- The regulatory report that the Japanese multinational wants to make will affect more than a third of the plant’s workers. Luis Escalona, a member of the company’s board, said it was “an attack on the workers” and announced that they will be making work stoppages.
The automotive industry continues to boast of dust in the Basque Country: Bridgestone, a Japanese tyre multinational, plans to lay off 335 of its nearly 900 employees at its plant in Basauri, or more than a third, according to the management’s regulatory report to the workers’ committee. The head of the workers’ committee, Igor Mena, explains that it has been a “severe and unexpected blow”, since the company has also not presented any plans for the future.
The workers of the tyre company in Usansolo (Bizkaia) will not be affected by the regulatory report, but those in Puente San Migueleko (Cantabria), where Bridgestone wants to dismiss 211 of them. Mena says they will have to organize a response between the latter and the Basauri plant. In the statement released by the company, it alleges "the changes that are taking place in the European wheel market" and the sharp decrease in both sales and production in the dismissal of 546 workers.
Luis Escalona, a member of the business committee, made statements to journalists immediately after the announcement of the decision taken by Bridgestone Hispania Manufacturing, saying: “We think layoffs are attacks on workers, so we’re going to call strikes.”
In recent years, downhill
Data from recent years confirm what Bridgeston’s management has indicated: according to the company’s figures, sales in 2024 fell by 58% compared to 2023, i.e. from 841 million euros in turnover to 351. This trend has continued this year, with a turnover of almost 40 million euros less than in the same month last year in January.