www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20157454
Where Ford lead, GM follows
It does not look good as Astra sites will go from 3 x factories (inc Ellesmere) to 2 plants
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And the other report-GM to amalgamate with Fiat & Peugeot.
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>> And the other report-GM to amalgamate with Fiat & Peugeot.
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So they will add GM's design skills to Peugeot's capability in electronics to Fiat's renowned quality control?
Waytogobust.
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The press having been trying to kill off Ellesmere Port for years and haven't managed it yet.
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But the German unions seem to be stronger than the UK ones, so if I were a betting man I'd fear for Ellesmere to be the one that gets closed :-(
As said in a different thread, if I were running GM I'd close 'em all. After losing about a billion $$ a year in Europe for over 10 years I'd throw in the towel.
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Unless GM intends major reduction to car production in Europe, I doubt Rüsselsheim will be closed. So doesn't that leave UK and Spain? I'd say UK might be okay because of the investment for the hybrids but they're not selling well are they.
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Isn't there massive over-capacity in the European car manufacturing sector ?
Combine this with slowing demand which is unlikely to recover any time soon - I read today that recovery in the UK is slower than it was following the great depression and I presume that France, Spain, Italy will not recover any time soon either (let alone Greece).
The sad reality is that GM, Ford etc don't need these plants and likely never will again.
What I notice in Australia is a tremendous 'buy Australian' culture, often with the tag line 'or your kids won't have jobs....'. What happened to 'buy British' ? Some of this is forced by (frankly) protectionist Govt policies which see inflated prices for many things, but people seem willing (or compelled) to pay the price.
I recall a thread (in HJ) a few years ago about Chinese car manufacture, IIRC Ling of Ling's cars chipped in. The point is that we've all benefited from reduced prices in real terms for 10-15 years now, if we want things to be different (i.e. manufactured in the UK) then there is a price to pay surely? But without this market demand (i.e. customers asking for British manufactured goods) then businesses will not invest in such things.
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>> But the German unions seem to be stronger than the UK ones, so if I
>> were a betting man I'd fear for Ellesmere to be the one that gets closed
>> :-(
Yes they are, but they have also accepted many changes to their workers' conditions over the past 10 years to improve competitiveness, German workers became poorer even as Greek and Spanish ones became richer (I understand that some of the resentment to bailing out these PIGS countries comes from this). German plants may-well also be more cost effective than UK ones (although I'd accept that UK workers have also accepted many changes in the name of competitiveness too).
Having said this, I know that my own employer has struggled to restructure operations in Germany due to their labour laws over the years.
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Vauxhall - & Opel to cull 2600 jobs in Europe - jc2
