Rolls-Royce Sheds Hundreds Of Jobs

Union bosses say they're hopeful they can mitigate the impact of 35 job losses at the Rolls Royce plant near Glasgow.

The company announced yesterday the posts are going at their Inchinnan plant with plans to axe 2 thousand 600 staff worldwide.

Hundreds of jobs are set to be axed at Rolls-Royce factories in the UK under plans by the engineering giant for a worldwide cutback, workers have been told.

Derby will bear the brunt of the cuts, with plans for around 300 job losses, almost half the total.

The jobs will be lost from the firm's aerospace business following an announcement last month that 2,600 jobs will be cut worldwide over the next 18 months.

Rolls said restructuring of its turbine business would lead to the possible closure of a site in Derby and one at Ansty in Warwickshire.

Jobs are also set to go at factories at Inchinnan near Glasgow, Barnoldswick in Lancashire and Hucknall in Nottinghamshire.

Unite regional officer Tony Tinley said: These cuts are a huge loss of skills to the UK economy and will result in Rolls-Royce outsourcing high-tech manufacturing jobs overseas to plug the skills gap in the future.

The UK workforce is world class and has proved time and time again to be at the cutting edge of engineering. Rolls-Royce needs to give assurances over its long term future and manufacturing in the UK.

There is a real danger that Rolls-Royce is making decisions in the short-term which it will later regret and it needs to give a guarantee of no compulsory redundancies.''

A Rolls-Royce spokesman said: On 4 November 2014, Rolls-Royce announced proposals to reduce headcount by 2,600, principally within our aerospace division. We said this would include reductions in engineering, our operational facilities, and support functions, and that we would work closely with employees and their representatives to achieve the necessary reductions on a voluntary basis where possible.

We are now in a position to provide an update on proposals affecting our operational facilities.

As part of this restructuring process we're looking to make the best use of all our facilities and we are proposing to consolidate our turbine machining operations, subject to consultation and a detailed feasibility assessment. These proposals would involve consolidating our low-volume part production, maximising our supply chain and transferring complex machining operations into our modern turbine blade facility in Derby.

With this and the advanced airfoil machining facility in Crosspointe, Virginia, we are able to utilise our newer, cost-competitive facilities. If our assessment validates our approach, this would result in the closure of our turbine blade machining facility at Ansty and the precision machining facility (PMF) in Derby during 2017. This would lead to a reduction of approximately 340 roles.

We also need to balance our workforce to the size of the workload we have in our internal supply chain facilities. As a result of reduced workload, we are proposing a reduction of 240 roles in the UK and Germany.

These reductions are all part of the 2,600 already announced. We recognise that this is a difficult time for those affected and we will work with local employee representatives to achieve this reduction by voluntary means wherever possible.

It is never an easy decision to make changes and propose reductions in our workforce, but it is a sign of the increasingly competitive market in which we operate. The measures we have outlined to our employees will contribute towards Rolls-Royce becoming a stronger company in the long term.''