Results tagged “manufacturing” from Birmingham Post - Business Blog

The Big Three US car makers were back in Washington this week with their begging bowls, asking for another $34 billion in government help. They've already had $25bn to help them re-tool to produce new cleaner and greener cars, and now need more just to keep going, as they burn through cash at an alarming rate. This time round they have to come up with more cunning plans as last month they were refused a bailout request.

Auto sales in the US have indeed been hammered. Ford has reported a fall in sales of 30% year-on-year in November, with GM and Chrysler seeing falls of 41% and 42% respectively. And after some of the worst losses in its 100 year history, GM's share price is now so low that if you'd bought some shares just after the Second World War they are today worth exactly the same - just $3 per share.

Ford's share price has similarly dropped from $35 a share in 1999 to just $1.80 today. With Chrysler worth perhaps $1 billion, the 'Big Three' are together valued at a paltry $7 billion. No one is buying, even at this low price, though, given the alarming rate at which they are burning through cash.

(Blogged by David Bailey and Caroline Chapain)

This week we launched our report into what has happened to the MG Rover workers who lost their jobs so suddenly back in 2005. The research was a joint effort by The Work Foundation and the Birmingham Business School and was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council. Richard Burden, MP for Birmingham Northfield, kindly hosted the event in Westminster.

A short webcast summarising the research can be found here. (you need to scroll down and click on 'download swf file').
What we found was that three years on from the historic collapse of MG Rover in April 2005, 90% of workers who lost their jobs have found new employment, but most have taken deep pay cuts.

We interviewed over 200 workers out of the 6,300 workers ex-Rover workers who lost their jobs when the Longbridge plant closed, and found two thirds have suffered wage falls. Overall, on average wages had fallen by £5,640 per year in real terms. A third of the former workers reported an increase in their salaries. Those out of work the longest suffered the largest drops in income.

In November a group of us at the Birmingham Business School working with colleagues at The Work Foundation will report on the initial findings of our study of what happened to the ex MG Rover workers. We've just interviewed over 200 of them to find out how they have got on, what work they are now doing (if any), how much they are earning, what skills they use, whether they have retrained and so on. The project has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, and is throwing up some fascinating results. I hope to be able to blog about this in a few weeks' time.

Meanwhile another investigation of sorts has been on-going for three years. That's the DTI (now BERR) Inquiry into the MG Rover collapse.

Setting up the inquiry was absolutely the right thing to do. There were (and remain) some serious questions to be answered about what happened. The 6000+ workers and their families who lost their jobs at Longbridge (plus thousands more in the supply chain) deserve some answers.

Like a slow-to-die Hollywood movie monster thrashing around until the credits roll, the bubble created by central bankers and politicians who mistake living on tick for prosperity may have been pricked, but it is going to do a lot more damage before it deflates to manageable proportions.

The worse of the credit squeeze may be over, with inter-bank three-month spreads well off their peaks, but the retail banks are only now starting to count the cost of their near-criminal profligacy.

I spend much of working life trying to keep track of two key strands to the industrial and financial life of this country.

Wearing my Birmingham Post automotive correspondent's hat I report on a manufacturing sector that, despite what the cynics and doom-mongers say, is still a vital element of the manufacturing base both of the West Midlands and the UK as a whole as well as the regional and national economy.

There are some out there who simply cannot understand why Britain is still making motor cars in the 21st century.

Yes, we have lost Longbridge, Ryton and Browns Lane as major carmaking sites. But Jaguar and Land Rover (albeit perhaps soon in Indian ownership) remain at the heart of the industry.