Dutch workers fear redundancy 40 years on

History is in danger of repeating itself in Limburg, the Netherlands, where the sons of coal miners thrown out of work 40 years ago when the government closed uneconomic pits, now face redundancy themselves.

The 3,000 workers at Nedcar, the only large-scale car factory in the Netherlands, include many whose fathers worked at the plant at Born when it was opened in 1966. Ironically it was established with government subsidies to ease unemployment in a region scarred by the loss of 75,000 mining jobs.

There appears little prospect of state intervention this time around. At least 1,000 jobs are expected to go in the coming months as Mitsubishi Motor Corporation (MMC), the factory’s Japanese owner since 1991, cuts costs.

But the fear is that entire plant will eventually close because the Japanese cannot commit to manufacturing the Mitsubishi Colt car at Born beyond the end of the decade. It is MMC’s sole European production facility.

Negotiations between unions and MMC - whose president Osamu Masuko was in the Netherlands at Easter for crisis talks with Jan Peter Balkenende, Dutch prime minister – proved fruitless.

Read full article: Financial Times, 21 April 2006