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JLR Voluntary Redundancies
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR), owned by Tata Motors, opened a voluntary redundancy programme that could see around 4,000 jobs cut over the next two years as the company targets £1.7 billion of savings and aims to reduce break-evens to 300,000 vehicles.
“could see around 4,000 jobs cut over the next two years”
JLR said it needed to “adapt to evolving global market conditions” while targeting approximately £1.7 billion of savings over the next two years and reduce break-evens to 300,000 vehicles, and it said it had informed employees and trade union partners about the voluntary scheme.
The planned workforce reduction comes nearly a year after a cyber attack that forced JLR to suspend manufacturing operations for several weeks, contributing to a 27% drop in production and with the overall cost later estimated at around £1.9 billion.
In the UK, the business minister Jonathan Reynolds said he would meet JLR’s CEO this week to discuss job cuts at the country’s biggest carmaker, and he told the BBC on Sunday that the business environment for carmakers was “challenging” in the UK and across Europe.
No Bailout, Talks Ahead
The UK government signalled it will not invest taxpayers’ money to limit job losses at JLR, with business secretary Jonathan Reynolds saying it was not his job to “intervene and run businesses”.
Speaking on the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show, Reynolds said: “Not if it’s to bail people out,” while adding that if the issue is making the workforce right over time, “that’s the conversation we need to have,” as he prepared for crunch talks with Unite general secretary Sharon Graham and JLR chief executive PB Balaji.
Unite warned that workers should not “pay the price,” with Sharon Graham telling reporters that “It cannot be acceptable that workers again are made to pay the price,” and she said there had been intensive government discussions over the weekend to mitigate job losses.
The BBC reported that Reynolds will meet JLR and the Unite union early next week to focus on ways to “mitigate any job losses” while ruling out a bailout, and it said JLR did not confirm the numbers even as the Times reported as many as 4,000 jobs may be lost.
What’s at Stake Next
JLR said it is opening the voluntary redundancy programme offering salaried and management team members the opportunity to leave the business, while it also said it would “share further information with our colleagues first” as the company seeks to simplify its organisation, improve efficiency and build greater resilience.
“share further information with our colleagues first”
Reynolds linked the job-cut pressure to a wider “challenging” environment for the auto sector and pointed to the government’s willingness to invest “alongside” industry, while he refused to rule out watering down government targets for UK automakers to reach 80% zero-emission car sales by 2030.
The Guardian reported that JLR has its largest plant in Solihull in the West Midlands and that the expected cuts represent almost 12% of JLR’s 34,000-strong UK workforce, with sources expecting redundancies to be weighted towards more senior roles in management and research and development rather than shop floor production workers.
The BBC said the cyber attack in September 2025 led to the shut down of all manufacturing at JLR for several weeks, meaning not a single vehicle rolled off its production lines, and it cited an overall cost of the cyber-attack and subsequent loss of manufacturing estimated to be £1.9bn as the company continues recovery.