British aircraft engine manufacturer Rolls-Royce will cut at least 9,000 jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic, it announced on Wednesday.
The impact of the new coronavirus (Covid-19) "on Rolls-Royce and the whole of the aviation industry is unprecedented," they said in a press release.
The job cuts represent 17% of a total workforce of 52,000 people. They will affect mainly civil aviation activities and some administrative functions.
It is "increasingly clear that activity in the commercial aerospace market will take several years to return to the levels seen just a few months ago," they added.
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"Our airline customers and airframe partners are having to adapt and so must we," said Rolls-Royce CEO Warren East. "Governments across the world are doing what they can to assist businesses in the short-term," he said, but they "cannot replace sustainable customer demand that is simply not there."
Rolls-Royce's restructuring, along with cost reductions "in plant and property, capital and other indirect cost areas" is expected to save a total of £1.3 billion (€1.45 billion), of which £700 million will come from redundancies.
UK Transport Minister Grant Shapps told Parliament on Monday that 43,500 people had been made redundant in aviation in the UK due to the coronavirus crisis. That includes employees of British Airways, Virgin Atlantic and Ryanair, all companies that had already announced thousands of job cuts.
The Brussels Times
