Rolls-royce to cut 4,600 jobs over the next two years
AROUND 4,600 jobs are being axed at Rolls-royce in the latest restructuring as the engineering giant looks to slash costs by another £400 million a year.
The group said the bulk of these job cuts would affect the UK workforce and would be made over the next two years, with around a third expected by the end of this year.
Rolls said the overhaul, which follows its announcement in January that it plans to slash its five operating businesses to three core units, will hit support functions and management.
Chief executive Warren East said: “We have made progress in improving our day-to-day operations and strengthening our leadership, and are now turning to reduce the complexity that often slows us down and leads to duplication of effort.
“It is never an easy decision to reduce our workforce, but we must create a commercial organisation that is as world-leading as our technologies.”
But Rolls insisted it would honour a previous pledge not to impose compulsory redundancies on union-represented staff, including at its sites in Derby, Hucknall and Annesley.
This is the largest reduction in the company’s headcount since 2001, when it announced plans to reduce 5,000 jobs, plus 1,000 contractors, which at the time was around 12% of the workforce.
Overall, Rolls has 55,000 employees worldwide, of whom 26,000 are in the UK, with 15,700 of those in Derby. It employs around 19,400 engineers.
Unite union assistant general secretary Steve Turner said: “There is a real danger that Rolls-royce will cut too deep and too fast with these jobs cuts, which could ultimately damage the smooth running of the company.”
Rolls said its group-wide revamp will see it shift away from operating with “overlapping activities between individual business units and a large corporate centre”. It said: “We will be significantly reducing the size of our corporate centre to remove the complexity and duplication.
“A traditionally heavily centralised control culture will be replaced by empowered businesses, in a simpler, leaner structure with much clearer accountabilities.”
The restructuring will cost it around £500 million - including redundancy costs - over the next three years, but will see it save £400 million every year by the end of 2020.
Recent annual figures showed Rolls-royce returned to profit last year with a pre-tax surplus of £4.9 billion.