Nissan announces 1,200 jobs to go at Sunderland plant

Jan 9 2009 by William Green, The Journal

'Obviously this is the last resort'

NISSAN bosses yesterday blamed the economic crisis for the decision, but said they would not be asking for a bailout from the Government.

Trevor Mann, senior vice president (manufacturing) for Nissan Europe, said the company had done all it could to prevent the job losses.

He said Nissan had been watching the international markets for many months and it was clear that had been a fall in demand for cars in the last quarter of 2008.

He said: “It is the overall impact of the market, the recession and the credit crunch that has caused this announcement.

“It is devastating what we have had to do today and it is obviously the last resort.

“It is a fall in demand but you have to understand why. We have dealerships that want cars but they cannot get the credit to pay for them.

“We need a bit more confidence in the market and the freeing up of the movement of credit.”

Mr Mann said that of the 1,200 workers who would lose their jobs, 400 were on fixed contracts taken on last year to work on the Qashqai production lines.

In recent months the plant had all it could to prevent the job losses, such as stopping production and moving staff to other jobs, Mr Mann said.

“You can only do that for so long. We believe the plant was not the right size of operation.”

But Mr Mann refused to rule out further job cuts. “You can never say never but we shall be watching the markets very closely,” he said.