Jaguar Land Rover is cutting a further 400 jobs as the economic slump takes its toll on sales.
JLR is asking workers at all three of its factories in Castle Bromwich, Solihull and Halewood to volunteer for redundancy.
Further jobs are likely to go at the company’s engineering centres at Whitley and Gaydon, where new models are developed. Some production workers have been offered three months’ leave at 80 per cent of their normal pay.
“We are looking for volunteers,” said JLR spokesman Mark Foster. “Applications for the 198 redundancies we announced earlier this year were heavily oversubscribed.”
In all, JLR employs about 16,000 people in the UK. Its workers already face short-shifts and non-production weeks as the company cuts vehicle output to avoid stockpiling models that aren’t selling.
Combined, the two Indian-owned companies saw a 4.7 percent drop in sales during the first nine months of this year.
“While regrettable, the redundancies are a necessary action,” chief executive David Smith said, describing it as "a very challenging period”.
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