Save Jobs At G E Aviation

G E Aircraft Engine Services workers will be marching on Saturday to save jobs at Nantgarw near Caerphilly. The US multinational has announced the loss of 369 jobs out of a workforce of 1350 which threatens the long-term future of the aircraft engine plant.

Jobs at GE are hi-tech, highly skilled and well-paid industrial jobs. For generations the plant has taken on dozens of apprentices, male and female, to be trained for well-paid jobs. The knock-on effect of lay-offs and job losses at the plant will be devastating on communities in Caerphilly and Pontypridd.

Unite at GE has organised to launch the fight against the job losses with a socially-distanced march and rally in Caerphilly organised with Caerphilly trades council.

Nearly 4000 job losses have been announced at plants in the Welsh aviation industry since the Covid pandemic began which threatens the loss thousands more jobs in the supply industries. The temporary collapse in the aviation industry is allowing employers to restructure to the detriment of workers.

Every loss of jobs at GE threatens the viability of the plant and means it might lose important projects bringing the future of the plant into question. 2500 jobs were lost at the plant after the slowdown in aviation following 9/11 in 2001. Once gone the jobs are gone forever: rather than re-skilling for other jobs the already skilled workers mainly migrated to where the work was – in France, New Zealand, the Emirates and the Far East. So the loss of 369 jobs would be a permanent blow and there have been rumours that the another couple of hundred jobs could go.

Work has dried up at the plant which maintains airplane engines as the aviation industry ground to a halt during the Covid crisis. But the industry expects to recover next year or 18 months – the demand for the work that Nantgarw has done for decades will return. So the workers and their skill must be retained on the site.

GE workers have demanded that the UK government steps in to safeguard the plant and the jobs. They have called for the company to share out the work and for workers to be temporarily re-deployed on public track-and-trace work during the Covid crisis until the work in aviation picks up again.

60 workers made redundant from Ford Bridgend were recently take on at GE and the plant is due to launch work on new low fuel, low burn GE 9X engines that reduce carbon emissions.

Aviation engines have been maintained at Nantgarw for 80 years, originally as part of British Airways, before being taken over by GE in 1991. If GE begins to run the plant down then the government must step back in to save this important facility. The plant should be brought back into public ownership along with BA (which is threatening 42,000 jobs) and the aviation industry planned.

In 1971 Rolls Royce aircraft production was nationalised by the Tory Heath government when the company was in trouble. Most of the industry has been nationalised at one time or another because of its strategic importance. With thousands of aviation jobs once again under threat there must be a mass campaign by aviation unions to force the government to step in and re-nationalise the industry.

Protest organised by Unite Cymru Wales and Caerphilly Trades Council

Saturday 1 August

Assemble Rear of Caerphilly Castle

12.00 noon

This is a socially-distanced event – please wear masks