HEBRIDEAN ferries will continue to be publicly run after the Scottish government announced yesterday that state-owned Caledonian MacBrayne had retained the £900 million contract.

The win over profiteer Serco is a victory for unions and the campaign for public ownership.

It was announced hours before a protest outside Holyrood organised by transport union RMT.

“This is great news for the staff, the company and the communities we support up and down the west coast of Scotland,” said CalMac chairman David McGibbon.

“A huge amount of time and effort has gone into understanding the aspirations of these communities for these vital services and preparing a bid which reflect these and our own ambitions.”

CalMac’s bid for Clyde and Hebrides Ferry Services had made almost 350 commitments to improve the service.

These included £6 million worth of investment, providing more employment opportunities to local people and pledging to better involve communities in investment and services decisions through the creation of a communities board.

The company has also pledged to maintain its living wage employer status, its pension commitments and its policy of making no compulsory redundancies.

CalMac currently operates routes between the west coast mainland and the Hebrides.

The Scottish government intends to formally award the eight-year contract to the firm at the end of the month.

RMT general secretary Mick Cash said the award was a “complete vindication of RMT members’ decision to take industrial action in June last year, which secured meaningful employment and pension protections” within the tendered contract.

He also told the Star that “without a shadow of a doubt” the factual case as well as the broad mobilisation across unions and communities to keep CalMac public had ­influenced the positive outcome.

RMT-CalMac trade union co-ordinator Brian Reynolds called the decision a “huge relief for the workforce given the track record of Serco” and said that the announcement showed that “when we fight together as a class we can retain resources in public ownership.”

STUC leader Grahame Smith criticised the tendering process as a “hugely wasteful, expensive and destabilising exercise.”

Transport union TSSA general secretary Manuel Cortes called for a “cast iron guarantee that service is now permanently in public hands.”