Jobs at risk at the Swindon factory of Honda

The Japanese car and motorbike firm Honda are one of the worlds finest when it comes to the car industry. Over the recent years we have seen them make it big on the new and second hand car markets with vehicles such as the Civic and the Jazz amongst many more. The factory they have in Swindon here in the UK is one of the UK plants that design these two specific vehicles but production could drastically be cut for these models at the Swindon plant over the course of the next year. It has been confirmed sadly that job cuts are set to take place at the factory which could potentially mean a loss of around 500 jobs.

Why the loss of jobs at Honda Swindon ?

The reason that some of these job losses are set to occur is because shifts at the factory have cut down from three shifts a day to two. Reasoning behind this according to Ian Howells from Honda is that “Over the last 12 months, we have not seen the growth wed anticipated “. The Swindon plant officially opened up back in 1992 and over the course of last year unfortunately seen 554 voluntary redundancies last year and 38 compulsory releases. It is expected that 340 permanent associates will be released over the next two to three months and some temporary staff that were set to be released towards the end of the year anyway.

Slow growth of the models at the Honda plant are to blame for these job cuts which is very sad news for not just Honda but the automotive industry as a whole.

The future for Honda Swindon and vehicle production

So with a plant that helps with the production of the Civic and the Jazz this is indeed a huge loss for the mass manufacturer and this could mean less Civic and Jazz models to reach showrooms around the United Kingdom. Along side job cuts it has been stated by the firm that they are also planning to move all production in the factory to just the one line in an aid to help increase production,flexibility and efficiency.