COVENTRY, England — Jaguar Land Rover opened a voluntary redundancy program on Sunday that could shed as many as 4,000 salaried and management jobs, and U.K. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said he would meet the carmaker's chief executive early next week to discuss ways to blunt the impact.
The cuts, first reported by The Times, would fall mainly on white-collar workers a year after a cyberattack shut JLR's production lines for more than a month and left a £1.9 billion hole in its accounts. JLR is trying to squeeze £1.7 billion out of its cost base over the next two years while U.S. tariffs and softening sales press on margins.
Buyouts opened
JLR confirmed to the BBC on Sunday that it had told staff and Unite union representatives it was opening the program to "salaried and management team members." The company said the move would "simplify" the organization and "improve efficiency and build greater resilience," and it did not rule out compulsory redundancies later. In July, JLR said fewer than 300 people would leave under an earlier round of savings.
Reynolds' terms
Reynolds told the BBC's "Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg" that he would meet Chief Executive PB Balaji and Unite general secretary Sharon Graham, and that talks would focus on ways to "mitigate any job losses." He ruled out a rescue, saying there would be no support "if it's to bail people out," but left open a "long-term investment in the future" of the company. Chancellor John Healey is due to deliver a speech in the West Midlands on Monday promising to change how the government values infrastructure spending. JLR is headquartered in Coventry and has plants in Solihull, Wolverhampton and Halewood on Merseyside.
Union alarm
Graham said the union had been warning about a "perfect storm" over the automotive industry for months. "Death by a thousand cuts has been going on under the nose of successive governments," she said. Des Quinn, a Unite national officer, called it "an incredibly worrying and stressful time for JLR workers."
JLR has not confirmed the 4,000 figure and did not release a departure target on Sunday. Chief Executive PB Balaji had not spoken publicly by press time, and industry analysts and Conservative opposition figures had not commented on the record. The company employs about 30,000 people in the U.K. and 10,000 more overseas, and salaried staff account for a fraction of that total.
Reynolds, Graham and Balaji are due to meet early next week. JLR said it would share further details with employees before making any public announcement about the size of the program.