Ex-Rover workers 'earning less'

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Most of the 6,300 workers laid off with the collapse of MG Rover in 2005 had to take substantial pay cuts when they found new jobs, research suggests.

The Work Foundation and Birmingham Business School found that 90% of 200 people questioned were in some form of employment by April this year.

But two thirds were earning less, with the cuts averaging £5,640 a year.

The BBC's Martin Shankleman says the report could offer lessons for policy-makers amid rising unemployment.

About one third of the workers had found new roles in manufacturing and were earning roughly the same as they had at MG Rover's Longbridge plant in Birmingham.

But of the 60% who had moved to the service sector, most had suffered a pay cut - this averaged over £6,000 a year across retail, education, health and social work.

Almost one in four of the 200 interviewees said they were now in debt or drawing on savings.

The Work Foundation senior researcher Michelle Mahdon said: "The jobs at Rover were high quality manufacturing jobs paying above the average for the West Midlands region so it was always likely that workers would not be able to find directly comparable work."

She added: "But judged against national levels, it does appear that the ex-Rover workers are now in jobs with slightly lower levels of autonomy, challenge and skill use, and fewer opportunities for progression than other workers in the UK."

While almost half of those studied said their job was worse then their role at Rover, a quarter claimed they had found a better position.

Lessons

Official figures on Wednesday put UK unemployment in September at 1.82 million, its highest level in 11 years.

"With mass unemployment back on the political agenda, this report may well contain some lessons for policy-makers," says our business correspondent.

We must never again allow highly-skilled, well-paid manufacturing jobs such as these to be lost from our communities Tony Woodley, Unite "After Rover collapsed in 2005, massive efforts were devoted to finding alternative jobs for the six -and-a-half-thousand workers," he says.

"Despite the efforts of outside agencies, most people who found a new job said they did so through their own initiative or through personal contacts."

Tony Woodley, joint leader of the Unite union, praised the former Rover workforce's "resilience" in finding new employment.

"But the bald reality is that most of them were forced to abandon manufacturing, set aside their skills and take a hefty pay cut just to stay in work," he said.

"The real lesson from the Rover experience, and one that we urge government to pay close attention to at this time of tremendous economic uncertainty, is that we must never again allow highly-skilled, well-paid manufacturing jobs such as these to be lost from our communities."