Redundant Avon staff at Melksham told to go (From This Is Wiltshire)

Redundant Avon staff at Melksham told to go

12:40pm Friday 5th June 2009 in News

Workers at a Melksham tyre firm faced redundancy this week as around four percent of the work force lost their jobs.

Last month the company, which is based in Bath Road and employs more than 1,000 people, said it was looking to make about 47 workers redundant.

A 30-day consultation between staff, union leaders and company bosses began on May 1.

This week a spokesman for the company said: “Forty-six people from the shopfloor and engineering areas were made redundant, as announced at the beginning of May.”

One employee, who lost his job the day after he talked to the Wiltshire Times, said: “It’s a joke. A couple of people got made redundant on Monday and they let them work Saturday and Sunday, so they got a whole weekend’s work out of them and then they told them they had lost their jobs.”

The man, who has worked for the Avon for seven years and did not want to be named, said: “They called me in to the office and handed me my letter.

“It was really badly done and no one is happy about it. They picked us out by saying ‘you and you and you’ so everyone knew who was going.

“My redundancy pay was a joke. It works out at about £1-a-day. I am going to have no money now until I get my cheque through and I have got a mortgage to pay.

“It’s not going to get us anywhere by having a moan about it but after all these years of service they only spent five minutes to tell me that I am out.

“They promised us that if we had all these shutdowns there wouldn’t be any redundancies.”

Last month workers were warned the company risked becoming uncompetitive.