Commenting on the announcement today (Wednesday 3 June) that
Rolls-Royce is planning to shed over 3,000 jobs in the UK, Unite
national officer for the aerospace sector, Rhys McCarthy, said:
“Today’s announcement by Rolls-Royce is another warning sign that
the UK is in serious danger of losing its leading position in
aerospace, in addition to losing thousands of skilled jobs.
“Unite understands the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic and
the impact on the aviation and aerospace industries, with the
likely scenario of a recovery to passenger demand for long-haul,
wide-bodied jets, which Rolls Royce makes the engines for, not
expected to recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2024/2025.
“This is why Unite has negotiated with Rolls-Royce the opening of
a voluntary severance scheme across the company to mitigate any
potential future redundancies and buy sometime so that
Rolls-Royce can develop the Plan B that our members and other
stakeholders so desperately need.
“The company’s defence and power divisions provide some
protection in the short-term from further sweeping job losses,
but this company urgently needs to develop a diversification plan
to fill the gap in its civil aerospace division. It also has to
move to bring new technologies to the market, builing on the uge
assets of the skills and factories it has in the UK.
“The UK government also has a key role in supporting
diversification for the aviation and aerospace industries. We
need them to be bold with levels of state investment and support
last seen in the post-war period.
“More widely, the UK needs to develop a survival and recovery
strategy that includes an aircraft scrappage scheme so that more
environmentally friendly aircraft, wings and engines that the UK
produces can be brought into service by airlines.
“Other countries such as France are already following this path;
if we fail to follow suit we will see our competitors overtake us
and help drive their economies out of the pandemic-induced
recession while we lag behind and never catch up.”
