BAE Systems plans to cut 1116 jobs

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

BAE Systems has announced it is going to close one of its UK sites and make job cuts at another three, with a total loss of 1116 jobs.

The Woodford site in Cheshire will close at the end of 2012, on completion of the Nimrod MRA4 production contract and with the loss of 630 jobs, the company said. Another 205 jobs will be lost at Samlesbury in Lancashire, 170 at Warton in Lancashire, and 111 at Farnborough in Hampshire.

BAE said it had been clear since 2003 that the Woodford site had little future beyond the end of Nimrod MRA4 production and the workforce had been kept informed since that time. Despite "strenuous efforts" to achieve further Nimrod production work there has been none forthcoming, the company said.

At Samlesbury, jobs will go in the manufacturing function and are associated with the end of Airbus work BAE Systems does for Spirit AeroSystems. The jobs going at Warton are in the manufacturing and operations areas with work on the Nimrod, Tornado and Hawk programmes winding down. And at Farnborough the job losses will be in the Harrier business and are due to a downturn in Harrier upgrade work over the next few years, BAE said.

Kevin Taylor, managing director of military air solutions, commented: "While we regret having to make this announcement we have to ensure we are the right size and shape to remain competitive and meet our customer's requirements in the future. We will work with our employees and their representatives to explore ways of mitigating these potential job losses and we will do everything necessary to deal with the potential job losses and closure of Woodford in a professional way and support our people throughout this process."

• BAE Systems and Thales recently showed US army officials the newest version of their jointly developed combat identification (CID) system, which is designed to prevent soldiers operating machine guns on armoured high-mobility multipurpose wheeled vehicles from firing on friendly forces in other combat vehicles. During the demonstration, the CID system correctly identified moving and stationary friendly vehicles through smoke and fog and in tree lines.

"The general officers and civilian attendees who took the time to try the CID system all responded positively to its potential for preventing fratricide," said Sal Costa, head of identification solutions for BAE Systems. "They were uniformly impressed by its simplicity and effectiveness."