Bleeding jobs

The UK tyre industry is starting to bleed jobs and is facing many of the same problems as the steel industry, says Unite national officer Tony Devlin. He heard the news of plans to axe 860 direct jobs and threaten 500 contractors jobs at Michelin in Ballymena while attending a demonstration at Goodyear’s Fort Dunlop plant where 330 jobs are facing the axe.

There are also signs that Michelin has started a Europe wide reorganisation beyond plans to close Ballymena. It may involve cuts in plants in France, Germany and Italy. The European tyre industry appears under pressure from cheap Chinese imports, made worse by the Chinese devaluing their currency to gain further competitive advantage.

“You can look at the problems facing steel, cross out the word ‘steel’ and add ‘tyres’,” said Devlin. “It’s facing the same problem of cheap Chinese imports, high energy costs and lack of investment.

“Sales are being hit by the high value of the pound against the euro and the Chinese yuan. That makes our tyre products more expensive and eurozone and Chinese products cheaper.

“Like the steel industry, we have the dumping of ultra cheap Chinese tyres,” Devlin explained. “They can sell one-use truck tyres for less than ÂŁ100 while our premium tyres are ÂŁ400.

“One big difference is that our premium tyres can be re-treaded a number of times while the Chinese tyres cannot. At the end of the life of our premium tyres the carcasses can be recycled, the Chinese ones cannot.

“A lot of small businesses will go for the cheaper product although it has a shorter life as it can’t be either retreaded or re-cycled,” he went on to say. “That has a much wider environmental impact and builds up a problem for the future.”

 
Unite is still challenging the threatened closure of Fort Dunlop in Wolverhampton and will challenge the threatened Michelin closure in Ballymena, Northern Ireland. That would be a major blow to manufacturing in Northern Ireland which is also facing threat of job losses across the biggest employer – public services.

Failure to act

Davy Thompson, Unite Regional Coordinating Officer said the planned closure of Michelin’s Ballymena plant is a cruel blow to the workforce and devastating news for the northeast economy and that of Northern Ireland as a whole.

 
“The proposal to close the plant comes within a year of a decision by JTI-Gallagher to close its Ballymena site with the loss of almost 900 jobs,” he said. “In addition to the 860 workers who are directly employed by Michelin on the site, there are approximately five hundred contractors and many more in the wider economy who now face the threat of redundancy as a result of this announcement.

“These were highly-paid, secure jobs reflecting the progressive employment practices of Michelin and their loss will devastate the retail and services economy in this region,” Thompson added. “Unite has repeatedly demanded action from ministers in relation to the high energy costs, the protracted difficulties experienced by Michelin in obtaining a connection for a proposed combined-heat power plant and the pressing need for capital support to modernise the plant.

“A Unite delegation met minister Bell in July to raise our concerns for employment at Michelin as well as the need for a proactive Manufacturing strategy but we are still awaiting his response to our specific proposals or any commitment to such a strategic approach to the sector. Sadly, this devastating news is not unexpected but is reflective of the failure by the NI Executive as a whole to act.

“Unite is hopeful that we might convince Michelin to reverse this decision,” Thompson went on to say. “Even at this late stage, we remain hopeful that corporate management may reconsider their decision to close this site if the NI Executive intervenes decisively to address the underlying reasons for this decision.”

Industrial strategy call

The lack of strategy leading to workers facing the axe and communities facing a big loss of secure high skilled higher paid work is now familiar territory to Unite assistant general secretary Tony Burke.

“There is a very real risk that a lack of government industrial and manufacturing strategy and a lack of support for companies is really beginning to bite,” he told UNITElive. Thousands of workers are paying the price for a Government ideology that sits back and lets the market rip through our industries.

“The devastation hitting the steel communities and this emerging problem in the tyre sector can leave our industrial sites as wastelands. We have secure higher paid, higher skilled jobs being replaced by minimum wage insecure and often zero hours employment.

“We need an industrial strategy to support jobs, investment and growth and we need it now. And we need a business secretary who can come out with more than an increasingly pathetic list of things he can’t or won’t do.”

The emerging news about Michelin’s cuts and re-organisation across Europe may involve the need for a union response across Europe.

“We are monitoring Michelin very closely and will be considering a response with our union colleagues across Europe” Burke told UniteLive.