Former car parts firm workers have occupied a factory in Enfield, north London, the Unite union says.
Visteon, a spin-off of the Ford Motor Company, was placed into administration on Tuesday.
Workers are also protesting at a Visteon car parts plant in Essex, while 80 workers are still taking part in a sit-in at a factory in Belfast which began on Tuesday. The workers are angry about more than 500 job losses and what they see as derisory redundancy packages.
The subsidiary has racked up losses of £669m since 2000. As a result, Visteon stopped funding the operation and appointed KPMG as administrators, who immediately shut down production at the three factories and announced 565 redundancies among car parts staff. According to KPMG, production has been diverted to other Visteon factories outside the UK.
The workers are protesting at what they see as rough treatment. Depending on length of service, they are only entitled to statutory redundancy. This is capped at £350 a week, and runs for a maximum of 30 weeks, said KPMG. But only workers who have been employed by Visteon for two years or more will qualify for redundancy.
The protestors claim that Ford - the company's former owner and main customer, had promised much more generous redundancy contracts which they now want to see honoured. There are also question marks over the workers' pensions. They might eventually be placed into the government's Pension Protection Fund. However, as yet the fund has "not even been informed officially of any insolvency", a PPF spokesman said. "We're not involved at all at the moment," he said.
Visteon in the US is itself struggling to survive. It has been hit hard by a drop in orders as carmakers cut back production during the economic downturn.
Report compiled by Find a Part - Car Parts Search Specialists since 1978.
