Mill Road/Leicester Road

Site redevelopment

In 2007 the Mill Road site was under development. As part of the redevelopment an archaelogical  survey was commissioned by the site owners, St Modwen and performed by Wessex Archaeology. The result of this survey can be found on their web site. 

In addition, one of the employees with Quartzalec, John Tozer, took photographs of the changes that were being made to the site, including the construction of the new East Warwickshire College. He assembled these into a document

Campaign to keep RMR, Mill Road open, 2017-2019

Written by Bill Boumphrey, 2019.

In November 2017, during a meeting with the company’s European Works Council, the leadership of GE Power Conversion announced their intention to cease manufacturing at their Rotating Machines factory in Rugby and transfer the work to France. This was part of GE’s long term strategy to rationalise the factory footprint it had inherited from Converteam from 11 to 5. To an international company such as GE this made sense ... as far as the company was concerned there are no borders in product manufacture, and maintaining two rotating machine factories, one in the U.K. and the other in France, both at around 30 % capacity didn’t make sense to the company.

This was the start of a long campaign by local management, by unions, by employees and by politicians to keep Rotating Machines, Rugby (RMR) open.

RMR has had a long history of building rotating machines (both motors and generators). At the time of the proposed closure its primary product line was in the manufacture of generators, but it had also been responsible for the supply of motors for marine and naval propulsion. RMR motors powered all of the primary surface ships of the Royal Navy, including the latest type 45 destroyers and the Navy’s Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carriers. The company was also prepared to supply the motors for the Royal Navy’s anti-submarine frigate, the Type 26.

Part of the problem was that GE Power Conversion’s main market for motors and generators was in the Oil and Gas business, and with a downturn in this market, partly due to a depressed oil price, there was a dearth of orders. The Naval type 26 order was not due until 2021/2022 and RMR was left with the prospect of little or no work for several years. There was the prospect of work from the Swansea Bay tidal lagoon project, which would supply more than enough orders to keep RMR going, but the government was still considering whether to go ahead with this.

The announcement in Nov 2017 to close RMR was a proposal and the European Works Council, the company’s European body of employee representatives, commissioned an independent report to look at the feasibility of this proposal. In May 2018 the report was submitted, concluding that it would be feasible to keep RMR open, and amongst other things, pointing out the importance of the Naval business. Nevertheless, GE-PC’s leadership decided that there wasn’t a sufficient business case to retain RMR, although they did agree to delay the formal announcement of closure until October 2018. This was partly to allow time for the Swansea Bay project to be agreed. Unfortunately, in June 2018 the government refused to provide funding for this project, effectively killing it off.

In the meantime, Unite the union had started a campaign to retain jobs at RMR. The local Unite membership started a campaign called “Build it in Britain” to raise awareness of the important part RMR played in the supply of equipment to the Royal Navy. Mostly self financed, the campaign consisted of postcards to MPs, mugs for employees (to raise funds) and flags, together with letters to important figures both at home and abroad raising awareness of the closure of RMR and potential consequence for the supply of equipment to the Royal Navy. Unite also used its political connections to invite politicians to visit the factory to find out for themselves what RMR did. This included a visit from Mr Jeremy Corbyn, the then leader of the opposition. Mark Pawsey, the local MP, also lent his support to the campaign.

Local management were also working to get business into the factory. During 2018 it was announced that both the Australian and Canadian Navies were interested in the export version of the Type 26 frigate, and it was becoming apparent that although this would clearly be local supply, the involvement of RMR would be required, giving it a good order pipeline well into the future. The issue was that the start of work wasn’t due until 2021.

In October 2018 the company formally announced its intention to close the factory, pending the necessary statutory consultation with employee representatives. Over Christmas the UK employee representatives put together a draft report reflecting the general concern by employees that the closure of RMR was detrimental to GE-PC UK’s business and outlining the specific concerns behind this. This report was favourably received by GE-PC’s CEO, Mr Azeez Mohammed. A further report in March 2019 looked specifically at the proposal to transfer the manufacture of Alpha generators to France and concluded that the company’s proposals were too much, too soon and would result in increased costs and the loss of market share (a characteristic of other transfer of work projects the company had engaged in). Again, this was an eye opener for the GE leadership, encouraging them to think again about their proposals.

The political campaign was also bearing fruit, with the proposal to transfer Naval work to France being questioned at the political level. Unite’s letters to Mr Larry Culp, the head of GE, were largely ignored, with the reply that this was a local matter. However, as a result of Unite’s postcard campaign the matter had been raised with the UK Parliament’s Defence Select Committee and in April 2019 an enquiry was put in place to investigate the procurement policies between the MOD and GE. The first part of the enquiry was conducted with Unite giving evidence, led by Steve Turner, the Assistant General Secretary of Unite. The second part was on the 21st of May, where the MOD and GE were to be interrogated regarding the transfer of work to France.

Fortunately (and as the committee dryly noted, coincidentally), the week before the second part of the enquiry GE and the MOD signed an agreement to bring forward the Type 26 work into 2020, providing the necessary bridge work to allow RMR to stay open. GE formally announced this on the 20th of May 2019. During questioning by the Defence Select Committee the next day GE was able to give assurances that RMR would be staying open for the foreseeable future, with a bright future for GE-PC UK.

The campaign to keep RMR open involved a lot of people. The entire workforce of RMR deserve particular mention for professionally working through the threat of closure. Steve Kerr, a Unite rep in the company, played a major part in Unite’s publicity campaign, organising the post cards, mugs, flags and letters for the Build it in Britain campaign. John Speller, an MP on the Defence Select committee, responded to this campaign and helped set up the eventual procurement enquiry. Mark Pawsey, the Rugby MP, put in a considerable amount of lobbying work. Debbie Bannigan, the local Labour Party candidate, helped organise the visit of Jeremy Corbyn and provided a bridge through to Labour Party Members of Parliament such as Matt Western, the Warwick and Leamington MP. Steve Turner, the Unite Assistant General Secretary, pushed for the Defence Select Committee enquiry. Andy Cooper, the manager of GE-PC UK, worked tirelessly with the MOD and others to secure business for the company. Amongst the Employee Reps special mention should be made of Jane Spencer, who worked through Christmas to interview key employees and collate their response into a draft report, and Amrat Mistry, who did a similar exercise with his colleagues in RMR and put together the March 2019 presentation on issues with Transfer of Work.