Tuesday 27 September 2011

BAE Systems Poised to Announce 3,000 Job Cuts

THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: BAE Systems, the defence giant, is expected to announce around 3,000 job cuts today, ending days of speculation about the scale of redundancies.

The move comes in the wake of the Government’s defence cuts and is understood to have been prompted by flagging sales of the Eurofighter jet.

The job losses are expected to be mainly at sites in its military aircraft division in Warton and Samlesbury in Lancashire, and Brough, East Yorkshire.

Union leaders said defence cuts had been a “hammer blow” to the defence industry but expressed fury that workers at the firm have been kept waiting for confirmation of the job losses.

Paul McCarthy, regional officer of the GMB, said it was a "disgrace" that workers heard via a leak to the media over the weekend that thousands of job losses were imminent.

"We are going to ask the company to launch a formal investigation to establish who leaked this information."

There is speculation that 900 jobs will be cut at Brough, 820 at Warton and 560 at Samlesbury, with hundreds more at smaller BAE sites. » | Murray Wardrop | Tuesday, September 27, 2011