What recovery? Thousands more jobs axed


The Con-Dems much vaunted economic recovery is a mirage judged by the recently announced large scale job cuts affecting manufacturing and the service sector. Socialist Party members in Wales and Derby report on these draconian cuts. It’s vital the trade unions organise a fightback to prevent this economic devastation.

Rolls Royce

Rolls Royce (RR) has announced job cuts with the biggest impact in Derby at the civil aerospace factories in Sinfin, which employ 12,000 workers. Up to 1,800 jobs will be axed over the next 18 months.

The local paper explains: “With shareholders to satisfy, Rolls-Royce is on a constant drive to deliver profitability. And if cutting costs, namely jobs, is a means to achieving them, then so be it. It is economics at its most brutal.”

Yet RR has an order book worth £71 billion and £60 billion has been secured by its aerospace division, the very part of the business where the axe will fall.

In the past few years, RR has delivered profits in spades to its investors, breaking records along the way.

I can remember being at school when RR in Derby went bust in 1971. Then, workers took to the streets with demonstrations. Such was the anger that the then Tory Heath government was forced to nationalise it in 24 hours.

The unions should be demanding the opening up of the company accounts to inspection by the workforce, no job losses whatsoever, and renationalisation under democratic workers’ control and management.

Derby has already suffered from job cuts at Bombardier. If the unions don’t fight then RR will keep coming back again and again announcing job cuts in the future and this would turn Derby into a ghost town.

Chris Fernandez

Milford Haven

Residents of Milford Haven now have another reason to remember 5 November, when it was announced that the Murco oil refinery, one of the biggest employers in the town, was to close. This will lead to the loss of 400 jobs directly, plus an estimated 1,500 jobs from contractors on the site, and taking a massive £30 million out of the local economy.

The loss of this refinery is the latest in a line of closures and layoffs to hit the town situated in one of the poorest regions of northern Europe.

Unemployment in the town is skyrocketing thanks to Con-Dem cuts passed on through a Labour Assembly to a county council that is set to slash its budget by 25% in the coming financial year.

Socialists demand renationalisation of the energy sector as part of a democratically planned economy to ensure full employment.

Gareth Bromhall