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Honda staff’s worries over factory closure
Robert Lea16 Jan 2009
More than 4000 workers at Honda in Swindon are fearing for their futures today after the Japanese car manufacturer said it is closing its state-of-the-art UK factory from the end of this month until June.
Honda UK said today it is extending its planned closure of the Swindon plant though April and May.
It had already said it planned to mothball the manufacturing facility in February and March.
Honda officials have said that the company plans no redundancies and has signalled that workers will continue to get basic pay. Trade union officials have previously warned that Honda had looked at cutting jobs.
The shutdown comes after a horror year for the motor industry from which Honda has not been immune.
Latest monthly figures show Honda sales in the UK collapsing by 38%.
For 2008 as a whole UK sales of Hondas plunged below the 100,000-a-year level, down 20% to 83,000.
Reader views (2)
Nice intelligent comment Kanan.
Didn't socialism do well??
- John Whitby, Peterborough, Cambs, 17/01/2009 22:41
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This is a great news for a socialist like me. Because capitalism which is over inflated artificially with phoney money needed a catastrophic burst for a long time. Finally it has happened. Whoever rejoiced for all these years need to come to reality and experience real excruciating and exhausting pain and poverty.
Nobody deserves this than the people in UK,Europe,US and Israel. I would like to see the Middle easter countries flush with rich oil money make these westereners to slaves and make them worthless piece of garbage.
- Kanan, mountain view, 17/01/2009 08:24
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