VAUXHALL is cutting another 250 jobs at its Ellesmere Port car plant on top of the 400 jobs it announced in October.
The carmaker, now owned by France’s PSA Group – maker of Peugeot and Citroen – said it needed to ‘accelerate the recovery of plant productivity’. The Ellesmere Port plant in Cheshire, which makes the Astra, is to move staff from two production shifts to one.
The company told the Unite union last Thursday that more voluntary redundancies were now needed. Vauxhall said it would conduct a statutory 45-day workforce consultation, adding it was committed to minimising the impact of the proposed reductions.
The company also said it was committed to the Astra plant continuing at Ellesmere Port.
PSA has said previously that manufacturing costs at Ellesmere were higher than other ‘benchmark plants’ in the group.
Vauxhall employs about 4,500 people in the UK, with about 1,800 at Ellesmere Port. The company also has a factory at Luton, which makes vans.
In August last year, PSA became Europe’s second biggest carmaker after Volkswagen when it completed the purchase of Vauxhall and German brand Opel from US car giant General Motors.
• Unite leader Len McCluskey is today due to address a conference of the the union’s officers and organisers. They will gather in Birmingham to set the union’s industrial and growth priorities, and hear the general secretary repeat the message that strong unions are vital for a fairer society.
Len McCluskey is expected to say: ‘We know great changes are on their way in our country. A progressive Labour Party is advancing, and a weak and incompetent Tory government is disintegrating.
‘People in Britain – and Ireland too – are sick of cuts in public services and stagnant wages while tax cheats go unpunished. They want a different society, an end to the situation where a decent secure job and a place to live are unobtainable for millions. But we know that those changes will never be achieved by government alone, even a progressive Labour one.
‘Society cannot be transformed solely from the top. Stronger trade unions are vital, not as an add-on to government, but as the very foundation of a more equal country. What we achieve in the workplace can do as much to make our countries better places to live in as almost any decree from Whitehall.’
