has put forward a proposal with 3 elements to ensure it emerges from the pandemic as a sustainable business. They involve changes to pensions, flexibility in working patterns and changes to terms and conditions for future employees. If the proposal is accepted there will be no compulsory job losses as a result of the current crisis.
Wightlink Chief Executive Keith Greenfield says:
“It is my duty to ensure that Wightlink survives this crisis, however long it lasts. We must manage our current costs and future financial risks to protect jobs and our lifeline connections for Islanders.
“The pandemic has had a devastating effect on the travel sector and wider industry. There have been widespread job losses, changes to terms and conditions and long term pay reductions. We do not want to see this happen at Wightlink.
“If we can reach agreement with our colleagues and trade unions to combat these financial challenges, we can avoid compulsory redundancies and protect Wightlink’s services for the future.”
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Wightlink staff have 60 days to comment on the proposals. They include the ending of accruals in the legacy Defined Benefit (DB) pension, with existing benefits protected, the doubling of company minimum contributions to the Defined Contribution (DC) pension which a majority of employees belong to, new terms and conditions for new joiners and, if the proposals are accepted, a generous mutual severance scheme and a pledge that no employee will lose their job as a result of the pandemic.
How about the Directors take a decent pay cut and reduce their legacy pensions or volunteer for redundancy? No thought not……
Very very true directors will still get there bonuses etc do shitelink really need all those directors how do they sleep at night
They can start by reducing their insane prices by 50 %. That way, they will get a return and so will traders. I will come over more than just twice a year.
And the share holders.
If it wasn’t for the shareholders, Wightlink wouldn’t exist.
The entire company took a 20% pay cut for 6 months. No bonuses for anyone last year or this year. Lagacy pensions are included in what’s proposed above.
It’s a shame they have not told the staff before leaking it to the press!
All adding to additional pressure for a fixed link to hasten the building over everything that isn’t already built upon by this greedy council.
As pressure from the third world’s as well as our own charity kept inhabitants now breed us into ironically into what the former came here to escape, viz overcrowding, crime, and poverty.
This then puts ALL areas to ‘take their share’ of the swelled populace of the UK, but bringing with them all the ‘issues’ such bring to everywhere which is greedy enough to gain by increased land prices, or getting ‘paid’ to take in such as our council will do from the overspill of inner city councils.
Vote this council out next time for they will ruin your children’s future and this beautiful Island, for the rest of time now.
NO FIXED LINK.
Well if they are loosing money then you can bet that they will increase the fares next year, I can’t believe that they loose money, especially after taking the government grants and reducing their sailings, the amount of money they must have saved not running the fastcat. I reckon the hedge fund that owns it will sell it off, hopefully at a loss, that will teach them for the extortionate fares
Rather simplistic view. You cannot SAVE money by NOT running the fast cat. The crews and maintenance guys have to be paid. If it is not running and taking fares, it is running at a loss.
The staff would be furloughed, no cost for electricity and water, no port charges from pompey,
If so, perhaps our council could buy it, and face it ‘across’ the Medina (where the floating bridge ‘used’ to run), when cars need to cross with both it’s ‘doors down’ then when ships need to pass, pull them up and swing it to face parallel with the river to let them pass.
Vote this incompetent council OUT next time around.
years ago, when the cat stopped, the car ferry always called into the pier head, picked up customers and then went onto pompey or fishbourne.
which bright spark decided that this wouldn’t happen anymore?
i guess they haven’t bothered ensuring that the end of the pier is dredged regularly to ensure it remains deep enough to have a car ferry dock.
last accounts show wightlink making £1.4 million a month profit – so, where has their rainy day fund for eventualities such as this gone –
paying off the massive debt the idiots that bought it, incurred, as well as dividends to shareholders of the group that owns wightlink
some serious questions need asking about their cash management
They may have invested, but it is clear that they have been running it to the bone – that being it cannot handle several months downturn without practically collapsing.
It’s a company that’s run in debt. Any profit is removed and paid out. They make a great profit but they don’t save any of it. It’s old school business that’s destin for failure. Any business that can’t survive at least a 6 month down turn is not sustainable and needs to be run differently.
Wow! I know 4 members of staff who work for wightlink and this is news to them! Joke of a company releasing to the media before their own employees!
Not surprised by the way it’s run. Shocking management. It’ll go bust soon…
They built bigger ferries so they can offer a better service (B***S***), they reduced frequency and speed of sailings.(worse service). Now ships are too big to run with reduced numbers (even eco friendly hybrid). Bad management resulted in overpaid bosses, and exorbitant fares, which has resulted in this situation. Perhaps an Island Co-operative could buy it when it goes bust (independent of council who would kill it) and run it for island residents by island residents.
Brilliant idea and the sooner the better. Shitelink will not be missed
It doesn’t say they lost £20m but that revenue was down £20m, the seasonal staff would have already been let go so this exercise appears more of a case of using the pandemic to push changes they wanted to make anyway.
