The management cuts will almost exclusively be from positions at the company’s TyreFort headquarters in Birmingham, with a further 69 non-office positions around the country. However, at least some of the jobs are a question of administration, with employment simply transferring to the various holders of the new franchise agreement instead of Goodyear Dunlop itself.
The 29 redundancies are understood to include an undisclosed number of “top roles,” which will be replaced during the merger of managerial functions between the Dunlop motorsport facility adjacent to company headquarters at Erdington and the Goodyear components plant in Wolverhampton. Other jobs were lost due to the outsourcing of some accounting functions to Poland two years ago.
The job cut targets are expected to be met through attrition and voluntary redundancies over the course of the next 12 months. They come as part of the manufacturer’s long-term plans to increase profitability between now and 2010. Despite the job losses staff morale is said to remain good, something that sources put down to new general manger Mark Brickhill and his team’s straightforward style.
In April, Goodyear Dunlop closed its Washington, Sunderland, Dunlop tyre production facility. This is likely to generate savings of between £15 and £20 million a year, but it did cost approximately 585 jobs.
Goodyear Dunlop still employs around 700 people in the Birmingham area alone.
