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JLR job losses

6K views 19 replies 13 participants last post by  PhilMabbots17 
#1 ·
So perhaps the unsurprising news a lot of people expected regarding job losses at JLR UK.

Amazes me that despite their difficulties they haven't been able to fulfil recent order books (such as the Stratstone Velar deal that dragged on for months with confirmed build slots)

Anyone thinking this will impact on production in the short term in terms of orders placed?

I see it's another blame Brexit situation, but we'll leave politics for another forum!
 
#4 ·
TeddyBear said:
Buy British is the answer. But obviously now that means no Discovery, no Defender and no I-pace. What is a boy to do?
Or E-Pace, made in Austria with the I-Pace.
 
#5 ·
TeddyBear said:
Buy British is the answer. But obviously now that means no Discovery, no Defender and no I-pace. What is a boy to do?
McLaren? Was there this week, very nice - sadly not as a client!

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
#6 ·
A particularly good point in the current febrile environment. All of the manufacturers with UK plant are talking non stop about the importance of "Just on Time" production, but this doesn't apply to customer delivery from them which is seldom less than 3 months and often six months or more.
They can demand component delivery on an hourly schedule but expect customers to wait for months for their output. That is why its so easy to halt production when its economically viable. It just means committed customers have to wait an extra month for the vehicle they have specified. JLR are by no means the worst offenders.
 
#7 ·
Yes, as displayed by Herr Speth on Midlands news last night in an in-depth interview. He was asked about the JIT implications of leaving the EU with no deal, and has already confessed to stockpiling components to tide the business over until April....after that, he claims production will shut down within days if no deal is struck. Part of me thinks that he is taking his orders directly from Frau Merkel, and saying parrot fashion exactly what she wants him to say.

The situation is very clear. Take the deal that is on offer (which is far from ideal) or leave without one. Stop blaming what might happen on Brexit, and damn well get on with it. Then once we have left, shut down the entire corrupt greedy political system, disband it, reform it and start again from scratch. I for one am bloody sick of hearing about project fear and the "what ifs", and would rather meet the challenge head on as and when it happens. Blaming something that hasn't happened yet on piss-poor management is cowardly at best.
 
#8 ·
Badgerface said:
Yes, as displayed by Herr Speth on Midlands news last night in an in-depth interview. He was asked about the JIT implications of leaving the EU with no deal, and has already confessed to stockpiling components to tide the business over until April....after that, he claims production will shut down within days if no deal is struck. Part of me thinks that he is taking his orders directly from Frau Merkel, and saying parrot fashion exactly what she wants him to say.

The situation is very clear. Take the deal that is on offer (which is far from ideal) or leave without one. Stop blaming what might happen on Brexit, and damn well get on with it. Then once we have left, shut down the entire corrupt greedy political system, disband it, reform it and start again from scratch. I for one am bloody sick of hearing about project fear and the "what ifs", and would rather meet the challenge head on as and when it happens. Blaming something that hasn't happened yet on piss-poor management is cowardly at best.
Bloody well said Sir.

Project fear at its best. Let's get big business to scare the shit out of the public with redundancies that may never happen. Or perhaps were needed anyway and Brexit it is just a better excuse than saying mismanagement. (I think the latter is the real real reason for a lot of the blame Brexit propaganda from big business - Brexit it is a great get out of jail free card for them)

The sooner we are out, preferably on a WTO no deal basis than the one on the table, the better, in my opinion.
 
#9 ·
#10 ·
Well, come 29th March JLR will presumably be able accept any bribe from within the EU without having to worry at all about the impact on the UK. They can then enter into a full on bidding war with the UK Gov, on how badly they want to keep the jobs in the UK...

Project fear vs project ignorance frankly. :eek:
 
G
#11 ·
Ian_S said:
Well, come 29th March JLR will presumably be able accept any bribe from within the EU without having to worry at all about the impact on the UK. They can then enter into a full on bidding war with the UK Gov, on how badly they want to keep the jobs in the UK...

