Jaguar Land Rover has announced it will make a further 300 job cuts and will shut one of its factories for three weeks during the autumn.
The Halewood factory in Merseyside, which employs 2,000 people, will close for at least three weeks between September and December, and 300 voluntary redundancies will be sought from among the workforce.
The move comes as the company stops production of the X-Type Jaguar at the factory by the end of the year.
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has already made 2,200 people redundant during the recession, has frozen pay for all 16,000 employees, and has put 9,000 production staff on a four-day working week.
David Smith, JLR chief executive, said: “Our industry has been especially badly hit by the recession, and the premium sector more than others. Ceasing production of the X-Type early, with further redundancies and temporary shutdowns at Halewood, is necessary to protect our other investment plans.
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“Further actions will be determined by the state of the market and the speed with which the already-approved €340m (£290m) European Investment Bank loan can be drawn.”
Des Thurlby, HR director at the firm, was unavailable to comment about the job cuts and factory downtime, but previously told Personnel Today that implementing alternatives to redundancy programmes had helped to improve staff engagement.
