LandRover faces ultimatum

THE jobs of 8,000 Land Rover workers in the Midlands are hanging in the balance as management and unions desperately work together on a rescue plan. Ford, which owns the factory in Solihull, has told bosses and unions to come up with a workable plan to make the factory more reliable, or it will be closed.

Both sides worked together for two months to devise a rescue plan. It was presented to Ford bosses last

month, but the package was rejected by Mark Fields, president of Ford's Premier Automotive Group (PAG), which includes Volvo, Jaguar and Aston Martin as well as Land Rover.

Ford bosses in Detroit regard the performance of the Land Rover factory as extremely unsatisfactory and they have told unions that failure to come up with a viable rescue package will result in production being moved to Halewood in Liverpool, where there is surplus capacity in the Jaguar plant.

Ford's PAG subsidiary lost £201m in the first quarter of this year, but the particular problem at Solihull is reliability.

Land Rovers being produced at the factory have an unenviable and growing reputation for bad workmanship. They have been built at the site since 1947.