Project fear vs project ignorance frankly. :eek:
Their parent company has a history of using U.K. workers as pawns to be able to extract cash from the U.K. government

Port Talbot v2 coming up no doubt
 
#12 ·
I was surprised to see an announcement of job losses in the news. In my area of Canada I see more and more Range and land Rovers each day so sales must be good , at least here. My father is in a care home and on one visit there where 3 of us parked in the lot, all newer Disco Sports. Small lot.
 
#13 ·
All the commentators mention the reasons for the reduction of staffing as due to China, Dieselgate and BREXIT. No mention anywhere about the "elephant in the room" which is their appalling reliability record. Consistently near the bottom of the various motor magazines reliability tables. Also people once bitten not ever buying another product from JLR. This must be another reason for the collapse in sales.
 
#15 ·
Lofty1 said:
All the commentators mention the reasons for the reduction of staffing as due to China, Dieselgate and BREXIT. No mention anywhere about the "elephant in the room" which is their appalling reliability record. Consistently near the bottom of the various motor magazines reliability tables. Also people once bitten not ever buying another product from JLR. This must be another reason for the collapse in sales.
Yes, not far off the money with that statement. However, I would temper that with the fact that ALL Manufacturers are having problems with reliability with Euro 6 power plants, not just JLR. Where they shoot themselves in the foot time and time again is how they as a business deal with issues as they arise (I.e. not engineering a solution), blaming the customer, and not pulling their appalling dealer service departments up to a standard befitting a Prestige marque. If they got the basics right in the first place, then their league table position would not be consistently in the relegation zone.....it's really not that difficult!
 
#16 ·
Been announced on ITV Midlands Tonight that all plants here as well as Halewood are closing from 8/4 through to Easter due to....wait for it....Brexit uncertainty!

How is closing the plants 10 days after we have (hopefully) left EU Tyranny going to create any more uncertainty than it already has, by not being managed by someone with the balls to stand up to the lib-tard elite and tell them to poke it?

To make that call in January would suggest to me that Dr.Speth has been ordered to say this and create even further uncertainty by his fellow countrywoman. Now who is helping 'Project Fear' I wonder.....
 
#17 ·
I believe that the Oxford Mini plant, Swindon Honda plant are also shutting down for the period after Brexit, due to the uncertainty of the Just In Time process. Nobody knows how freight will perform, so rather than wait for components coming over the channel with a work force doing nothing have an lay off period to assess the situation. I don't think modern factories have great big store rooms to hold vast supplies.
 
#18 ·
Badgerface said:
Yes, not far off the money with that statement. However, I would temper that with the fact that ALL Manufacturers are having problems with reliability with Euro 6 power plants, not just JLR. Where they shoot themselves in the foot time and time again is how they as a business deal with issues as they arise (I.e. not engineering a solution), blaming the customer, and not pulling their appalling dealer service departments up to a standard befitting a Prestige marque. If they got the basics right in the first place, then their league table position would not be consistently in the relegation zone.....it's really not that difficult!
I think they are getting there though.

Why? As we all know most of the current dealerships are too small now for the volume of vehicles they are selling. You can't park, and booking can be difficult especially if you want a courtesy car. This puts the service department on the back foot from the off. In order to try and get through the work they have to rush it. They're on the defensive constantly, have angry customers and that's the main reason IMO for the cock & bull excuses. If you're always on the defensive it's human nature to defend yourself. It must be a horrible place to be at times, I don't envy them.

JLR as a group *have* to get their new style dealerships rolled out so they can cope with the volume. For the number of cars they shift there will be an ideal dealership size so that the service department isn't continually stressed. That then allows them to spend time properly with customers and their cars. My last visit to the new one near me was an example. I just wanted the free adblue top-up, but on a Saturday morning with what felt like a busy and buzzing showroom they were able to fit in the N273 software update there and then. All smiles, all polite, and a pleasant experience. I even ordered a 3rd row rubber mat :)

Yes they've ****ed up with the transverse Ingenium EU6 diesels, but if they admit that they'll probably be sunk by litigation. I suspect the loss of a service plan provider will be linked to that as well. A simple, and probably effective sticking plaster for that mess would be to follow Jaguar's lead on servicing and for affected models over 3 years old, offer cheap fixed price oil changes that cover the costs only, and with a very cheap labour rate, for example. £125 all in. Personally I'd be happy with that, especially if it was a 30 minute while you wait job.
 
