Jaguar Land Rover announces nearly 5,000 UK job losses in global restructuring
By
Robert Stevens
12 January 2019
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), the UK’s biggest car maker, has confirmed that 4,500 jobs will be lost in Britain.
The redundancies represent around a tenth of its 44,000 strong UK workforce. The company, owned by Indian-based Tata Motors, has UK plants in Halewood, Solihull, Castle Bromwich and Wolverhampton. Internationally it employs a total of 53,000 workers, with operations in India, Ireland, Austria, Slovakia, Brazil, China and the United States.
The job losses are part of restructuring plans by the firm to cut costs by £2.5 billion. The announcement was made Thursday, the same day that the Ford Motor Company announced it would shed thousands of jobs in Europe. BBC Wales reported yesterday that this includes plans to slash 370 jobs at the Ford Bridgend engine plant in south Wales, which employs 1,700 workers, in a “first phase” of up to 1,150 job losses by 2021.
As with all car producers, JLR operates in a cut-throat environment and is constantly reducing its costs and increasing productivity. Last year, JLR shed 1,000 roles at its flagship plant in Solihull and reduced working hours at other sites amid falling demand for its diesel vehicles and saloon cars. Costs have been reduced further, with the company opening a plant in Slovakia employing 1,500 workers.
Last October, JLR posted losses of £90 million and has seen a collapse in sales by nearly 50 percent in its main and most profitable market, China. Reflecting growing trade tensions between the US and China, and a marked slowdown in its economy, last year the Chinese car industry recorded its first fall in sales for more than 20 years. The China Passenger Car Association reported that 22.7…