Staff at Jaguar Land Rover's Halewood plant have said they are "prepared to walk" over plans to reduce their shift payments.
Last month the ECHO revealed that changes would be coming in to the shift patterns of staff at the Halewood plant. These changes were announced around the same time that dozens of agency workers at Halewood had their contracts ended early.
JLR has said it is being affected by a global shortage of semi-conductors, which is causing major issues across the automotive industry. However the company said the situation is "improving." The firm also pointed out that workers were awarded an "inflation-beating" basic pay increase of 12.3% in October to help with rising living costs.
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Permanent staff were told in December that from January the number of shift patterns would be changed as part of the plans to deal with these problems. It has since been confirmed in a letter to workers that the plant is moving from operating two daily shifts to just one.
Workers are concerned and unhappy the change in shift patterns will reduce their take-home pay. This is because the single day shift does not attract a shift premium payment, as was the case with previous shifts.
One worker told the ECHO: "They are moving us over to a day shift and taking the staff's shift rate. They do all this whilst also confirming we exceeded customer demand and have thousands in the order bank.
"They have changed the hours so staff will now not be able to pick up their children from school and yet they claim to be a family-oriented and a caring company. It is an absolute disgrace and staff are preparing to walk."
Another staff member contacted the ECHO to say he will now have to look for a second job to make up for the lost earnings.
Unfortunately for the JLR workers, it looks like the new arrangements will continue for longer than initially expected. It had been hoped the new arrangement would only be in place until March. But an update from the Halewood Leadership Team said: "We can now confirm that production schedules for Halewood will be continuing to operate on a day shift basis beyond the end of March 2023 and into the new financial year. Therefore, from the week commencing April 3 2023, we will be operating a day shift working patter."
A spokesperson for Jaguar Land Rover said: “We continue to actively manage the operational patterns of our manufacturing plants whilst the industry experiences global semi-conductor supply chain disruption. Demand for our vehicles remains strong and although supply is still constrained the situation is improving.
“In October 2022 Jaguar Land Rover activated the second-year terms of its Pay and Conditions agreement with employees, which saw colleagues awarded an inflation-beating 12.3% basic pay increase to mitigate rising living costs.”
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