AAZ ENGINEERING
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Perkins to lay off shopfloor workforce
PERKINS Engines Ltd is to cut its shopfloor workforce as part of an overall efficiency programme.
The exact number of redundancies is not known as this will depend on talks currently being held with the unions involved, but it is believed to be in the region of ten per cent. Of the 9000 people employed at Peterborough, around 6500 are production workers.
The redundancy programme, while linked to the current recession, is mainly to improve the company's efficiency and thus increase its competitiveness in world markets.
The discussions with the unions are about "changing methods of working", according to company chairman Mike Hoffman. An example of these -changing methodsis already operational in the form of the new Perkins production test beds.
It is hoped in the short term that if the unions agree to these redundancies being completed by the end of October (the end of the Perkins fiscal year), then further redundancies will be prevented.
During the current November 1-October 31 Perkins year, over 10,000 engines have had to be dropped from the build programme.
The company claims that this is mainly due to its lack of competitiveness on price, aggravated by the strong pound — a further contributory cause being a slump in agricultural machinery sales, particularly in the USA.