THOUSANDS of DHL employees involved in the production of Jaguar Land Rover’s (JLR) vehicles are facing redundancy.
Up to 2,200 DHL Supply Chain workers employed on the JLR logistics contract have been told they could lose their jobs.
The proposed redundancies – which comprise just under 40 per cent of the entire DHL workforce on the contract – will affect full-time, salaried and agency staff at all of JLR’s major factories in the West Midlands and North West, including Solihull and Castle Bromwich.
A spokesperson for DHL Supply Chain 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.
“We would like to thank our colleagues for their understanding at this extremely difficult time and stress that this proposal is based solely on the commercial challenges affecting the global automotive sector, and in no way reflects on the service levels delivered on the contract in recent years.”
The company has not revealed when the job cuts will take effect.
The trade union Unite described the proposals as a ‘massive, bitter blow for a dedicated workforce’ and said it would ensure the eventual number of job losses is ‘kept to an absolute minimum’.
National officer for logistics Matt Draper said: “Unite has not yet received any details of how DHL intends to make 50 per cent of the proposed redundancies through efficiency savings, but we are making abundantly clear to DHL that they will not be able to force these workers to undertake impossible workloads as they show other workers the door.”
He said DHL should not attempt to make permanent full-time staff redundant while continuing to outsource work to sub-contractors.
He added: “While DHL is the employer, the reality is that the workers perform their roles for JLR. JLR has a moral duty to ensure that workers are treated fairly and decently during this incredibly difficult and stressful time.”
A JLR spokesperson 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 announced up to 1,100 temporary production line roles would be cut across its manufacturing sites in Solihull, Castle Bromwich and Halewood in Liverpool – following a drop in sales caused by the Coronavirus pandemic.
