MOTOROLA: As workers at Motorola are warned of further job losses, BILL CALTHROP looks at what went wrong and what is in store for the future.
MOTOROLA is such an integral part of the business scene in Swindon, it is hard to believe that the long established American company first came to the town as recently as 1989.
This was when it moved into a building on the Blagrove Industrial Estate, employing just 65 workers, most of them making mobile base states for the fast expanding cellular phone networks.
But now the telecommunications giant is in trouble and cutting jobs worldwide.
Just last week, employees were told to expect more job cuts and staff at the company's two remaining sites in Swindon were called to meetings to be told consultation was being opened over possible further job losses.
This followed the announcement that the company was planning to cut another 7,000 jobs worldwide, 3,000 of them in GTSS division, to which most of the employees at the Europark headquarters in Blagrove and at the Groundwell site belong.
But where did it all go wrong?
The massive 66-acre £82m Ground-well operation was opened on October 24, 1998, by the Queen.
When Motorola first unveiled the Groundwell project, it was planned to be the new European headquarters, encompassing all admin, manufacturing and distribution departments.
However, this plan was trimmed before work started, with the site being designated for manufacturing to meet the increased demand for its cellular network base stations.
Plans for the growth of the building, which has three areas under one roof, each the size of three football pitches, were to proceed. The company still has outline permission to increase the size of the building by nearly a third.
The arrival of the new millennium saw the height of the boom years for Motorola and other telecom companies many of whom, like Cable and Wireless, Lucent Technologies and Mitel Semiconductors, still have a strong presence in Swindon.
Staff numbers were increasing to such a degree that people were being bussed in from Newport, Reading, Birmingham and Southampton.
New orders and new products kept the cash rolling in as customers showed an insatiable desire for new technology of all types.
Motorola played its part in the community, as it continues to do, supporting charities and sponsoring events.
The year 2000 looked very rosy indeed, with the workforce totalling about 3,000, although they were still scattered at six sites around the town.
But the nightmare was just around the corner.
2001 started off well enough with Motorola UK chairman David Brown receiving a knighthood in the New Year's Honours List. It was to be the last bit of good news for a long time.
An already restless customer base was expanding its interest in other areas of telecommunications, and no matter what the manufacturers tried in the way of upgrading, the sheer cost of investment and the vagaries of an increasingly jittery investment market were about to kill the goose that laid the golden egg.
This sudden lack of confidence was to prove catastrophic for such a widespread industry, and the results were to have hugely unpleasant consequences for economies across the world.
By February 2001, there wasn't a hi-tech company anywhere that wasn't restructuring and laying people off.
In March, Motorola said it would cut 7,000 jobs worldwide and that some were likely to go from its 10,500 UK workforce, many of them in Swindon.
The local figure proved to be 700, most of them from the 1,600 working in manufacturing at the new Groundwell plant.
In April, the company announced the closure of its Bathgate mobile phone manufacturing plant in Scotland with the loss of 3,100 jobs as part of a further downsizing of 22,000 jobs globally. This followed first quarter losses of £140m.
The writing was well and truly on the wall. Motorola had not previously reported anything but profits, and very healthy ones at that.
By October, the company was planning more massive staff level reductions as it struggled to come to terms with a shrinking market. Another 550 jobs in Swindon were axed.
Matters only got worse as the telecoms sector tried to reorganise and restructure just to survive.
And so it goes on.
Motorola has now closed all but two of its sites in Swindon, its administrative headquarters at Blagrove, and Groundwell, where manufacturing has virtually ceased to make room for people from other sites.
And with the recent news that another 7,000 people are to be axed globally, 3,000 of them from the GTSS division, which employs most of the Swindon workforce, it has to be said that things don't look too promising.
Already the Swindon workers have been told that consultation talks are underway on job losses, although no numbers have been mentioned.
This followed Motorola recording a massive $2.3bn loss for the second quarter, its biggest quarterly loss ever.
However, the company insists it is on course for a return to profitability by the end of the year and that it is ahead of its targets to do this.
So, is there light at the end of the tunnel for this beleaguered communications giant?
We must all hope so, for much of Swindon's future economic prosperity is hinged to the recovery of such hi-tech companies.
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