Jaguar Land Rover is cutting 1,000 temporary jobs at its plant in Solihull because of “continuing headwinds” affecting the car industry.
The automaker saw a 26% drop in sales in the UK in the first three months of 2018 while sales in Germany fell 32%.
JLR said in a statement:
“In light of the continuing headwinds impacting the car industry, we are making some adjustments to our production schedules and the level of agency staff. We are however continuing to recruit large numbers of highly skilled engineers, graduates and apprentices as we over-proportionally invest in new products and technologies.”
“We also remain committed to our UK plants in which we have invested more than £4 billion since 2010 to future proof manufacturing technologies to deliver new models,” JLR added.
Earlier this year the carmaker said it would cut production because of Brexit uncertainty and changes to taxes on diesel cars – the UK has increased the Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) rate for diesel cars by one band in the first year.
Professor of industry, David Bailey, from Aston University, was quoted by the BBC as saying:
“With the big turn against diesel engines, Jaguar Land Rover is particularly exposed as more than 90% of its UK sales are diesels.
“JLR has just revealed its full-electric i-Pace model and have indicated offering all-electric or hybrid variants of all their models by around 2021, but they have been far too slow compared with Tesla and BMW.”