Syros Shipyards
Located on the island of Syros South East of Piraeus in the middle of the Aegean Sea, the Syros Shipyards was established in 1861. Since 1994 when it was privatized, it has underwent a technological evolution, implementing an ambitious investment program of more than 35 million euro. It soon became famous for the quality of its services, provided by some of the most experienced craftsmen in the Mediterranean. From 1994 to 2004 more than ?21mil was invested in the company in new infrastructure and equipment. Another ?14mil was spent in main finance. One of the most important investments was the creation of infrastructure that was aimed at the construction of mega yachts or small cruise ships. One of the largest Syncrolifts in the Eastern Med was installed capable of lifting ship 100meter long or 2.500DWT.
A line of giga-Luxury Yachts complying fully with the latest SOLAS regulations and furnished with all the certificates required as Passenger Vessels for International voyages is currently being constructed in NEORION. These luxury yachts are characterized by unique construction quality and high equipment standards with respect to the building procedure itself and by using the most modern technology in the fields of communication, safety, control - monitoring, audio - visual systems, integrated - navigation systems etc. On one hand, the quality of their interiors is unsurpassed, equal to the best of the international market, on the other hand, the vessels are hydro dynamically optimised, even with respect to the wash effect. Special attention has been paid to their design and construction in order to achieve low maintenance cost, the lowest possible fuel consumption, environmental protection and the maximum speed performance.
Syros Shipyards, currently known as Syros Shipbuilding and Industrial Enterprises, was founded in 1861, making it the oldest shipyard in Greece. It was privatised in 1994 and is now part of Neorion Holding S.A., a company that ownsshipyards in both Syros and Eleusis. Workers at Neorion Syros Shipyards still hope tospend their whole working lives at the shipyard. In the past, this was the normal situation. There was a tradition of fathers and sons working within the same organisation throughout their careers.
Despite the recent crisis, workers still expect the company to offer them lifelong employment. Several factors contributeto this attitude: a semi-public business culture, the low qualification level of the workers, and the specific geographic situation of the company. Syros is a Cycladic island with a very strong industrial tradition. However, all other industries have left the island and Neorion Syros Shipyards is the only major industrial employer left. This means that workers with this profile cannot find a similar job without leaving the island, which obviously poses a major impediment to voluntary job mobility. As a consequence, voluntary outbound job mobility is extremely low.
Because the company is struggling to keep afloat, no new recruitment of permanent workers is taking place. Before its privatisation in 1994, the shipyard had been closed for two years with all staff members laid off, but when it reopenedthe shipyard was obliged by its contract with the state to re-recruit its former workers. Between 1994 and 2000, there was a period of significant business success. However, since then, there was a downturn in its economic prospects. Although it managed to retain all its re-recruited workers, Neorion Syros Shipyardshad to make redundant all its workers who were employed under fixed term contracts. In order to deal with the fluctuations in demand, the company now hires extra workers on very short-term contracts, typically no longer than two to four weeks. This approach is possible because many skilled workers are available on the island because of its strong industrial tradition and a relatively high unemployment rate. In the past, the recruitment of permanent staff was carried out informally, often through family connections, with sons following their fathers into the company.
Neorion Syros Shipyards feels that it has a social responsibility towards the workforce of the shipyard. Major restructuring is taking place and the future of the workers is unclear. In the past, but to a certain extent still today, work at the shipyard was organised on production-line principles with teamsof workers with very specific skills working in a strictly defined sequence. The welders, for example, could only start their work when the platers had finished and vacated the working position. This system entailed high labour costs. In addition, it created a high level of demarcation and hence potential discrimination within the workforce. The idea of internal mobility is to retrain the workers to carry out a much wider range of tasks and to have multidisciplinary teams carrying out several of these tasks simultaneously.
The shipyard has adopted two strategies to deal with the downturn in its activities. Firstly, it is developing a system of internal job mobility by training its employees so that they can take on multiple tasks. Secondly, the company has set up a Sectoral Mobility Support Centre in close co-operation with other stakeholders. The purpose of this center is to provide personalised counselling and support for those workers who are most exposed to change. The ultimate goal of this strategy is to improve the company's competitiveness and to establish a profitable niche in the shipbuilding market. Adapting the internal environment by training the workforce to be more flexibly employable and introducing modern business structures are regarded as processes that are necessary to achieve a better position on the worldwide market. The Sectoral Mobility Support Centre is a way of offering support to workers who may no longer have a place in the streamlined organisation that the shipyard aims to become.
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