We hear very little from workers who are made redundant, but a heart-warming story has turned up of two former press operators who lost their jobs in New Jarrold Printing’s dramatic collapse in 2006.
According to the Norwich Evening News, Les Britcher and Jamie Spring have found new jobs in print by moving to the sunny climes of Dubai to train a team of Indian and Filipino immigrant workers there on how to use a Komori System38 press.
But not only have they moved to the fast-growing Middle Eastern city – they have followed the very press that they ran at New Jarrold Printing, which had been bought in 1999. After the closure of NJP, the press was bought by Zabeel Printing Press, a company in the United Arab Emirates, which last year advertised for operators.
Britcher told the paper: “I didn’t think I would ever see the press again, and when the advert appeared in the paper my response was to apply for it immediately. To a certain degree I feel an emotional attachment to the machine.”
Spring added that working on the press now is “as if we’ve never been away from it”.
If you have a story about what you’ve done since leaving the print industry, let us know in the space below.
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