Bentley Job Cuts Are Another Heavy Blow to the UK Auto Industry -Unite
June 05 2020 - 10:16AM
Dow Jones News
By Anthony O. Goriainoff
Unite the Union, a British and Irish trade union, said Friday
that Bentley's announcement of 1,000 job cuts at its Crewe factory
in England was "another heavy blow" for the U.K.'s auto
industry.
The union said the luxury carmaker, a subsidiary of Volkswagen
Group, has proposed redundancies accounting for just under 25% of
the workforce, which will be on a voluntary basis. It described
them as another reminder of the battering the sector is taking,
caught in a downturn in global demand supercharged by the
coronavirus pandemic.
"It is absolutely essential that the government works with the
automotive industry and Unite to bring forward the sort of sector
specific support we are seeing other governments deliver, in France
and Germany, because for every automotive job that goes, four more
will go in the wider supply chain," Unite's national officer for
the automotive sector Steve Bush said.
The news comes one day after British sports-car maker Aston
Martin Lagonda said it plans to reduce employee numbers by up to
500 as part of a restructuring, as it seeks to cut costs to restore
profitability.
Write to Anthony O. Goriainoff at
anthony.orunagoriainoff@dowjones.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 05, 2020 10:01 ET (14:01 GMT)
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