(UK) British engineering consultancy WS Atkins has cut a further 1,500 jobs over the past few months to help cope with tough trading conditions, it said on Wednesday, as it announced plans to appoint a new chairman.
Source: Reuters
(UK) Network Rail is planning to cut hundreds more jobs over and above the 1,800 planned cuts it announced at the end of last month.
The network now plans to cut a total of 2,549 jobs. But it said the additional losses included sub-contractors, and did not constitute permanent jobs.
Source: BBC
British telecom giant BT’s plans to cut 2,000 call centre jobs in India to provide permanent positions for UK staff during the recession have taken a major hit, over worries whether British workers would put in the stifling hours.
Keeping the recession in mind BT, which had moved 5,500 call centre jobs to India in 2003, had said that it was preparing to repatriate the jobs.
Source: Rediff
BT is cutting its call centre workforce in India by 4,000 and bringing some of the work back to the UK, the telco confirmed.
The company recently topped a poll of UK companies with the worst customer service, with complaints including call waiting times and trouble getting offshore call centre staff to understand English accents.
Source: BusinessWeek
Jaguar Land Rover, the luxury unit Indian truckmaker Tata Motors Ltd. bought from Ford Motor Co. last year, needs “major cost reduction” as the global recession hammers demand for its vehicles.
Jaguar Land Rover plans to eliminate 300 jobs and end production of the Jaguar X-Type model sooner than planned as demand slumps, the automaker said July 15. The job reductions at a plant in Halewood, northwest England, are in addition to 2,200 cuts already made throughout the company since September.
Source: Bloomberg
Unions have condemned the British Council’s announcement that it intends to cut up to 500 jobs over the next two years and consider offshoring work to India.
In a message to staff issued today, the British Council, which promotes the UK overseas, announced that it intended to reduce its staff by between 400-500 jobs – about one-third of the organisation – over the next two years.
Source: The Sikh Times
Thousands of people took to the streets to protest a decision by Diageo, the drinks giant, to shuts its Johnnie Walker bottling plant. The firm has announced that it will close the plant in the town, which has been linked with Johnnie Walker since 1820, with the loss of 700 jobs.
A further 200 jobs are to go with the closure of its distillery in Port Dundas, Glasgow, although 400 new jobs would be created at a packaging plant in Fife.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
(Newport, UK) Workers were last night occupying a wind turbine factory for the sixth day in protest at the imminent closure of the plant.
The Danish owners of Vestas Wind Systems factory say the plant will close ‘within days’, with the loss of 525 jobs, because the UK market for turbines is too small.
Source: DailyMail
~News submitted by upthecreek
Up to 95 Aston Martin workers are to lose their jobs, a union has said.
A company spokesman said the redundancies were part of 600 jobs cuts - a third of the workforce - announced in December.
Source: BBC
Tech staff may be insulated from further job cuts resulting from the recession according to the latest research from the government backed skills councils e-skills UK.
Nine out ten companies say they have no plans to cut back on their IT headcount despite making redundancies in other areas
Source: eWeek Europe
British secret weapons tester QinetiQ Group is cutting 400 jobs in the UK despite a 22 percent hike in full-year profits, risking further confrontation with trade unions threatening strike action.
The job cuts come on top of a pay freeze at the company that has seen union officials ballot around 2,600 staff for strike action.
Source: Reuters
Barclays has announced fresh tech job cuts that could see up to 350 permanent IT posts axed. Job losses will take place in the Global Retail and Commercial Banking (GRCB) Technology department this year. Jobs are expected to go from Barclays centres at London, Northampton, Poole and Radbroke, UK.
Source: ZDNet-UK
UK software company Micro Focus International plc is buying Borland Software Corp. for $75 million in cash. In January CEO Tod Nielsen departed to become chief operating officer of VM Ware. Borland reported a loss of $216 million last year. Layoffs announcements are expected due to acquisition.
Source: Austin Business Journal
Lloyds Banking Group, the part-nationalised financial services giant, has confirmed plans to cut almost 1,000 UK jobs at its motor finance division as it moves to save costs by combining sales forces.
The bank, formed out of the merger of Lloyds TSB and HBOS last year, will cut 985 full and part-time jobs over the next two years.
Source: Times Online
The Royal Bank of Scotland said on Tuesday it might cut as many as 9,000 jobs worldwide as the troubled British bank, which is majority-owned by the government, seeks to reduce costs and repay government funds.
The job cuts would affect back office operations and would come in addition to the 2,700 already announced in Britain for this year. The bank said the actual number of layoffs would be lower than 9,000 because “natural turnover” and “less use of agency staff” would further help to limit redundancies. In addition, the bank said it already identified 650 new job opportunities in Britain.
Source: The New York Times
The steady drumbeat of layoffs in the legal world continued yesterday with the announcement by Reed Smith L.L.P. that it would let go 100 lawyers and staff in offices in the United States and London.
The firm, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh and has a large Center City office, said it would let go 17 lawyers in various U.S. offices and nine in its London office. A total of 74 administrative staff also would be laid off, the firm said, in the United States and the United Kingdom.
Source: Philly.com
According to NYTimes : ” Barclays is in exclusive negotiations with the private equity firm CVC Capital Partners to sell a part of its fund management business, iShares, for about $4.3 billion in an effort to shore up its capital without handing a stake to the government.”
Blake Grossman (CEO of Barclays Global Investors) mentioned today in email that “this potential transaction, along with continued uncertainty in the markets, has made the last few weeks quite challenging for all of us“, according to people familiar with the matter.
Tempers are flaring across Europe as the economic pain deepens and more people lose their jobs.
Luc Rousselet, the manager of a 3M factory in France, was barricaded in an office for a second day by workers demanding better severance packages for 110 employees who are being laid off.
In Scotland, vandals smashed at least three windows on the ground floor of Fred Goodwin’s (the former chief executive of the ailing Royal Bank of Scotland) house in an affluent suburb of Edinburgh and damaged a black Mercedes S600 parked in the driveway. Mr. Goodwin was not in the house at the time and no one was hurt, but the incident alarmed Britain’s business community.
The author of an e-mail message sent anonymously to a local newspaper on Wednesday claimed responsibility for the damage and said: “We are angry that rich people, like him, are paying themselves a huge amount of money and living in luxury while ordinary people are made unemployed, destitute and homeless.”
Source: New York Times
HSBC yesterday said 1,200 UK jobs were under threat following a review of the banking business, which will see the closure of its Newport call centre.
But union leaders insisted 2,900 jobs will be axed at HSBC, including 500 being off-shored to India. The Unite union said a number of local communities would be “ravaged” as sites were closed and work moved abroad.
HSBC insisted that while 2,900 positions would be axed, some staff would be given different work and only 1,200 would lose their jobs.
Source: Wales Online, The Mirror
Insurance firm Legal and General (L&G) is to cut 10% of jobs in its 6,500-strong life and pensions division.
L&G made the announcement after reporting a £1.5bn annual loss, and said it was cutting costs as it fought the recession and stock market turmoil.
The company, which has offices in Surrey, Hove, Cardiff and London, said the figure included 450 job losses announced last month.
Source: BBC News
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