Dundee Michelin tyre factory closes with loss of 850 jobs

Sore one for Dundee and not a good time of year to get told this news. Although Michelin seem to be prepared to help the employees retrain/find alternative employment while keeping the place open til 2020.


Dundee Michelin tyre factory closes with loss of 850 jobs


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-46097215

 

Hopefully this type of joke, at a very difficult time for 850 people and families, will get no traction

 

Globalisation is so great.

 

Jokes are not so funny when it’s close to home.

Have family that work there, this is really terrible news. Finding out in the news too. At least the local MPs are getting their rallying around the people sound bites in, as they did for NCR, Day International, SEG and no doubt Timex and Levi’s at the time as well. When really there is probably * all they can do to help.

 

Aye but 12 year old weans in Cambodia can make these tyres for 50p an hour, plus the shareholders get their big dividends so all is good.

 

It is actually. However in this case it isn't the only reason, we are also buying cars that require larger tyres so the Dundee plant are also suffering because of that. Although people will always look to save money on whatever they buy, so rather than look to blame others perhaps we should look closer to home as well. Or are people gonna go all trump on here and start to demand protectionist policies for what we import next.

Not good for your family members, hopefully they get something sorted in the future, aye there does seem to have been a leak which isn't ideal.
If I remember rightly the unions at timex and Levis just came the *. From what I have heard, so far, they are being and have been sensible when talking with Michelin as they are talking about enhanced redundancy packages being payable. While a job would be better that is also a good offer to get if you manage to retrain and get another job.

 

To be fair to local management and Michelin, they seem to be setting out some sort of reasonable plan with plenty thought. And there is a good time frame for people to start looking etc

The press couldn’t bite their tongues for a change.

 

Are you completely against this?

 

I know it is nothing to feel Dandy about!

PS Seriously though i saw this story on Reporting Scotland last night,very sad,i was hoping things would turn out better.

 

Hope everything goes as pain-free as feasibly possible for your family mate.

 

Same here

 

They do seem to be and as its open til 2020 that will help. I just hope the talk of enhanced redundancy packages combined with the potential for, imo, large pension transfer values does not see some of the more shark like advisers, from my industry, start to turn up in Dundee in the coming weeks/months. That's the one thing I really hope doesn't happen but human greed, both adviser and client, is a powerful thing.

I wish I could remember the actual specifics but this factory in Dundee mirrors a similar scenario that played out in America, with tyres as well - (If I have time I will look for the story later) - It was under Obama and the tyre manufacturers had been complaining about unfair cheap tyre imports from China (I think it was) So Obama levied a duty on these cheaper tyres, this escalated obviously. So to cut a long story short - The tyre manufacturers saved their jobs (about a 1000 although there is questions about this also) but the cost to the wider American economy was estimated to have cost about 4K jobs (i think it was) as people had to spend more on tyres, as the prices increased, which resulted in less money for them to spend on other services in the economy.
The same manufacturers are now moaning that India is undercutting them and they want trump to do what Obama done. This simply proves some people will not learn from history, no matter how recent it is/was.

 

Hi ho hi ho it's off to Eastern Europe/Asia we go!!!

That's a lot of jobs there.....sore one!!

 

Know a few lads that work there, there's been talk of redundancies but don't think they were expecting this news, massive blow to the area.

 

Sad news.

There had been strong rumours about the place closing for a long time. I don't understand the shock. Still not good.

Apart from a huge amount of money being spent to refit the entire production line what can keep the place open?

They only make smaller diameter tyres and the need for them is dying as more cars use bigger wheels now. More people are opting for budget brands on top of that.

 

seems michelin are now saying the goverment has 3 days to put a rescue pack together ???
here's an idea, take the factory over and produce a tyre at the same quality as michelins at a fraction of the price, then tell michelin to GTF and make sure every company that needs an operating license and every cooncil is scotland to buy them.

 

The factory is only tooled up to make certain sized tyres. The smaller sized tyres are no longer popular.

Making tyres for cheap usually means cheap tyres.