Robert Dickie

Retired shipyard joiner

Robert Dickie

"In those days when they wore bowler hats there were no safety helmets. There were no safety in the yards and the joke was that the head foreman wore the bowler hats because when they were walking by a ship, somebody maybe throw something over the side and the bowler hat would be some semblance of safety for them – but that was the story!"

"When the upper Clyde shipbuilders' 'work in' stopped, a company called Marathon, from Texas, took over the yard. And obviously the fact that they were building oil rigs rather than ships was a difference in the labour mix. What actually happened was that some of the people who were employed in Browns were transferred to Govan. There was an agreement with the Boilermakers' Society the surplus labour from joiners, electricians and painters etc. transferred to the Boilermakers' Society and retrained as platers, retrained as welders, retrained as cockers etc. that worked at the start. It worked for about one and a half to two years and then there was a situation where there wasn't enough work for the number of trades we had, because the oil industry was like ship building - peaks and troughs. And some of the people who were retrained were made redundant."