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Trinity titles take Jaguar fight to Downing Street

Five Trinity Mirror regional dailies have launched a new fight to safeguard the future of Jaguar Land Rover.

The Birmingham Post and Mail, Coventry Telegraph and Liverpool Daily Post and Echo are pleading with Chancellor Alistair Darling and Business Secretary Peter Mandelson to sign off a £1bn loan aimed at keeping the firm afloat.

An e-petition has been submitted to the Downing Street website by Birmingham Post editor Marc Reeves and a Facebook campaign group has already attracted over 170 members.

The company directly employs around 16,000 people at plants in the West Midlands and Merseyside while a further 60,000 people are employed in supply chain and car showroom jobs across the UK.

JLR, now owned by Indian firm Tata after a £1.15bn sale last summer, is seeking a commercial loan, rather than a financial bail out, which it intends to repay by 2011.

  • How today’s front pages look on the five papers
  • In an editorial comment piece, Birmingham Mail editor Steve Dyson said: “It has announced 600 voluntary redundancies and 850 agency job losses, has cut night shifts at Land Rover and introduced four-day weeks on the Jaguar XJ and XK lines.

    “It has even offered production staff three-month sabbaticals on 80pc pay.

    “But these measures may not be enough as the worst sales climate to hit the car sector for 40 years exacts a brutal toll.

    “JLR is a well-run, successful firm, whose research and development expenditure is the seventh largest in the UK.

    “It made an operating profit of £310m in the first half of 2008. This is a special request from a special company in unprecedented economic circumstances.”

    Comments

    rich newell (06/01/2009 15:45:23)
    Surely the Government cant just sit there and let another part of our manufacturing secter go to the wall?The alternative will be frightening and will mean thousands more people having to claim off the state and pulling the economy further into a black hole.This Government must help to protect real jobs first.before it starts trying to create so called Green jobs which add nothing to our economy.

    Mr Mystery (07/01/2009 21:08:12)
    This is just another cynical Trinity Mirror ploy to hold on to a declining readership – moving away from the papers in disgust at the fact they are sacking all their talent and replacing them with ill qualified “multi-taskers”. And, before you ask, no I am fortunately not a Trinity Mirror employee

    Mr Mystery (07/01/2009 21:10:02)
    By the way, we have had the spin about the management at the Post and Echo but what is happening to the real staff there? I don’t want to know about those with their snouts in the trough but there is a human story here that the trade press seem to be largely ignoring