Threatened Michelin factory closure Dundee

[gosub]

V = 9 x √P


Michelin in Dundee: Wheel of misfortune


If Michelin really do only make 16 inch tyres there, fabulous oppurtunity for someone with access to different size moulds to aquire a trained work force whilst Michelin gives same skilled workforce a nice big redundancy payout for not wanting to be there in 2020.


Did try and see a mate's mate who does tyres to see if there is anything written on the side but he's away today

 

[quimcunx]

Why is the fashion for bigger wheels pandered to by government regulation when 16 inch wheels are more energy efficient?

Apart from job losses which Dundee could do without, thank you very much, I will miss the Michelin wind turbines.

 

[gosub]

Never did work out why they never encircled their turbines with a cowling makes a wind turbine more efficient


The Japanese could have told them that

 

[pogofish]

I'm actually surprised it lasted this long as the Dundee factory has been on borrowed time since they closed its sister plant in Aberdeen a few years back. That was where they made the steel wire for the Dundee plant to mould into complete tyres.

Since then, they trucked wire-in from Germany (Trier IIRC) and even at the time of closure, admitted that it would not be cost effective to keep doing this long term.

 

[danny la rouge]

Can 850 Dundee jobs be saved?

Should be nationalised. The plant owes £8 million of public money.

 

[redcogs]

Bugger whether its cost effective for Michelin. 845 jobs out of Dundee local economy will devastate. Michelin shareholders have taken government hand out after handout for years. They have been milking profits for 30 years i believe? Where have all those dividends gone? Certainly not into the pockets of the local workforce.

The Scottish trade unions should resist this closure by all means possible, including strikes and a demand for nationalisation.

 

[MickiQ]

Can 850 Dundee jobs be saved?

Should be nationalised. The plant owes £8 million of public money.

Nationalisation isn't likely but if it happens it will make for a very interesting showdown between Westminster and Holyrood over jurisdiction.

 

[danny la rouge]

Nationalisation isn't likely but if it happens it will make for a very interesting showdown between Westminster and Holyrood over jurisdiction.

You’re right on both counts.

If it does happen it’d be exactly the kind of showdown I’d like to see.

 

[pogofish]

Bugger whether its cost effective for Michelin. 845 jobs out of Dundee local economy will devastate.

And I think it was well over three hundred jobs here - again from a plant established with a lot of Westminster money.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Bugger whether its cost effective for Michelin. 845 jobs out of Dundee local economy will devastate. Michelin shareholders have taken government hand out after handout for years. They have been milking profits for 30 years i believe? Where have all those dividends gone? Certainly not into the pockets of the local workforce.

The Scottish trade unions should resist this closure by all means possible, including strikes and a demand for nationalisation.

I've never understood why strike action is advocated to try and save a plant from closure. All it does is save a few bob on the salaries bill.

 

[alex_]

I've never understood why strike action is advocated to try and save a plant from closure. All it does is save a few bob on the salaries bill.

“You claim this factory isn’t profitable, let’s make it even less profitable.” That’ll teach then !

 

[Sasaferrato]

Bugger whether its cost effective for Michelin. 845 jobs out of Dundee local economy will devastate. Michelin shareholders have taken government hand out after handout for years. They have been milking profits for 30 years i believe? Where have all those dividends gone? Certainly not into the pockets of the local workforce.

The Scottish trade unions should resist this closure by all means possible, including strikes and a demand for nationalisation.

Nationalisation isn't going to happen.

A question though: Were the plant to be nationalised, how are you going to make it profitable? If there isn't a market for the size of tyres, that, sadly, is pretty much that. You can keep virtually anything going if you are prepared to keep funding it, but what do you do with the tyres?

I like 16" wheels, the deeper tyre gives much more protection from the 'thump' of bloody potholes, but most people nowadays don't, they prefer a bigger wheel and a slimmer tyre.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is the prospect of re-tooling.

 

[redcogs]

The concern isnt whether the company becomes profitable. It is whether the long term job prospects and interests of the threatened workforce are paramount. As suggested above, Michelin shareholders have profited for decades on the backs of the workers. Those stolen dividends, had they been put to proper social use to plan and intelligently restructure could have insulated against austerity and unemployment. Of course that would need a broader vision of how a socialised society (which operates for all instead of a few fatcats) could operate.

 

[Sasaferrato]

The concern isnt whether the company becomes profitable. It is whether the long term job prospects and interests of the threatened workforce are paramount. As suggested above, Michelin shareholders have profited for decades on the backs of the workers. Those stolen dividends, had they been put to proper social use to plan and intelligently restructure could have insulated against austerity and unemployment. Of course that would need a broader vision of how a socialised society (which operates for all instead of a few fatcats) could operate.

Stalin died I think, along with every country that tried to run on the basis you propose.

 

[redcogs]

Stalin was an authoritarian murdering brute. You appear to be a prejudiced misinformed rednecking idiot to conclude from what was written above that i am an advocate of Joseph Stalin or his tyranny.

 

[Sasaferrato]

Stalin was an authoritarian murdering brute. You appear to be a prejudiced misinformed rednecking idiot to conclude from what was written above that i am an advocate of Joseph Stalin or his tyranny.

He was indeed a murdering brute. He was also a staunch advocate of the totalitarian state, which you do support.

I appreciate that profit is a dirty word to the buffoons of the left, who fail to see that for any society to progress, more must be generated than is spent by the state.

 

[redcogs]

Your tedious anti communist narrative has you stuck in a cold war mind set fighting battles that were always dubious but today sound positively eccentric. Hierarchy and your beloved profit system have dragged the world to a point where humanity face oblivion, where species extinction is accelerating beyond all previous experience, where individual capitalists hold more wealth and power than entire nation states whilst the poor fester in insecurity and squalor, yet you peddle vile misanthropic shit as though nothing is systemically wrong.

The young are thankfully waking up to this injustice, just as your generation of cynical wankers are fading into oblivion. Its bound to be frustrating. Have you considered Dignitas? im told its the perfect cure.

 

[Fedayn]

He was indeed a murdering brute. He was also a staunch advocate of the totalitarian state, which you do support.

Silly billy.... You do know that those with politics like redcogs were the first victims of Stalin and his butchery. Whilst he was doing wee deals with various 'capitalist' countries and being feted in America by various capitalist businesmen. When you fat racist pal Churchill was drinking champagne and eating caviar with Uncle Joe in Tehran he had butchered various genuine revolutionaries in Leningrad, not that this mattered to the bosses over here... . Always an idea to have a clue what you are talking about....

The same Churchill who defended Mussolini and his totalitarian state and also understood Hitlers anti-socialist ideas and move into the Saar and Ruhr........

 

[DexterTCN]

And I think it was well over three hundred jobs here - again from a plant established with a lot of Westminster money.

It's almost equivalent to the Honda place shutting down south, population-wise. Devastating.