It was announced that Vauxhall Motors Ellesmere Port plant came very close to being closed back in 2012.
As Vauxhall Motors CEO Duncan Aldred is set to depart from his role, he announced that this major UK car plant was very close to being closed as General Motors looked to restructure their European work back in 2012.
As General Motors owns Vauxhall Motors, they had been seriously considering closing one of their European car plants and the ones they were thinking about were the Ellesmere Port plant in the UK and the Opel plant in Bochum, Germany.
The Ellesmere Port plant has more than 2000 workers and Aldred said that it was due to a deal made with unions which had stopped the closure of this major plant. An agreement was made to produce new Astra models at this plant until 2020 which has guaranteed the safety of this plant until then.
This deal was made between General Motors and the Unite trade union which would affect the working conditions and pay for the next four years at the Ellesmere Port plant. This new deal included the workers agreeing to no pay increase over the next two years and the possibility of the working week being increased to 40 hours. The deal also included the possibility of the plant being in operation up to 51 weeks of the year.
Unfortunately for the Opel Bochum plant in Germany, this is not the case and they had to be the ones who would lose out. General Motors announced in December 2013 that this plant would be closing in 2016. The Bochum plant has been producing Opel cars for almost 50 years and is a real blow to the area.
Aldred has been given a new role with General Motors as vice-president of Buick-GMC and will be responsible for their US market Sales, Service and Marketing.
