MG Rover: Former workers reveal life on the breadline
The father-of-two said: “I was unemployed but have been working for three and a half years on the railways.
“We used to have gangs of nine but that has been cut back now, so I’m only doing two or three days a week.
“It’s not enough really but at least it’s work.”
Their experiences are typical of men and women left on the employment scrapheap after the Longbridge closure.
Birmingham professor Carl Chinn says the new jobs that many ex-workers had found are no match for the ones lost.
“People have been retrained but they are now on short-term low paid jobs when before they were on long-term high paid ones,” he said.
“They have lost their feeling of security and the sense of camaraderie from the workplace.
“There was such a groundswell of optimism when union leaders, politicians and workers came together in the hope of maintaining an iconic manufacturer like Longbridge in 2000. Now that has turned to despair.”
