Jaguar Land Rover confirms it is slashing 4,500 jobs to save £2.5billion while Ford announces ‘significant’ cuts in worker numbers across Europe

Britain’s biggest carmaker Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) is to make 4,500 job cuts, mainly in the UK, following 1500 job losses last year.

The announcement this lunchtime comes as Ford signalled ‘significant’ cuts to be made among its 50,000 European workforce under plans to make it more competitive and make its business more sustainable.

JLR  said the 4,500 global redundancies will start will voluntary redundancies as unions promised to ‘scrutinise the business case’ for the cuts.

But the firm has promised UK investment with Electric Drive Units to be built in Wolverhampton and new electric Battery Assembly Centre at Hams Hall, North Warwickshire.

Most of the cuts are expected to be in the UK, with the savings and ‘cashflow improvements’ coming over the next 18 months.

Ralf Speth, chief executive of Jaguar Land Rover, said: ‘We are taking decisive action to help deliver long-term growth, in the face of multiple geopolitical and regulatory disruptions as well as technology challenges facing the automotive industry.’

The company pointed to a downturn in China and lower demand for the diesels which make up most of its products. In the UK, ‘continuing uncertainty related to Brexit’ was blamed.

Meanwhile, Ford signalled ‘significant’ cuts among its 50,000-strong European workforce under plans to make it more competitive and make its business more sustainable.

Jaguar Land Rover’s UK workforce has grown from around 17,000 to more than 40,000 in the last six years, at its sites including Whitley near Coventry, Halewood on Merseyside, Solihull, Castle Bromwich and Wolverhampton. But employees were laid off last year.

The firm, owned by Indian conglomerate Tata, booked a £90 million pre-tax loss in the three months to September 30, which compared with a £385 million profit in the same period in 2017.

Last year it also cut around 1,000 jobs, shut its Solihull plant for two weeks and announced a three-day week at its Castle Bromwich site. 

Meanwhile it has been hiring elsewhere. In China it has increased its workforce by 4,000 since 2014. And it recently announced it would move production of the Land Rover Discovery to a new plant in Slovakia with plans to hire up to 3,000 workers.

The announcement from the manufacturer is part of plans to cut costs and improve cash flows by £2.5 billion including ‘reducing employment costs and employment levels.’ 

JLR was expected to build one million vehicles by 2020, but sales in the first eleven months of 2018 dropped 4.4 percent.