BAE Systems To Cut Over 600 Jobs in U.K.
LONDON - BAE Systems will cut up to 642 jobs at its Integrated System Technologies (Insyte) business in the United Kingdom, the company said in a statement Thursday.
The move takes job loss announcements at BAE businesses across the U.K. this year to around 2,350, just over 7 percent of the company's total British workforce, which at of the end of 2008 stood at 32,800.
BAE's air, land and now systems business sectors in the U.K. have all been hit this year by the prospect of reduced workloads.
Insyte currently employs 3,719 people across 11 U.K.-based sites that produce a range of radar, command and control, underwater systems and other products. Last year, it reported a turnover of 526 million pounds with an order book of 1.7 billion pounds ($2.8 billion).
The cutbacks are spread across eight sites with the Broad Oak, Portsmouth, facility expected to lose 220 of its 1,109 employees.
Proportionately, it is the radar building site at Cowes on the Isle of Wight that will take the biggest hit with 32 percent of its 319 employees earmarked to lose their jobs. Cowes' product line includes the Sampson radar being fitted to the Royal Navy's new T-45 destroyers now entering service.
BAE says the proposed job losses at Insyte, which are now the subject of consultations with the unions here, will take place over the next two years.
"We have a responsibility to address a reduction in our forecast workload and manage our cost base to remain competitive and meet our customers' future requirements," said Rory Fisher, the Insyte managing director.
Howard Wheeldon, the senior strategist and defense specialist at London brokers BGC Partners, said the proposed job losses at Insyte are a "typical response to reducing levels of UK Ministry of Defence business and pressure to maintain competitiveness in markets that globally are expected to get much tougher as government customer spending cuts begin to bite."
"I suspect that in the coming months we will see further jobs losses as a result of lowered defense spend, program wind down or delay. These may be worsened as a result of delays in program awards caused either by the impending General Election in the U.K. or the planned Strategic Defence Review."
"While current market conditions are still reasonable, the outlook amongst the U.K. defence industrial base is more uncertain now than at any time over the past nine years," Wheeldon said.
In September, BAE announced it intended to cut 1116 jobs from its U.K. military air solutions business. About half the job losses were focused on the Woodford site in Cheshire. The facility is scheduled to close in 2012 following completion of Nimrod MRA4 production for the Royal Air Force. Three other sites were also affected by the cuts.
Earlier in the year the company announced it was closing three armored vehicle sites in the U.K. and was drawing down employee numbers at other sites. Some 590 jobs are affected.
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