The restructuring events database contains factsheets with data on large-scale restructuring events reported in the principal national media and company websites in each EU Member State. This database was created in 2002.
Manufacturing Manufacture For Transport Equipment Manufacture Of Other Transport Equipment 30 - Manufacture of other transport equipment
1,300 jobs Number of planned job losses
Announcement Date
18 March 2004
Employment effect (start)
1 June 2004
Foreseen end date
Description
Alstom, the indebted and restructuring French engineering group, is closing its train-making plant at Washwood Heath, Birmingham. The closure will take place in the summer of 2004 and imply the loss of 1,300 jobs. The company employs 1,100 at its Crewe repair and maintenance plant, 400 in Wakefield and 132 in Doncaster, with the latter set to close. It has 438 staff at Central Rivers, near Burton-on-Trent, which has work to 2012, and 360 at Chart Leacon, near Ashford, Kent, as well as 238 in Ilford, Essex, which will close.
Birmingham's last train building workers walked through the gates of their historic factory for the last time as production formally reached the end of the line on November 24th 2004. About 50 workers clocked off the last shift and said an emotional goodbye to the former Metro-Cammell plant at Washwood Heath which had sustained more than 150 years of rolling stock manufacturing.
They were among 400 shopfloor employees who had campaigned heroically against the decision of French owner Alstom to end production.
The decision was announced in June 2003 and over the past few months workers have left in waves of redundancies.
Sources
17 March 2004: The Guardian
25 November 2004: Birmingham Evening Mail
Citation
Eurofound (2004), Alstom, Closure in United Kingdom, factsheet number 59133, European Restructuring Monitor. Dublin, https://restructuringeventsprod.azurewebsites.net/restructuring-events/detail/59133.
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