LDV workers turn to sales
Normally at 7.30am on a Monday morning, Mike Trewartha would be clocking on for his shift on the LDV van production line.
Yesterday, as the Birmingham plant remained shut down because of the recession, he found himself behind the wheel of one of the vans with fellow production workers Colin Coton, 58, and Colin Mahoney, 52.
Mr Trewartha, 45, from Coleshill, is one of the 950 employees who have had to down tools and pick up salesmanship skills instead in a bid to get business moving again.
Emblazoned with Union Jacks and advertising slogans, the vans fan out around the country, visiting industrial estates and motorway service stations, to try to kick start their own little piece of the economy.
"We were a bit apprehensive about it at first because we were not sure what we were supposed to be doing, but now I'm quite enjoying it because it can get quite tedious stuck on the production line day in and day out," said Mr Trewartha, a spot welder whose take home pay is £300 for a 37 hour week. "Today we will be going round the industrial estates, checking out van numbers and bringing information back to our sales team and doing whatever we can to get customers interested."
"We have already generated some orders and it's certainly better than sitting at home doing nothing. There's only so much hoovering and ironing you can do."
Mr Trewartha, whose wife Joanna, 34, is a special needs teacher, has two sons, Luke, 19, and Danny, 5. He has worked for LDV for 20 years and survived a similar shutdown in 1993 when it was owned by Leyland Daf.
The business was bought for £50m in 2006 by the Russian group Gaz - owned by the billionaire tycoon Oleg Deripaska who caused controversy last summer when he entertained Lord Mandelson and George Osborne on his yacht.
The factory, which normally produces 12,500 vehicles a year, closed its production line just before Christmas making 95 people redundant and there is still no official word when it will re-open. The end of February is the latest rumour circulating among workers.
Marketing assistant Sarah Jones said: "Everybody is doing their bit to get things going again. The guys are still on full pay and we find they like to be out there actually doing something rather than just sitting at home. They go as far as they can get in a day and back again. I can't tell you how many sales they have generated, but we have had more than 500 inquiries as a result of this initiative."