Quite right, I thought there was a 60m profit last year.
20M is a lie, during the pandemic wightlink lost half their 60m projected revenue
any one can say about projected revenue – I projected to have personal revenue of millions this year – but the lottery numbers didn’t come up
No……overpriced and shit?
Nows the time to build a bridge?
I am sorry but you are in the transportation business to PROVIDE transport. As they stated “For Essential travel” we have not gone back to key worker only status, so I don’t get why the fastcats are cut. People still need that essential travel. Transportation companies must provide transport, but in limited amounts. It does not need to cut whole services altogther. Talk about sticking your fingers up to Islanders……..again, after how many cuts we have allready endured with the removal of night crews. Do Wightlink think we have short memories. If they don’t like providing transport, maybe its time for them to get out. If the government are nationalising the railways, maybe now is the time to buy, price will be cheap………like their service
Just go, bye bye Wight Link.
Reduce the fares is the only option available and I do mean under cutting Red Funnel and improve the service. Otherwise your dead in the water and will go under ….
Look at what’s being written, listen and sheer iignorance to blindly push thru old hat agendas
How many of you people moaning actually use the Cat? I use it every day it works out at £3.79 each way with my season ticket. This morning 5 people got off at Ryde and 15 people got on. For that hour there were 10 members of staff plus maintenance staff, fuel and insurance. Do you think those 20 peoples fares would have paid for all that? I don’t think a bus could afford to run with those numbers.
The worst thing about the service being suspended is having to rely on an unreliable Hover Craft and having to pay the extortionate parking fees of £7.60 a day. Maybe the council could give a majority of that fee to the ferry companies so they can reduce fairs.
I’ve decided that most islanders only want to moan and aren’t happy if they have nothing to moan about. Where I live the phone signal is really weak, Vodafone were going to put up a mast but the local people objected so it didn’t happen. Now they all moan they cant get a signal. Do I have to say anymore!!!
Good. Now they might build a bridge over priced ferry anyway
So sad so many islanders still have this pipe dream. Do you know how much import and export goes through the solent? The construction would also cost £££ and they wont pay for something which will lose them money
I doubt that Wightlink are in any danger of going bust – they are merely using Coronavirus as an excuse to amend the terms of their employees in their (and their shareholder’s) favour. As stated, if not accepted, employees risk losing their jobs – they are stuck between a rock and a hard place.
Reduce fares more people would visit island most expensive piece of water to cross.
I’m rather pleased that eventually financial issues have affected Wightlink. I have been using Wightlink on and off for years and found several, not all of their ground staff to be rude, arrogant and self assured. The prices to travel are infamously expensive to feed the fats cats management and directors pockets without any regard for passengers or their other relentlessly efficient staff. Maybe this pandemic will shed the incompetent staff and greedy top management and for once covet the passengers pocket.
Why can’t a peak service be run? Why has Wightlink dropped services and handed their business over to Hovertravel? Surely, Wightlink should be showing passengers who provides the better service. Better service better footfall better profits. Simple you would thought!!! Instead of penalising employees who ensures the service runs and are at the coal face, cuts etc should be made higher up as they are the people who are incompetent and lose profit
Surely during these difficult times we should all be pulling together? Wightlink are failing to do their bit. If adverse weather conditions means the hover cannot run, then workers have to use the car ferry which doubles their travel time. Senseless and uncaring springs to mind. SHAME ON YOU THE MANAGEMENT OF WIGHTLINK
All the while cross Solent ferries are allowed to be owned by private equity firms, nothing will change. Cross Solent ferries are the only, if not one of very very few, vital UK public transport links that is not bound to operate under a PSO. As far as I am aware! All other vital community links in the UK are bound, including air and rail, such as Scottish islands for instance. That’s why they can hold us to ransom. Build a fixed link asap! Afterall, the government has just approved £2billion to build a tunnel at Stonehenge. But then the Isle of Wight isn’t important! Is it?
i would recommend you research why, how and the reason PSO’s are used before unilaterally declaring that they should be applied to isle of wight ferries.
If you read my comment “correctly” I have not declared that PSO’s be applied, I simply make the point of why the ferries are allowed to operate in the manner that they do. I recommend you research business models!
Simple build a bridge or tunnel
not a hope in hell.
no county on the mainland is willing to accept an off/on ramp/entrance in their backyard, which will simply create a massive car park and significant environmental destruction of their greenland areas.
they do not want a continual, polluting stream of people and vehicles using them as a thoroughfare to and from the island.
“Freedom” against fixed link it appears! They are not bothered about a “continual, polluting stream of people and vehicles” using the ferry ports then?
indy – the ferry ports have been in existence long before the residents that currently reside around them were even born – they cannot object to existing commercial premises unless there are good grounds, as they had a choice about moving into those premises when they knew about the ports being there.
your argument is invalid.
Freedom, you really must learn to comprehend peoples comments before you respond. There is no argument to be invalid as I have not made one. I merely asked a question!