Flexible employment at Mini - the upside and the downside

This morning’s bad news for jobs comes from the Mini car plant in Oxford, where 850 workers have been laid off as the weekend shift is cancelled with immediate effect. There has been a fall of news orders of 30% during January following an even larger fall in December, and in order to cut capacity the BMW group is cutting production from three shifts to only two, and on five days a week instead of seven. The carmaker also said it had identified 150 surplus workers at its panel production plant in Swindon. Those workers will be offered a transfer to work in Oxford, it added. There is not statement included about their engine plant near Birmingham. But as the Swindon plant uses components on a sophisticated just-in-time system from a good number of local suppliers, there is bound to be a knock-on effect on those employers around Oxford too.

This is relevant to flexible employment because those losing their jobs are all agency workers, who are not employed on a permanent basis but for as long as they are needed. Those workers do not have the same level of protection as Mini’s permanent workforce, or ‘associates’, who are being redeployed onto other shifts; although some of the agency staff have worked at the plant for four years they will not qualify for redundancy payouts and are unemployed with immediate effect. On the other hand this gives the employer the flexibility to respond to the downturn swiftly, and they do say that they hope to be able to take some of those workers back in the future when sales pick up again. In a radio interview this morning a representative from the Unite union that represents the workforce confirmed that the associates will not be facing redundancy at the moment, but made the point that there will be some management jobs lost, as there are now fewer shifts needing management and supervision.

Although this is a shock announcement for those workers affected, it cannot have come as a complete surprise; the factory closed down for 4 weeks over Christmas, re-opened on 5th January only to close down for a further 3 days, and is shut down over this week to coincide with the half term break.

I visited this Oxford production plant just three weeks ago with a group of Business Studies students (after our planned trip to the Jaguar plant at Castle Bromwich was cancelled as that factory was put onto a short-term shutdown in January). This was an excellent visit, with a great tour of the production areas and ample opportunity to ask questions about the fantastically well-developed just in time production and stock control techniques that the plant employs, the combination of flow and job production, training and team work arrangements, and design and technology developments. We heard that, ironically, Mini remains one of the more successful cars in production, with sales in the US holding up well at present partly thanks to the weakness of the pound, and partly to a shift in preference for smaller, more environmentally friendly cars rather than the gas guzzlers in that market. We went on to Morgan’s hand-built cars in Malvern which is equally impressive, and a complete contrast. Very good value and highly recommended – book it while you can!

This is a link to the news story on the BBC website.
This is a link to the website of the Mini factory at Oxford – look at the ‘Commitment’ section to find out about plant tours.