As of the 1st of November, 1 800 jobs will disappear at the Dutch car manufacturing plant Nedcar in Born. One of the two work shifts will completely disappear, almost halving the number of employees.

Mother company VDL sent the message to the works council on Thursday, discussing “an unavoidable dismantling of fellow workers”. VDL adds that it doesn’t exclude that in March 2024, another round of job cuts is not to be excluded. The BMW contract (producing Mini) expires then.

Currently, some 3950 people are employed at Nedcar, 1 000 permanent and 800 temporary workers will not have employment at nedcar anymore as of 1 November. This includes production employees and people in supporting services.

Turbulent circumstances

In a statement, the VDL management explains that it is still looking for other clients in the automotive business but that it didn’t work out yet. “We’ve done our utmost to ensure production,” says VDL director John van Soerland, “but until now, we didn’t succeed. Time has been too short in a very turbulent automotive environment to achieve this. This makes us very unhappy, and we apologize to the workers.”

VDL says it will try to lead as many workers as possible to other jobs and reiterates that there is a social plan foreseeing doubling the legal severance pay plus a so-called end-of-work bonus amounting to € 7 500.

Unions extremely unhappy

For a long time already, the workers’ unions are very unhappy with the decisions of the VDL management and have been organizing strike days and other protests lately. They are also refusing the social plan the management proposes and are asking for at least double.

Now they claim to be flabbergasted by the management’s move to talk to the press first before warning the unions and the workers’ council about the job cuts. “At the moment, people are already feeling very uneasy,” says Jeroen Bruinsma from the CNV union. “People are heavily frustrated and disappointed. This comes at a very unhappy moment.”

“To say that you’re still sticking to the social plan of 2021 is very inappropriate,” he adds. “The circumstances are completely different now, and we agreed that changing circumstances would lead to a review of the social plan. Until now, VDL has always refused to talk seriously about this.”