The shadow of failure hangs over Nissan's reindustrialization. Given the continued delay in the investments promised by the so-called decarbonisation hub, the Workers' Commission considers that public aid must be reconsidered and warns that alternatives must be considered if the investments, manufacturing and contracting of the former Nissan staff.
"In the current situation, public aid cannot be given and people continue to be deceived", emphasizes the general secretary of Commissions Obreres de Catalunya, Javier Pacheco. "Power Points are no longer useful to us, we want to see contracts with suppliers that ensure future manufacturing", adds Miguel Ruiz, general secretary of Sigen-Sir USOC.
The statements come after the meeting held on Thursday by the reindustrialization monitoring commission, which noted a further delay in the plans that, in the best case scenario, would delay until 2025 the relocation of most of of the Nissan workforce. Two years have passed since the closure and in December 600 people will no longer receive unemployment benefits. Almost 700 more also aspire to be redeployed, although they are working in other companies. So far, the hub has hired only a hundred people. Another 95 have joined Silence, the only company that has started manufacturing.
The union unrest is mainly focused on QEV, the engineering that leads the hub together with Btech. Joan Orús, CEO of QEV, had announced the start of manufacturing in the Free Trade Zone for this same 2023. For this reason, he promised to transfer the production of the Zeroid vans that are now made in China. "Now we are seeing that it does not have financial capacity", warns Pacheco. "The hub has kept the assets of Nissan at the balance price and to facilitate the operation the workers gave up ten days of compensation per year", he adds.
The unions are showing a little more confidence in Btech, especially in the talks it is holding with Chery to manufacture vehicles for the Chinese company in the Free Zone, specifically for its subsidiary Omoda. Btech also plans to manufacture pick-up trucks under the Ebro brand and with the patents assigned by Nissan.
Until it begins to invest, the hub will not be able to dispose of the 65 million euros in aid allocated to it by the Perte for electric vehicles. In addition, the Generalitat has granted 2.1 million for staff training under the Conforcat programme. However, at the moment only 330 people out of the 1,300 possible interested parties have been accommodated. To alleviate the impact of the loss of unemployment, a dual FP program is being negotiated with the Generalitat with workers receiving the minimum wage.
