Redundancy Spells Opportunity for MG Rover Workers
27 February 2007
When MG Rover went into receivership in 2005, thousands of skilled workers faced a tough future. Whilst their skills and work ethic were without question, they had to consider retraining to find a job \'on the outside\' of the company that many of them had worked in for years.
Immediate help came from the Government-funded Rover Rapid Response, set up and run by the Learning and Skills Council which offered retraining at local colleges.
Between them Sutton College, Stourbridge College and Dudley College took on around 80 former Rover workers to train them as gas installation engineers, on a 9-month intensive training course, to help them become Corgi-registered so they could work in the gas industry.
To achieve full qualification, and their Corgi-registration without which a gas engineer cannot work, each trainee had to complete both college-based training and on-the-job work experience.
Whilst the colleges could provide the training, they were not able to find enough work placements so the trainees could complete their Corgi registration, making their training effectively useless unless they could find a work placement to provide evidence of their competence.
The local Learning and Skills Council turned to Energy & Utility Skills (EU Skills) for help.
According to EU Skills Operations Manager, Nick Edwards: \"Everybody undergoing retraining as a gas installation engineer needed to find work placement to complete their course, and we knew there were more former MG Rover employees who were keen to retrain within the industry too.\"
The Challenge
EU Skills needed to work quickly to identify work placement opportunities for the 80 trainees, and further work placements for another 40 or so students who were considering doing the course.
Harnessing its close links to industry, EU Skills started to contact all employers across the area to encourage them to offer placements to the trainees.
\"It\'s a big job to match 80 trainees with suitable companies, and persuade them to take on a worker at short notice,\" explained Nick. \"But each employer recognised that the quality of these trainees was perhaps higher than usual. They were excellent workers with the right motivation and commitment to do a good job, who had lost previous employment through no fault of their own. An employer knows when they are getting a good deal, and that\'s just what it was.\"
With 80 trainees in work placements, EU Skills turned its attention to the 40 or so more former MG Rover employees wanting to work in the gas industry, and made sure they found suitable training and work experience.
Having successfully given the trainees the opportunity they needed to complete their training and obtain Corgi registration, EU Skills started to consider how to help them into jobs.
Using local industry contacts, EU Skills began talking to local businessman Clive Denham.
Clive saw an opportunity to fill a gap in the market for gas central heating installation – but he needed good quality gas engineers. It seemed like a great opportunity for him to be able to set up a new business, using highly qualified staff who hadn\'t been available the previous year.
Rover Heating was set up in September last year, and around 80 of the eventual 120 newly-trained gas installation engineers formally MG Rover employees will be working for the company on a self-employed basis – many of the others were either taken on by the companies that had offered them work placements, or they are working elsewhere.
For those that joined the new company, Midweb Heating Ltd will provide the equipment, support and Corgi registration and the engineers with a much more secure and bright future than many were expecting when they received their last MG Rover paycheque.
Partners in the training programme included boiler manufacturer Worcester Bosch who provided some of the necessary work experience to enable the newly qualified gas heating installers to become CORGI registered through Midweb Heating Ltd.
Business Benefits
The entrepreneurial attitude of Clive Denham has enabled the launch of a new business offering opportunities for employment not only for those retraining as gas installation engineers, but also for a number of administration and support staff who were also victims of the MG Rover redundancy.
The whole project has been very successful one. Working with all parties EU Skills has the retraining scheme fulfilled all the necessary technical requirements and successfully helped satisfy skills shortages in the gas industry.\"
Boosting Skills
Over 100 ex-MG Rover technicians have now been retrained as gas engineers, putting their technical capabilities into a new area of employment and helping to fill a shortfall of qualified gas installers and service engineers in the local area.
The newly-trained gas installation engineers are well-qualified, well-motivated and keen to make the most of a new career opportunity that many had never thought would come their way.
Alan Mullins, a former manager at MG Rover\'s Longbridge plant, trained through the programme. He said: \"I am married with three children and a mortgage so when MG Rover collapsed, it was frightening. Having retrained thanks to EU Skills support, my self-esteem has risen and I am happy to be able to work in an industry I enjoy. We all felt we were on the scrapheap, but the training for this was very intense so my confidence is back.\"
The Future
EU Skills has also recently completed work on new gas Apprenticeships for the whole industry to harmonise existing schemes for the future unification of standards throughout the industry.
Midweb Heating Ltd is due to launch on 1 December this year and as gas installation engineers become fully qualified they will be take on in teams of four, with the business planning to be up to full strength in early 2007.
The EU Skills retraining scheme has been so successful that the Birmingham Skills Council has indicated a desire for extending this project concept to redundant supply chain workers.
