BMW has announced that it will be cutting 850 jobs at the Mini factory in Oxford. The giant car manufacturer also confirmed that weekend working has been stopped, with all agency workers that did weekend shifts losing their jobs.
The 850 job losses will affect the Cowley Plant in Oxford, but BMW have also said that it will be cutting 150 jobs at their Mini plant in Swindon. The Cowley Plant will be shut this week, as the demand for cars drops during the recession; the plant will reopen on the 23rd of February, with the new shift changes and job losses taking effect on the 2nd of March.
A statement released by BMW said: “Mini plant Oxford will be bringing in a new shift pattern in response to continuing volatile market conditions,”
And went on to say that, “As of Monday 2 March, the plant will go from a three-shift to a two-shift pattern, operating five days per week instead of the current seven.”
The economic downturn has affected the majority of car manufacturers, with BMW seeing a fall in sales of 4.3% in 2008. BMW is the latest car manufacturer to announce redundancies and factory closures; last month Honda announced in would be closing its Swindon plant for 4 months between February and May.
3 Responses
Sad to see all those jobs go, but you see loads of minis about
Posted on February 16th, 2009 at 10:04 am
There build quality wasn’t that great anyway, they creak like mad
Posted on March 2nd, 2009 at 10:00 am
My Cooper S isn’t the best build quality wise all the plastics creak and the finish is poor
Posted on March 3rd, 2009 at 3:42 am
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