Jaguar Land Rover Cuts 500 Jobs at SUV Plant Amid Cost Squeeze

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Jaguar Land Rover will eliminate 500 posts or about 10% of the workforce at its Halewood plant near Liverpool, northern England, as the luxury automaker seeks to cut costs amid mounting spending on electric cars.

The reductions come as the factory, which makes the Land Rover Discovery Sport and the upgraded Range Rover Evoque SUVs, moves from a round-the-clock three shift pattern to two, JLR said in a statement Wednesday.

“This is about efficiency, not loss of volume,” the unit of India’s Tata Motors Ltd. said, adding that the change was agreed as part of pay negotiations last year and that it will seek voluntary departures.

The U.K.’s biggest carmaker said a year ago that it planned to slash 4,500 jobs worldwide as it struggled with a sales slowdown caused by uncertainty around Brexit, flagging demand for diesel vehicles and a downturn in China. Tata has since said it’s open to finding partners for JLR to share the burden of investing in electric vehicles.

The Unite union said the latest cuts amount to a “fresh blow” for a U.K. car industry that’s been in retreat for the past few years, amid concern about Britain’s future relations with the European Union and frictionless trade required by companies’ just-in-time manufacturing systems.

Halewood has around 4,000 full-time staff and 500 contract workers and the cuts will involve both categories, according to a JLR spokeswoman. The plant will adopt a two-plus shift pattern under an agreement that allows it to extend some workdays to accommodate extra demand, she said.

JLR has moved production of the Land Rover Discovery, a different model to the Sport, to Slovakia from Solihull in Birmingham, England, to make room for future electric cars at a cost 1,200 jobs.

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