Plans to reduce shifts for workers at Jaguar Land Rover's (JLR) Halewood plant have been confirmed.
In December, the ECHO revealed the company would be cutting the number of shifts available for workers at the Knowsley plant, while dozens of agency workers had their contracts terminated just days before Christmas.
JLR has said it is being affected by a global shortage of semi-conductors, which is causing major issues across the automotive industry.
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Permanent staff were first told in December that from January the number of available shifts would be reduced. It has now been confirmed in a letter to workers that the plant is moving from operating two daily shifts to just the one.
The latest letter, seen by the ECHO, states that from Monday January 16, hours of work will be "in line with a standard day shift pattern" and will include a 30-minute unpaid lunch break.
Those hours will be carried out from 7am until 3pm Monday to Thursday and 7am until 2.30am on a Friday. Previously a later shift would have followed the early shift but this has now been cut. The company says these changes will be in place until further notice.
As well as a reduction in shifts and hours, workers will also be hit by the fact that the day shift pattern does not bring with it a shift premium payment that was previously attached to certain shifts.
The letter states: "A and B production shifts will remain as they are currently grouped and will continue to alternate working weeks - one week on, one week off (with the non-production shift stood down) - in line with corridor arrangements.
"We would like to remind employees that, during any period of corridor stand down, reduced or paused production, they must remain available to attend work. We currently anticipate employees will need to attend work to support the alternative shift in order to meet operational requirements and support launch activities."
In the letter, JLR bosses say that while the new shift pattern will come in from January 16, they are "open to considering options." The letter also references a workplace ballot being carried out by the Unite union, which will be asking for staff members' views and preferences on working hours.
One JLR staff member previously told the ECHO what the reduced shift work would mean for him. He said: "For the last 3 months or so we've worked on a 'week on, week off' basis, with us still being split into 2 shifts, A and B. If we were in we got shift premium, if we weren't we got flat rate. From January 16 we'll still be on the same shift pattern but without the shift premium, meaning everyone is paid the same regardless of whether we're in or not.
"It was bad enough losing the shift pay every other week, this pay is around £120 a week on average. Now we're losing it every week. That's nearly £500 a month for some people. Some of us are having to take on gig work to make up the shortfall."
A spokesperson for the company 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 we expect our performance to continue improving in the second half of our financial year, as new agreements with semiconductor partners take effect. "
“This year Jaguar Land Rover activated the second-year terms of its Pay and Conditions agreement with employees, which saw colleagues awarded an inflation-beating 12.6% basic pay increase to mitigate rising living costs.”
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