There’s good news and bad news at two Japanese car plants here in England this week.
Good news: Nissan is creating 50 new jobs at Sunderland, in the north east, as it prepares to assemble luxury brand Infiniti’s Emerg-e.
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The company, which already employs about 6,500, has launched a recruitment drive for engineers and maintenance staff.
European production head Trevor Mann said: “The parent company places trust in the Sunderland plant. This is a reward for many many years’ hard work.”
Nissan has recently spent millions at the factory gearing up for European production of the Juke, Leaf EV and its battery packs, the redesigned European Note (SOP summer 2013) and the Infiniti EV, creating thousands of jobs.
The bad news: Honda has announced 38 compulsory redundancies at its plant in Swindon, southern England, following the end of a consultation period.
At the beginning of 2013 the carmaker announced it needed to shed 800 jobs at the factory. So far 554 employees have taken voluntary redundancies and the 38 compulsory redundancies are all ‘indirect’ staff and do not work on the production line itself.
The cutback follows falling European sales and Honda said it expects the market to remain challenging for at least another two years.
Honda has worked with other UK vehicle makers such as Jaguar Land Rover and Nissan to try and relocate workers and retains about 3,000 employees at Swindon which assembles the Civic, Jazz and CR-V at the rate of just under 600 cars a day for the UK and Europe.
Later this year it will introduce the CR-V with a smaller, lighter, locally made 1.6-litre turbodiesel engine and the new Civic Tourer, returning Honda to the C-wagon segment it abandoned after a model-sharing deal with MG Rover ended in 2000.
