The owner of British Gas is to slash 5,000 jobs, as the UK jobs market endured another bleak day with chemicals firm Johnson Matthey also announcing the loss of 2,500 staff and Heathrow airport launching a redundancy programme.
Centrica, the owner of Britain’s biggest energy supplier, said it was looking to cut costs by simplifying its business structure. The company is removing three layers of management, with more than half of the job losses falling on leadership roles, including half its 40-strong senior team. The restructuring is expected to take place in the second half of 2020 following staff consultations.
Centrica also intends to simplify its employee terms and conditions, as it has up to 80 different employee contracts, with some agreements in place for more than 35 years.
Centrica’s chief executive, Chris O’Shea, said the company’s “complex business model hinders the delivery of our strategy”, adding that the group had lost half of its earnings in recent years.
“I truly regret that these difficult decisions will have to be made and understand the impact on the colleagues who will leave us. However, the changes we are proposing to make are designed to arrest our decline, allow us to focus on our customers and create a sustainable company,” O’Shea said.
British Gas has faced growing competition from challenger energy suppliers and has been haemorrhaging customers for several years. It lost 286,000 customers from its energy supply business in 2019, although that was a slower rate of decline than the previous two years. It is braced for a further fall in revenue because of the pandemic, after businesses closed their sites and households looked to defer paying their bills, leading the company to cancel its cash flow forecasts for the year.
The coronavirus lockdown has virtually halted international travel and tourism, hitting airlines and other travel companies, aerospace and auto manufacturers and oil companies hard.
As these businesses adjust to dramatically reduced revenue projections, job losses are starting to mount alarmingly. More than 40,000 redundancies have already been announced across these sectors, with more than 10,000 likely to be in the UK.
Rolls-Royce
The jet-engine manufacturer has confirmed that 3,000 job cuts, of a planned 9,000 worldwide, will be made in the UK. Rolls-Royce will make the first round of redundancies through a voluntary programme, with about 1,500 posts being lost at its headquarters in Derby, as well as 700 redundancies in Inchinnan, near Glasgow, another 200 at its Barnoldswick site in Lancashire, and 175 in Solihull, Warwickshire.
Bentley
The luxury carmaker intends to shrink its workforce by almost a quarter, slashing 1,000 roles through a voluntary redundancy scheme. The majority of Bentley’s 4,200 workers are based in Crewe in Cheshire.
Aston Martin Lagonda
The Warwickshire-based luxury car manufacturer has also announced 500 redundancies.
BP
The oil company plans to make 10,000 people redundant worldwide, including an estimated 2,000 in the UK, by the end of the year. The BP chief executive, Bernard Looney, said that the majority of people affected would be those in office-based jobs, including at the most senior levels. BP said it would reduce the number of group leaders by a third, and protect the “frontline” of the company, in its operations.
British Airways
The UK flag carrier is holding consultations to make up to 12,000 of its staff redundant, a reduction of one in four jobs at the airline. BA intends to cut roles among its cabin crew, pilots and ground staff, while significantly reducing its operations at Gatwick airport.
Virgin Atlantic
Richard Branson’s airline is to cut more than 3,000 jobs, more than a third of its workforce, and will shut its operations at Gatwick.
EasyJet
The airline has announced plans to cut 4,500 employees, or 30% of its workforce.
Ryanair
The Irish airline intends to slash 3,000 roles and reduce staff pay by up to a fifth.
P&O Ferries
The shipping firm intends to cut more than a quarter of its workforce, a loss of 1,100 jobs. The company, which operates passenger ferries between Dover and Calais, and across the Irish Sea, as well as Hull to Rotterdam and Zeebrugge, will initially offer employees voluntary redundancy.
Centrica
The owner of British Gas is to slash 5,000 jobs, saying it was looking to cut costs by simplifying its business structure. The company is removing three layers of management, with more than half of the job losses falling on leadership roles, including half its 40-strong senior team.
Johnson Matthey
A major supplier of material for catalytic converters in cars, Johnson Matthey announced plans to make 2,500 redundancies worldwide, or 17% of its total workforce. The group said it was the result of the impact of the pandemic, and the uncertain outlook for the car industry.
Heathrow Airport
Voluntary redundancy has been offered to all of its 7,000 direct employees after coronavirus wiped out its passenger traffic.
Centrica employs a total 27,000 people, of which 20,000 are in the UK.
Elsewhere in UK industry, Johnson Matthey, a major supplier of material for catalytic converters in cars, announced it plans to make 2,500 redundancies worldwide, or 17% of its total workforce. The group said the impact of the pandemic, and the uncertain outlook for the car industry as a result, had forced it to make the cutbacks which will take place over three years.
Heathrow said on Thursday that voluntary redundancy had been offered to all of its 7,000 direct employees after coronavirus had wiped out its passenger traffic.
Chief executive John Holland-Kaye said: “Throughout this crisis, we have tried to protect frontline jobs, but this is no longer sustainable, and we have now agreed a voluntary severance scheme with our union partners.
“While we cannot rule out further job reductions, we will continue to explore options to minimise the number of job losses.”
The Unite union said it accepted that cuts would be necessary and that it had negotiated a generous voluntary redundancy scheme. The union’s national officer for aviation, Oliver Richardson, said it was “simply the latest blow to the aviation sector, and tens of thousands more jobs are at risk unless the government gets a grip of the challenges the industry faces”.
German airline Lufthansa also announced on Thursday that it was cutting 22,000 jobs, half of them in the carrier’s home country.
