Jaguar Land Rover is cutting 500 jobs at its Halewood plant in Liverpool following an adjustment to shift patterns aimed at delivering ‘significant operating efficiencies’.
The company produces Range Rover Evoque and Land Rover Discovery Sport vehicles at the Halewood plant, which is switching from a three shift to a “two-plus” shift pattern from April 2020.
“This will deliver significant operating efficiencies at the plant, while enabling us to meet…growing customer demand,” the company said in a statement. “This change in shift pattern affects around 10 per cent of Halewood’s workforce.”
JLR announces two-week Solihull shutdown
JLR workers moved to three-day week in light of ‘Brexit chaos’
JLR added that Halewood employees will have the opportunity to leave through an enhanced voluntary redundancy programme.
Trade union Unite has described today’s news as a ‘fresh blow to the car industry’, adding that the job losses comprise a mixture of permanent employees and agency staff.
Des Quinn, Unite national officer said: “This is a further blow to the UK car industry in general and to our members at Halewood in particular. Unite will be ensuring that the commitment to limit job losses to voluntary redundancies is fully honoured.
“The challenges being faced at JLR are also being experienced by other UK car factories.
“The UK’s car industry has plummeted from being the jewel in the crown of the UK’s manufacturing sector in a few short years, directly as a result of government inaction.
“Until the government ensures that there is long-term frictionless trade and no tariffs with the European Union along with meaningful investment in the infrastructure to ensure the success of electric vehicles, the UK’s car industry will continue to experience severe challenges.”
About time the unions had a seat on the Board of Directors !
Also the wage structures should be that the Max compensation of the Top management is no more than the 45 times the lowest company employee including bonuses/shares [no matter where the plant/workplace is in the country]. Then there is no real obscene wage disparity from top to bottom as there is now in most of the major corporations (read JP Morgan’s 1930s’ book on corporate governance and fiduciary responsibility where back then he said “no more than 40 times the lowest paid employee, otherwise they will line their own pockets and forsake the employees and companies future prosperity”. Applies to this era now for the UK to get back to being a world engineering leader/innovator.
What JLR are doing is typical short sightedness by upper management. Once folks are laid off they might never return and that adds to the extra cost of training replacement engineers/technicians etc if they return to the regular shift system.
But get workers/union managers on the Boards so they have input on the companies future and operating viability going forward [what about the JLR apprentice scheme, that could fall a apart if the apprentices do not see a job future at JLR. Yes, Brexit is now a challenge except management need to cut their compensations to keep folks employed!!!!! and really buckle down to solving this debacle.