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Honda Confirms Plan to Leave Britain as Brexit Looms
The Japanese automaker Honda has become the latest business to make plans to leave Britain as global forces reshape the car industry and the country prepares to exit the European Union.
Honda will close its plant in Swindon, England, which employs 3,500 workers, by 2021, it confirmed on Tuesday. The factory, which produces about 150,000 cars a year, will close once its current line of Civic cars comes to an end.
"In light of the unprecedented changes that are affecting our industry, it is vital that we accelerate our electrification strategy and restructure our global operations accordingly," Katsushi Inoue, the chief officer for European operations, said in a statement.
The decision was a "devastating decision for Swindon and the U.K.," Greg Clark, Britain's business secretary, said in a statement. "The news is a particularly bitter blow to the thousands of skilled and dedicated staff who work at the factory, their families and all of those employed in the supply chain," Mr. Clark said, adding that he would convene a "task force" to keep the employees in work.
Also at CNN.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 19 2019, @07:06PM (7 children)
Mr. Clark said, adding that he would convene a "task force" to keep the employees in work.
This taskforce has a straightforward means of achieving its goal: cancel Brexit. This is going to be the only way to prevent these sort of losses, and this late in the game, even this might not suffice.
I said it would be straightforward, not easy. Right wingnuts will go ballistic, and Trump/Putin will have a conniption, but it would go a long way toward saving the UK's position in the world, their economy, and their independence from the US. Unfortunately it would also prevent the worst of the right-wing excesses of the Tories (like privatizing and/or eliminating the NHS) which is something Teresa May won't countenance.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Sulla on Tuesday February 19 2019, @07:21PM (3 children)
How many jobs were lost in the UK over the last few decades because the EU gave companies incentives to move production from the UK/France/Germany to the less developed members?
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Tuesday February 19 2019, @08:59PM
Profit--
It's only when a mosquito lands on a man's testicles
that he realizes violence is not always the answer.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday February 20 2019, @06:45PM (1 child)
Negative a bajillion. Which adds exactly as much substance to this thread as your concern troll.
If you would like to argue that they lost jobs due to this maybe you should try presenting some evidence,
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:29PM
Should be straightforward. Count the number of (coal) miners that lost their jobs during the '80s and '90s, then contrast that against the mining jobs opening in Spain, Italy and Greece.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by janrinok on Tuesday February 19 2019, @07:27PM (2 children)
Honda have already made a statement saying that Brexit is NOT a major factor in this. The EU has recently signed a deal with Honda so they no longer have to pay tariffs on vehicles produced outside the EU. There is no benefit to Honda from having any manufacturing inside the EU anymore. Honda have also decided to concentrate on the US, China and Japan for their future manufacturing, particularly on future electric cars.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday February 20 2019, @07:56AM (1 child)
Honda are trying to be very polite and not inflame the ERG/UKIP/Alt-Wrong/Far-Wrong types who are threatening the country with "civil unrest" if they don't get their Brexit. They are also trying not to upset the Conservative Party in general because they don't want to burn their bridges.
Anyone who works for a living in the UK can tell you this. What companies are saying in public regarding Brexit is very mild indeed compared to their internal discussions and preparations.
Disclaimer: I do not work for Honda.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 20 2019, @09:43AM
Eh?, I watched a bespectacled young oik of an economist on the Beeb rabbit on at length about how the Japanese have been planning to move production to the Far East for a while (closer to what they see as their main future growth market), mutterings about how it was more or less the bribes, sorry, subsidies which made them irrationally set up shop in Britain in the first place, and the EU-Japan deal removing the final barrier to this shift. Only as an afterthought, he added, oh Brexit..
Seems like the only people surprised by this move are the poor plebs who worked there.
As to 'civil unrest', if it happens it'll be fun watching the confused looks on the faces of the riot police, they're more used to cracking the skulls of lefties, students and pseudo-hippies, not, as it were, their eigenes Volk..
Well, as someone whose post was made redundant allegedly thanks to the 'Brexit preparations' the lot I worked for made (blah, blah, blah, projected downturn, blah, blah, blah, scaling back operations, blah, blah, blah ) can I just say that there's a serious amount of egregious shite being talked, and they're all lining up to see how best they can use the whole Brexit debacle as the ultimate fucking excuse for every shitty weasel move/stunt they've dreamed about implementing but felt they couldn't get away with...
Hint: my post was made redundant, coz Brexit...fast forward a couple of months a remarkably similar but lower paid post is filled by a minion I trained..
Bitter, Moi?