Thankfully, not all Holden employees will be out of employment when the automaker shuts down its manufacturing operations in 2017. According to Australia’s Drive, some of the company’s more talented engineers have already found positions with parent company General Motors in the United States and General Motors Europe.
About 50 engineers and other tradespeople who will lose their jobs once production of the Cruze and Commodore ends in 2017 have been offered jobs with GM internationally. Over 200 engineers have already been dismissed, with another 600 being cut by the end of next year.
“We’ve got 31 people that are already there or have signed agreements to go there in a couple of months (Europe or the US), plus another handful that are still thinking about it,” said Holden executive director of engineering Brett Vivian. “If they want to do it, they’ll be offered the opportunity.”
The current VF Commodore was introduced in 2013, and will be updated for the last time in October 2015, keeping about 300 engineers on board for the time being. This will also keep some equipment operators and other tradespeople on board for a while longer, Vivian said. Holden will also continue to have an engineering presence in Australia, as it will tune imported models for Australian roads. The company’s HSV arm is also expected to stay operational.
Comments
Let’s hope they are working on a RWD replacement for Commodore & Omega with V6 petrols & diesels & a V8, VW (predictably) is rumoured to be working on a model based on Audi’s A6 to fit in between Passat & Phaeton.
GM’s European operation is called the Opel Group, not General Motors Europe! Most of the former Holden engineers will work in Ruesselsheim, Germany at Adam Opel AG.
You will probably find most Holden engineers will go to work for GM’s competitors (e.g. Ford is expanding engineering ops here and has publicly stated it will take on ex-Holden engineers), other automotive industries in Australia (e.g. Performax international) or other industries entirely (e.g. defence).
What would be nice is if Holden could organise some of the engineers such as Rob Trubiani and people like him to do a farewell tour of the country together with some V8 SC drivers before Holden engineering winds down to a suspension tuning shop. This should be done in the form of track days for performance Holden owners (SS/HSV/Monaro etc). Would be a great way of thanking fans for loyalty over the years and may just convince some to stay Holden fans and buy whatever performance product GM plans to bring here which at the moment is not looking like any form of RWD product.
If they priced it at around $500 a pop with a decent package like lunch included etc I’d definitely take a day off work and put my hand up for that.