#19 ·
Ian_S said:
Yes they've ****ed up with the transverse Ingenium EU6 diesels, but if they admit that they'll probably be sunk by litigation. I suspect the loss of a service plan provider will be linked to that as well. A simple, and probably effective sticking plaster for that mess would be to follow Jaguar's lead on servicing and for affected models over 3 years old, offer cheap fixed price oil changes that cover the costs only, and with a very cheap labour rate, for example. £125 all in. Personally I'd be happy with that, especially if it was a 30 minute while you wait job.
Hear, hear. But the ill-fated mating of the Ingenium engine with the too-small D8 chassis of the Evoque, Discover Sport and, later, the E-Pace necessitated a sequence of deliberate deceptions to hide the serious problems they were having getting the combination to work, even poorly. Disco Sport sales were stalling in 2015, in part because people were waiting for Ingenium, and amongst the folks in the queue there were impatient fleet buyers who were eager to get their hands on a great looking car that promised to reduce their servicing overheads by up to 50%. This car had to be delivered with the extra-long service interval because that's what the world had been promised. It said it on the internet. The magazines had promised it in the teasers. The brochures had been printed with the claims of lower cost of ownership and more convenience. But, meanwhile, in the back room, powertrain engineers were telling their managers that the DOC and SCRF combination would cause serious oil dilution and that they needed to scale back the 2 year/21,000 mile target. Instead of taking the honest and obvious step of toning down the mileage claims, the bosses pressed on and the engineers were told to keep banging their heads against a wall. We all know what happened next.

Speaking as one of the victims of the misselling that occurred (and which is still going on to this day), I believe that this company deliberately misled hundreds of thousands of potential diesel owners about the true cost of ownership that they would experience with a DS. Over the lifetime of the car, say 10 years, what we were "sold" was servicing costs fixed at £499 (later £625) for the first 5 years plus a maximum of three further 2 year/21,000 mile services at about £500 each. That is an equivalent amount per annum for servicing of £200, give or take. What do we have in reality? For the guy with a typical 7,000 mile service interval doing 12,000 miles a year, it will now cost a minimum of £4,750 over the same period (oil, oil, A, oil, oil, B, etc.) or £475 per annum, an increase of 138%.

On top of this there's the additional wear and tear on the SCRF, potential clogging and prematue failure of the EGR components plus a documented risk of complete engine failure due to high dilution. And, as BFGDSman points out, there's the downwards pressue on residual values once the second hand market gets to grips with the problems and costs associated with owning one of these things outside of its warranty period.

We all know why JLR did this. They desperately needed the cash flow from 200,000+ annual DS and Evoque sales - one third of the annual sales volume - and anything that threatened that revenue stream was mercilessly dealt with and the threat removed. By whatever means was necessary. Even if it meant setting up a systematic mis-selling scheme for the dealers to engage in. Mis-selling of the service deal will probably prove to be the thing that catches them out legally over this as the penny finally drops in the wider community and someone with sufficient anger realises that they were well and truly had. I saw a typical case on facebook yesterday....

"Stuart" bought a DS in 2016 and paid £499 for what he thought was a five year service plan. His car didn't have N010/N020 so he got to 2 years in blissful ignorance about diesel dilution. He had the A service in January 2018 at nearly 15,000 miles. They applied the fix to the dilution counter and so turned on the service required message. He managed another 7,000 miles before the newly-awakened dilution counter told him that a service was needed. So, at 22,000 miles on a 3 year old car, they completed the 42,000 mile B service and Stuart is now out of credits. He is just one of thousands waking up to a problem that was first discussed and accurately predicted on the forum six months ago...

https://www.discosportforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5379&p=91818&hilit=N010+N020+Q627#p91818

https://www.discosportforums.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5379&p=93915#p93915

Look at those dates and mileages. It's like someone had a crystal ball!
 
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