LABOUR Assembly Member for mid and west Wales, Joyce Watson, has called on First Minister Rhodri Morgan to ensure workers laid-off in the economic downturn have the opportunity to retrain and update their skills.
Joyce Watson raised the issue following her meeting on Monday (17th November 2008) with workers and trade union representatives at the endangered Thyssen Krupp pressing plant, located in Felinfoel.
Up to 30 job losses were announced at the site in late September due to reductions in volume from its two main customers, Land Rover and Bentley. However, this could now rise to more than 50. This is despite the plant having improved its financial performance considerably and making a profit over the last two years, after several years of losses.
Joyce Watson told the First Minister that workers at the site are concerned that they will be laid-off for an extended period over Christmas without pay, and without financial support for training and educational programmes:
“Job losses are an unfortunate feature of economic downturns, but it’s the responsibility of governments to mitigate the effects of job losses by providing opportunities to retrain and find new employment.
“The workers at Thyssen Krupp are very concerned that if they are laid-off they will not have access to the training and educational support which would be available to them if they were made redundant”.
The First Minister responded by saying that the Assembly Government was considering new ways to support people who find themselves temporarily out of work:
“I am afraid that this has become a common pattern in the automotive industry.
“Longish lay-offs of four weeks holiday over Christmas instead of two are the way that companies try to deal with surpluses of stock and the lack of sales.
“On the broad principle of what we do about the situation at Thyssen Krupp and other companies that are implementing lay-offs of that nature, we are giving consideration to a skills upgrade programme that would extend the principle of the ReACT programme, which covers those who have been made redundant or are about to be made redundant, to those workers that a company is desperate to hang on to but whose skills may be rusty. They could perhaps use the lay-off period to upgrade their skills for the twenty-first century.”
Joyce Watson has also organised a meeting for 17th December between Thyssen Krupp bosses and the Minister for the Economy, Ieuan Wyn Jones, to discuss the future of the plant.
-
