Vauxhall to axe 350 jobs at van plant as part of GM overhaul

Published on Monday 30 November 2009 21:54

MORE than 350 people will lose their jobs at Vauxhall this winter, the carmaker confirmed last night.

All of the redundancies will be from the van plant in Luton, Bedfordshire, where 1,400 people are employed.

Vauxhall-owner General Motors is axing 9,000 jobs across Europe in a massive restructuring caused by a slump in demand.

All of the job losses will be voluntary redundancies and are expected to be made in the early months of 2010.

Vauxhall, which employs about 5,500 people across the UK, will not be cutting any of its staff at its plant in Ellesmere Port, Merseyside.

Senior bosses were last night about to start consulting staff on the redundancy process.

A spokesman for General Motors said last night: "Some 354 jobs are to go at the Luton van plant and they will be voluntary redundancies.

"A consultation period will now take place at plant level about how this plan is going to be put into operation.

"This is part of a reorganisation of General Motors. The van market in the UK is down by 40 per cent this year and there are no signs of it coming back.

"Hopefully, these will be the only job losses, but we do not know what lies ahead round the corner."

GM scrapped plans to sell Opel, including its British Vauxhall plants, to a group led by Canadian auto parts maker Magna in early November, casting further doubt over its European operations and risking a confrontation with unions across Europe.

Workers at Luton, the light commercial vehicle plant, build the Renault Trafic and Opel Vivaro van models.

The UK government has said that it would be willing to provide funding to secure the future of Vauxhall's car plants in Britain.