Nissan to end night shift at Sunderland plant
From behind the paywall:
"Nissan workers at the carmaker’s Sunderland plant have been told that the factory’s night shift is to end.
In a brief statement on Wednesday night, the company confirmed that headcount at the plant, which employs around 6,500 people, will remain the same despite the change. At present, the plant, the UK’s biggest single carmaking site, operates three shifts and works around the clock. It will move to two shifts.
The Nissan statement said: “To support the production of the new Juke [small sport utility vehicle], extra manufacturing staff will be needed on the plant’s production Line Two. In a restructuring of the production schedule, these staff will transfer from production Line One, with both lines operating on a two-shift pattern.”
Nissan declined to give any further details.
The timing, coming as anxieties over the threat of a no-deal Brexit intensify, will arouse further unease among workers in the UK automotive sector. The sector faces potentially grave disruption in the event of a no-deal Brexit and is already suffering from a drop in new car sales. While the Nissan statement indicates that more staff are needed on the Juke line, the end of the night shift may imply a drop in volumes for the larger Qashqai SUV.
Last week, Nissan said that plans to build the new Qashqai in Sunderland — a model crucial to the plant and a linchpin of its output — had not changed following reports that the company could change its mind if the UK left the EU without a deal. But it urged UK and EU negotiators to “work collaboratively towards an orderly, balanced Brexit that will continue to encourage mutually beneficial trade”.
The Sunderland plant makes the Qashqai, Juke and electric Leaf models.
On Wednesday night, Steve Turner, assistant general secretary of Unite, the recognised union at the Sunderland site, said: “Unite has been aware of this announcement for some time and our officers and reps at the plant have been working hard to ensure that the full workforce is protected. As a result, no jobs will be lost with current demand being consolidated into the remaining day shifts.”
The end of the third shift, which will affect around 3,000 people, will mean a slight drop in pay because the night shift premium will not apply. Nissan is north-east England’s biggest private-sector employer and its Sunderland plant is crucial to many thousands of supply chain jobs in the area.
Night shift has been part of the production schedule for years at the Sunderland site, and has helped the plant cope with strong demand for the Qashqai.
The axing of night shift follows other reversals at the plant in the past two years — none of which have been attributed by Nissan to Brexit uncertainty.
Earlier this year, it reversed a 2016 decision to build the X-Trail vehicle there, a year after laying off hundreds of workers at the site because of a sharp decline in diesel sales across Europe. It also stopped production there this year of the Infiniti Q30, a premium model.
The Sunderland plant, in production since 1986, is one of the carmaker’s international crown jewels, ranking among its most efficient sites outside of Japan. Investment in the plant now exceeds £4bn, with a further £100m spent to prepare for the new Juke, which is about to begin production.
Around three-quarters of the site’s cars are exported, with more than half going to Europe. Its UK supply chain supports 26,000 jobs."
