DHL said it was restructuring its business working with the car maker as it faced “highly challenging trading conditions”.
Logistics firm DHL is cutting up to 2,200 jobs at Jaguar Land Rover factories as the car sector wrestles with the “unprecedented impact” of the coronavirus pandemic.
It is the latest in a wave of thousands of job cuts blamed on the pandemic across the economy, from BP and Airbus to Pret A Manger and easyJet.
Jaguar Land Rover last month separately announced 1,100 cuts to agency staff employed via Manpower as part of a cost-cutting “transformation programme”.
Trade union Unite said the number of job losses at DHL represented just under 40% of the its workforce on the JLR contract.
DHL said: “In light of highly challenging trading conditions in the global automotive sector and the unprecedented impact of the Coronavirus pandemic, we have made the difficult decision to restructure our linefeed and freight operations supporting the Jaguar Land Rover contract.
“This is in line with future volume forecasts and forms part of the optimisation and efficiency initiatives that have been driven by both organisations in recent months.
“We are now in consultation with our employees and their representatives and will make every effort to redeploy as many colleagues as possible to our other operations nationwide.”
JLR, Britain’s biggest carmaker, said: “DHL informed us that they were going into consultation with some of their workforce last month.
“Through its ongoing transformation programme and against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, Jaguar Land Rover is taking action to optimise performance and achieve further operational efficiencies to enable sustainable growth and safeguard the long-term success of our business.”
Last month, JLR, owned by India’s Tata Motors, reported a £501m loss and a 31% drop in sales for the three months to the end of March – a period that saw many factories and showrooms across the world closed due to the pandemic.
Source:
SkyNews
