No reprieve for Bedford
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• Bedford unions met last week with Robert Stempel, General Motors' executive vice-president for operations outside North America, to discuss a union plan for saving Bedford's commercial truck production in the UK.
The plan, which involves the introduction of a new cab (already largely developed by Bedford) on existing truck chassis, was in effect rejected by Stempel. He told the unions that last September's announcement was irreversible, because it had led to the loss of a number of truck dealers.
Stempel has undertaken to consider the proposals, but Bedford unions are resigned to the phasing out of commercial truck production at Dunstable this month, unless an eleventh hour purchaser for the business can be found.
Union representative Peter Cushing says: "He (Stempel) talked about Daf and Paccar . . . he said Some talk had gone on with Daf at the time of the GM-Leyland talks, but nothing had come of it."
"He had great hopes of a new military contract," says Cushing, "but by our estimates you need to produce 40 vehicles a day at Dunstable to break even. You are not going to get anywhere near that number with either the existing military contract or a future military contract, assuming we get it."
Cushing predicts that Bedford will be forced to effect compulsory redundancies at Dunstable in order to bring the workforce down to 1,000, as foreseen in the September announcement.