370 workers to go at troubled truck firm; Accounting flaws force job losses.Byline: Stephen Stephen, 1097?–1154, king of England (1135–54). The son of Stephen, count of Blois and Chartres, and Adela, daughter of William I of England, he was brought up by his uncle, Henry I of England, who presented him with estates in England and France and Rylance TROUBLED truck manufacturer ERF n. 1. A garden plot, usually about half an acre. is to shed 370 jobs after allegations of discrepancies in the firm's accounts. More than half the 760-strong workforce at its Middlewich site will be made redundant at the assembly factory, bosses announced last night. A company spokesman said the job cuts were a direct result of alleged irregularities discovered in ERF's account last month during an audit carried out by its Munichbased parent company, MAN. After the discrepancies were found for the year 2000, totalling tens of millions of euros, two senior staff members were suspended sus·pend v. sus·pend·ed, sus·pend·ing, sus·pends v.tr. 1. To bar for a period from a privilege, office, or position, usually as a punishment: suspend a student from school. pending an investigation. Redundancies will be made across the board, from assembly line jobs to management posts. ERF spokesman Trevor Longcroft said: "We are still investigating discrepancies which have left us in a loss-making situation. "These restructuring restructuring - The transformation from one representation form to another at the same relative abstraction level, while preserving the subject system's external behaviour (functionality and semantics). measures are necessary in order to bring the company back into profitability." Over the next six months truck assembly at the company's plant in Middlewich will switch to ERF products based more heavily on MAN technology and for the UK market only. MAN has already indicated that it intends to maintain ERF as a sales and marketing subsidiary, alongside MAN Truck and Bus UK. Mr Longcroft added: "Truck manufacturing at Middlewich will continue but we are seeking to reduce headcount by some 370 people to achieve the economies necessary to reduce further costs and to compete more effectively in the market place. "ERF will be run solely for the UK and no exports will be made in future. We will maintain the sales and distribution arm of ERF alongside the MAN UK sales and marketing operation. "They will be run as two separate entities but will make use of common facilities in order to achieve economies of scale." The company, which moved its plant from Sandbach to Middlewich a year ago, was until recently the UK's leading truck builder, rivalled only by a truck manufacturing plant at Leyland. Established in 1933, the firm produces up to 60,000 trucks a year for haulage and distribution. Mr Longcroft said ERF would now enter a three-month consultation period with unions including the TNG TNG Training TNG The Next Generation TNG Tongue TNG The Newspaper Guild (Union) TNG Transitional National Government TNG Telescopio Nazionale Galileo (national facility of the Italian astronomical community) and the AEEU AEEU (in Britain) Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union AEEU n abbr (BRIT) (= Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union) → sindicato mixto de ingenieros y electricistas . A spokesman for the TNG was last night unavailable for comment. There is no evidence to suggest that John Bryant John Bryant may refer to:
Until the investigation is completed, management of the UK subsidiary and the Middlewich plant will pass to acting chief executive Michael Raab. |
|
||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion