Jobs axe to fall at BAE Systems' North plant

Nov 21 2008 By Karen Dent, The Journal

AROUND 20 jobs are to go at BAE Systems’ Newcastle factory as part of 200 jobs being shed nationwide by the defence giant.

The company said the redundancies among staff and contract workers were necessary because of a decline in the workload on the Ministry of Defence’s Armoured Fighting Vehicle programmes. It aims to shed all of the posts via voluntary redundancies.

The Scotswood Road tank factory, which employs 665 people, has been hit along with BAE plants in Leeds, Leicester, Barrow and Telford.

David Allott, managing director of BAE Systems Land Systems, said: “BAE Systems has been working with the UK MoD, in line with the defence industrial strategy, to build a long-term, sustainable land systems business and transform its UK operations to better meet the needs of the front line.

“In the armoured vehicle sector, we are looking to match our internal planning to potential long-term workload and this has led us to these job losses.

“We recognise the impact these job losses will have on our employees and the communities in which we operate and we always aim to mitigate as much as possible the impact of losses by offering voluntary redundancy where we can, as well as re-skilling and retraining people for alternative roles.

“We have been able to postpone this decision due to high workload on meeting urgent operational requirements, but that activity is now tailing off.”

In June, BAE Systems – the world’s third biggest defence company – announced a 12% increase in sales to £7.75bn for the first half of this year. At the time, it predicted further gains for the rest of this year.

The Newcastle factory clinched a £28m contract in the summer to deliver and maintain 401 armoured Panther jeeps for the MoD, which was expected to secure jobs at the former Vickers factory. The manufacture of these vehicles is almost complete, with the final few due to be handed over early next year. A spokeswoman said: “The workforce and the forward workload don’t match.”

BAE’s redundancy announcement came a day after the MoD revealed the preferred bidders for its £350m programme to provide three new classes of Tactical Support Vehicle. The preferred bidder status went to US firms Force Protection Industries Inc and Navistar Defence, and Devon company Supacat Ltd.

A spokesman for Northern Defence Industries (NDI), which represents and lobbies for companies in the region’s defence sector, said: “There is a considerable amount of work as new orders for Armoured Fighting Vehicles recently announced but unfortunately BAE Systems has not won that.”

BAE Systems will continue to review the business in the light of the MoD’s requirements.