Goodyear closure: Workers offered jobs advice
Goodyear workers facing redundancy will be offered help to secure new jobs including careers advice and support retraining for other roles.
The Bushbury Lane plant is due to close in 2017 with the loss of 330 jobs.
The city council has been working with Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), Job Centre Plus, and City of Wolverhampton College to offer support to workers.
They will now be offered recruitment and retraining support, as well as careers guidance, interview skills preparation and pension planning advice.
It follows a jobs fair held last month and attended by around 300 workers.
Further events are also planned for the future.
Councillor John Reynolds, cabinet member for city economy, said the council hoped to ease the burden for the workers affected by the closure.
He said: "This is clearly a distressing time for the workers set to leave Goodyear.
"But the aim of the taskforce from the beginning has been to ease their burden and help them get back into work as soon as possible.
"It is crucial there is a co-ordinated approach to providing a one-stop shop for the workers affected to seek advice and support on their futures.
"There are reasons for optimism with a number of major employers moving to the area in recent times, such as Jaguar Land Rover and Wiggle.
"And last month's jobs fair shows there are a number of job opportunities in Wolverhampton which the highly-skilled Goodyear workforce may be able to take on."
The news comes as the first set of staff prepare to leave the company on New Year's Eve.
Goodyear has not revealed exactly how many staff will be leaving on that date but confirmed all had been achieved through voluntary redundancies.
Kate Macnamara, communications manager for Goodyear, said: "Affected associates are being given an indication of their potential leaving date as a part of second round consultations.
"The first group of associates will leave at the end of December and currently there are enough volunteers to mean that none of these redundancies is compulsory."
Earlier this month workers were left up in arms after discovering the firm has signed a sponsorship deal with Bayern Munich Football Club.
Bayern Munich stars Philipp Lahm and Franck Ribéry were pictured holding shirts printed with the Goodyear name following the announcement of the deal.
