Car firm records first annual loss
23 December 2008
Thousands more jobs are at risk in Britain’s car industry after Japanese giant Toyota recorded its first annual loss.
Toyota, the world’s largest car maker which last year reported record profits, yesterday forecast losses of more than £1 billion this year. Like many other car manufacturers, the company has already taken measures to reduce production and has not ruled out future redundancies. In the UK, more than 4,000 people are employed at the firm’s manufacturing plant in Derbyshire and about 600 in an engine factory in Wales.
The news comes after Tata Motors, the Indian owner of Jaguar Land Rover, was poised to inject tens of millions of pounds into the ailing British car maker. This would temporarily save thousands of jobs until the UK government makes a decision over whether to use public money to bail out the country’s car industry. Some 850 agency workers were recently laid off at Jaguar Land Rover following a steep decline in production and the future of the firm’s 15,000 staff remains uncertain.
The CBI has urged the government to give urgent help to the struggling industry, which it said is vital to the UK’s future. With 800,000 jobs reliant on car making, Richard Lambert, the confederation’s director-general, said the government should “put the public balance sheet behind the industry”.
The union Unite has also urged the government to give immediate help. Speaking as president Bush announced a rescue package for the beleaguered US car industry, Unite’s joint general secretary Derek Simpson, said: “Only action by the treasury in the next few days will safeguard the tens of thousands of jobs and the many communities across the country that depend on car manufacturing for their livelihoods. For their sake and the sake of our manufacturing base we do not have the luxury of pondering on intervention for weeks or months. Intervention must come this side of Christmas.”