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BMW is axing 520 production roles at its car manufacturing plants in Birmingham, Oxford and Swindon.
Of these, 400 roles will be lost at the group’s Mini plant in Oxford, which is roughly a 10% cut to the 4,000-strong workforce on site.
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It also means just under half of the 950 agency workers currently working at Oxford will see their jobs go.
Meanwhile, a further 100 jobs will be lost from BMW’s Hams Hall engine plant in Birmingham, where 1,200 people are currently employed.
And 20 jobs will go from BMW’s steel pressing factory in Swindon, which currently employs around 600 staff.
The cuts are all agency workers employed by a company called GI Group, which means they won’t be entitled to redundancy pay from the BMW group.
Job losses since June 2020
MANY firms have announced job cuts since June as a result of the coronavirus lockdown. These include:
- Shoe chain Aldo collapsed into administration with five stores permanently closed
- Victoria’s Secret plunged into administration, putting 800 jobs at risk
- Fashion chain Quiz put its shop business into administration in , putting 82 stores at risk
- British Gas owners cuts 5,000 jobs, over half of which will be in management
- Airbus announces 1,700 job losses. It expects cuts to be made by summer 2021
- TM Lewin says it will close all 66 of its UK shops, putting 600 jobs at risk
- Harveys Furniture goes into administration resulting in 240 immdiate job losses and puts another 1,000 at risk
- Upper Crust plans to make 5,000 out of its 9,000-strong workforce redundant
- EasyJet says it plans to close hubs at Stansted, Southend and Newcastle, putting 4,500 jobs at risk
- John Lewis is reported to be planning to cut jobs and permanently close department stores
- Harrods has said it is consulting on cutting 680 jobs
- Virgin Money, which owns Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank, will cut 300 jobs
- Topshop owner Arcadia has announced plans to cut 500 office staff
- Royal Mail is expected to cut 2,000 jobs as a result of coronavirus
But BMW does plan to cut roles among its non-agency workers at Oxford and Swindon too with voluntary redundancy and early retirement among the options on the table, although it says it’s too soon to say how many roles this may impact.
Currently, production staff work in shifts but the group is reducing the number of shifts from October due to fewer vehicles needing to be produced.
BMW blames the cuts on the coronavirus crisis causing a drop in demand for new cars, saying it only builds vehicles to meet new orders rather than them being mass produced.
It follows similar moves by other car manufacturers, which were hard hit when the country went into lockdown forcing factories to temporarily close down.
Nissan, Toyota, BMW, Honda, and Ford were among top manufacturers that suspended production as a result of coronavirus.
Following this, McLaren revealed plans to axe quarter of its workforce in May putting 1,200 jobs at risk.
But problems were mounting up for many vehicle manufacturers before the pandemic hit with Ford putting 3,100 roles at risk and Nissan cutting 12,500 jobs globally last summer.
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Bob Shankly, human resources director at Mini Plant Oxford, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in a substantial impact on customer demand and, like other automotive manufacturers, our volume forecasts for 2020 have had to change accordingly.
“We have, therefore, made the difficult decision to adjust our shift patterns at Mini Plant Oxford from October.
“We have sought to protect as many jobs as we can, while also taking the necessary steps to ensure the stability of our business in light of this current period of volatile and unpredictable market conditions.”
