Unions representing sacked sportscar workers are calling for a UK government investigation into the way the manufacturing arm was sold off and subsequently placed into administration.
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Russian businessman Nikolai Smolenski bought the Blackpool-based automaker of specialty hand-built cars in 2004 and subsequently split TVR into three units: TVR Motors, which owns the brand and intellectual property rights, manufacturing arm Blackpool Automotive and parts supplier TVR Power.
TVR Power was sold in a management buyout and Blackpool Automotive went to new ownership which is still unclear but was placed in administration in December.
Leaders of the Transport and General Workers in the north west of England said on Tuesday that the way the company had treated workers and the local community have been treated over the last year, culminating in the sale to Blackpool Automotive, needed to be probed and, as part of any inquiry, the government should review the way workforces are treated when companies go into administration.
“The sacking of over 250 skilled car workers with no pay, the ‘hokey cokey’ of people being laid off and taken back on and the hiving-off of workers to administration whilst directors appear aloof all need to be examined critically,” said T&G regional secretary Dave McCall at a regional committee meeting. “Corporate legislation isn’t working for working people and their families.”
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By GlobalDataThe unions said that, over the last year, in particular, there had been doubts about the company’s future in the UK, rumours of production difficulties due to credit issues and the laying off of people only for the firm to then take everyone back on and claim the future was bright.
In October, TVR said it would close the Blackpool operation and relocate manufacturing to an undisclosed site in Europe – Bertone in Italy has since emerged as the most likely facility and a press conference has been scheduled in London this week for TVR Motors to announce this, according to motor trade press reports.
The union said it had last October commenced talks with the company, also involving the local authorities and the Regional Development Agency, to try to find a resolution without closure but, in December,TVR said it had sold the Blackpool operation to Blackpool Automotive which was put into administration days before Christmas leaving 250-plus workers (the administrators say 245) without any pay or redundancy compensation.
Offers by Smolenski to pay the workforce direct have been welcomed by the union and, it understands, the administrators but nothing has yet been received.
“If it proves impossible pay the workforce through either the administration process or Mr. Smolenski, the taxpayer will have to fund the redundancy pay under the statutory DTI scheme,” the union said.
The Sunday Times reported recently that Smolenski had resigned as a director of Blackpool Automotive on 13 December – less than 10 days before the administrators were called in – and no longer owned the manufacturing arm of the business he had earlier declared he wanted to save.
According to the paper, company records showed that, also on 13 December, TVR’s production director Mike Penny also quit as a director of Blackpool Automotive and both men were replaced by Smolenski’s personal assistant Roger Billinghurst and Angelco Stamenkov, an Austrian national with a home address in Vienna.
The paper added that David Oxley, managing director of TVR Motors, still owned by Smolenski, had said Blackpool Automotive was recently sold but would not name the buyer, though he confirmed that Smolenski was no longer the owner.
“TVRs will continue to be produced,” Oxley told the Sunday Times, “but not in Blackpool.” He declined to comment on speculation that production will be moved to the Bertone plant in Italy.
The Sunday Times said Smolenski’s sale of the TVR production arm just before it went into administration apparently achieved his aim of holding on to the name and moving production offshore without the problems and cost of closing down the Blackpool plant, but it noted there are strict UK rules covering the disposal of businesses and a loss-making offshoot cannot be simply off-loaded in the expectation that it will promptly go under – the buyer has to give an undertaking that the acquired business can meet its liabilities.
