Rolls Royce protests over plans to cut Mersey jobs

Dec 10 2007 by David Higgerson, Liverpool Daily Post

SOLIDARITY protests will today take place across the UK in support of hundreds of workers who face losing their jobs at Rolls Royce’s Merseyside plant.

Workers will protest outside the company’s major UK plants, including Bristol, Coventry, Derby, Inchinnan, East Kilbride, Sunderland and Barnoldswick, with placards and banners.

Over 200 highly-skilled engineering workers at Rolls-Royce, Bootle – which makes turbines for the oil and gas industries – will lose their jobs next year if company plans to shift production to its Mount Vernon plant in the US go ahead.

The campaign “Keep Rolls-Royce Pride on Merseyside”, led by the UK's largest trade union, Unite, aims to stop the closure. Unite is calling on Rolls Royce workers from across the UK to back their fight to keep jobs and skills in the UK.

National Officer Ian Tonks said: “It is scandalous that a global employer like Rolls-Royce can abandon its loyal workforce and shift production abroad.

“We are doing everything in our power to defend member’s jobs on Merseyside and we will take on any company that attempts to exploit the UK's weak employment laws because it’s cheaper, quicker and easier to cut jobs here compared to other countries.”

Sefton Council and the North West Development Agency are still hopeful the company will re-consider its plan.

A package, said by the NWDA to be a seven-figure sum, will be offered to help the company find a way of staying here. Unite union leader Debbie Brannan revealed to the Daily Post last month that Rolls Royce pays £1.7m a year rental for the site, where turbines for the oil and gas industries are made.

The upkeep and rent of the decaying building are understood to be factors which have led Rolls Royce to want to shift production to Ohio, where, according to Unite, the company pays a peppercorn rent of $1 (50p) a year.

Rolls Royce has previously said high production costs in the UK meant the Bootle factory was no longer viable.

Over 10,000 people across Merseyside have already signed up to support the campaign.

The campaign message Keep Rolls-Royce Pride on Merseyside was displayed on a giant poster site in Liverpool last week.

davidhiggerson