Media centre

Thursday 21 Apr 2005

UP TO 200 LONGBRIDGE WORKERS TO BE OFFERED NEW JOBS

Region & Route:

National

Network Rail has stepped up to offer employees from MG Rover’s skilled workforce the chance to bring their expertise to the rail industry and join in the task of rebuilding Britain’s railway.   Deputy Chief Executive, Iain Coucher, said: “Longbridge contains a vast pool of talent.  The workers have exactly the sort of skills we need to help us rebuild Britain’s railway. We’ve identified nearly 200 jobs in the immediate Birmingham area and we’d very much like to help local people by filling all these posts with Longbridge employees.   Network Rail has identified 192 vacancies in the immediate Birmingham area, offering a wide variety of job opportunities, including: engineers, project managers, signallers and maintenance workers.   A job fair will be held within or close to the Longbridge Plant within the next two weeks, where MG Rover workers will be able to talk to Network Rail people about the jobs on offer.   Full training will be offered to allow workers to convert their existing skills, experience and expertise to the specific disciplines needed in the rail industry.   Iain Coucher continued: “This is a great opportunity for MG Rover workers to apply their existing skills to a new environment and learn and develop new ones.  And it’s a great opportunity for Network Rail to attract new employees with proven abilities and professionalism.”   The decision to invite Longbridge workers to apply for posts within Network Rail builds on the substantial commitment to training and development which the company has demonstrated in the last year:  

• The introduction of six-month conversion courses taking skilled engineers from other industries and making them into skilled railway engineers
• One of the UK’s biggest apprenticeship schemes has just been launched offering over 1,000 places for 17-19 year olds over the next five years
• New work-based competency training has been introduced for all maintenance workers
• National, world leading, signalling training centres were recently opened in Watford and Leeds
• New management training programmes have been introduced to improve the skills and competency of the company’s managers