Jaguar Land Rover Cutting 4,500 Jobs

Another 1,500 people were let go last year.

Jaguar Land Rover
Ralf Speth, CEO at Jaguar Land Rover announced mass layoffs are coming. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)
Getty Images

The U.K.’s larges automaker is reducing its global workforce by 4,500 jobs as part of its larger goal of slashing costs by a total of $3.2 billion, the company announced Thursday.

Jaguar Land Rover took a major hit last year in China, its biggest market, where sales fell 42% in December alone and 22% in 2018 as a whole, CNN reported. The uncertainty surrounding Brexit has taken a toll on the company, as did the collapse in sales of diesel vehicles in the wake of Volkswagen’s emissions scandal.

“We are taking decisive action to help deliver long-term growth, in the face of multiple geopolitical and regulatory disruptions as well as technology challenges facing the automotive industry,” CEO Ralf Speth said in a statement.

Hundreds of workers at JLR’s U.K. plant were switched to a three-day workweek in September of last year, while another 1,500 across the world were laid off.

On the Brxit front, Speth has previously cautioned that the “wrong outcome” would jeopardize JLR’s plans to spend $102 billion in the United Kingdom over the next five years.

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