The news that 1,400 jobs are to be shorn from Bombardier’s train manufacturing
plant in Derby has sent the worlds of business and politics into collision. Ostensibly, these job losses are the result of the Department of Transport’s decision to award the Thameslink
renewal contract to German company Siemens. And unions warn that the 12,000 jobs that depend on supplying Bombardier are now threatened.
This has led some on the left to criticise the government’s “incoherent plan for
growth”.
Elsewhere, both right and left blame European competition law, and there is consensus that the government should intervene to preserve British jobs. Philip Hammond has written to Vince Cable insisting that ‘procurement processes have a sharper focus on domestic supply lines’ in future. Meanwhile, Unite’s Assistant General Secretary for Manufacturing, Tony Burke, acknowledged that European competition law is complicated, but not insoluble.
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