BAE announces 580-plus redundancies

In separate announcements, Britain’s biggest defence contractor said 134 jobs would go at its Woodford military air solutions site and a further 450 at the Brough Hawk trainer aircraft plant in East Yorkshire. The Woodford job losses will affect a shared service team of engineers, known internally as Engineering Internal Supply. BAE said a review of the engineering capabilities required within the Military Air Solutions business was undertaken last year. This identified that the engineering workload would reduce as products moved from design and development into the support phase. As a result, it was announced in August 2007 that a managed run-down of the Engineering Internal Supply team at Woodford would take place between 2008 and 2010. There was no opportunity for significant transfer of engineering work packages to the site, despite the good reputation of the Woodford team, BAE said. The workload for the Engineering team made the current staffing level unsustainable, regrettably resulting in the redundancy announcement. At this stage the exercise is confined to the Engineering Internal Supply population at Woodford and does not affect those involved on the Nimrod MRA4 programme who were focussed on meeting aircraft deliveries, BAE said. At Brough, the 450 job losses include Engineering, Manufacturing Engineering, Manufacturing and Business Support workers. The announcement reflected the need to ensure resource levels at the site were in line with future business demands, said BAE. Additional work BAE had been seeking for the plant were not sufficient to sustain the current number of jobs there, the company said. BAE said a transition plan was being developed to retain critical capabilities at Brough, both to preserve its Hawk trainer aircraft’s position as a leader in the market place and to position the site as a provider of advanced engineering and manufacturing services for a range of air sector programmes. The transition plan would provide an opportunity to create longer term stability for the site and reduce its dependency on Hawk.