Jaguar Land Rover confirms plans to cut thousands of jobs
Jaguar Land Rover has confirmed plans to cut thousands of jobs as it looks to slash around £1.7bn from its cost base over the next two years.
The Midlands-based carmaker said it needed to “simplify” its structure as it presses ahead with the next phase of its strategy. The company’s bosses told staff on Monday that “salaried and management team members” will be offered voluntary redundancy as part of the plans.
A spokesperson for the company said: “As we deliver the next phase of our strategy we need to adapt to evolving global market conditions while targeting approximately £1.7bn of savings over the next two years and reduce break-evens to 300,000 vehicles.
“To achieve this, we must further simplify our organisation, improve efficiency, and build greater resilience.”
The confirmation of the plans came after reports on Sunday the company was expected to cut around 4000 jobs in a cost-cutting drive.
Business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has spoken to PB Balaji, chief executive of Britain’s biggest carmaker, and is due to meet with the company’s leadership in the coming days.
But he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show on Sunday that the government will not offer the company financial support to protect jobs “if it’s to bail people out”.
JLR directly employs 34,000 across its three UK sites and supports a further 120,000 British jobs through its supply chain.
Tata Motors, the carmaker’s Indian owner, is putting pressure on Balaji to reduce costs at the firm after being parachuted in last year to shore up its balance sheet.
JLR was forced to pause production at its factories for five weeks following a cyberattack in September last year. Donald Trump’s tariffs on UK car imports has weighed on the group’s performance in North America – its biggest market, representing 29 per cent of sales.
The manufacturer saw its revenue fall by nearly 10 per cent in the three months to June, while its pre-tax profit slumped by more than two thirds to £109m.
‘Death by a thousand cuts’
Reynolds said on Sunday: “A company the size of JLR, which is a huge British success story, at various times in its business cycle, the number of, directly, people it employs will change.
“If this is about making sure over time that the workforce is right to make the business as competitive as possible, that’s the conversation we need to have. Of course you want to mitigate any job losses.”
But the government will not be giving JLR support “if it’s to bail people out. If it’s about long-term investment in the future, we do invest alongside industry on that.”
A spokesperson for the government said it has already taken measures to support the UK’s car industry, including a cut to energy bills and £4bn of capital and research and development funding for zero-emission vehicles.
“We understand that this will be an uncertain and concerning time for affected workers, their families and wider communities,” they said.
Sharon Graham, general secretary of the Unite union, said that she will meet with Reynolds and Balaji next week. “Death by a thousand cuts has been going on under the nose of successive governments,” she said.