Toyota, Babcock and Shop Direct deepen the gloom

More than 4,000 job cuts marked a bleak day for British industry yesterday, with AstraZeneca and Shop Direct Group, the owner of Littlewoods, making swingeing redundancies.
Toyota and Babcock Rail also announced deep cuts, although Nissan said it would create 400 temporary jobs by adding an extra production shift in Sunderland for its Qashqai car.
Shop Direct said it would cut 1,500 call centre jobs in Sunderland, Burnley and Newton, Cheshire — about 15 per cent of its workforce. It said the continuing shift of its business online had left it with spare capacity.
Toyota carworkers at its Burnaston assembly plant, near Derby, and at its engine plant on Deeside were told the Japanese car manufacturer would be cutting a fifth of the workforce. Toyota is mothballing one of its production lines and will make both its Auris and Avensis models on the same line. The brunt of the cuts will be at Burnaston, which employs 3,500.

Last year Toyota suffered a collapse in demand. It made just 127,000 cars in Britain, against 213,000 in 2008.
Babcock International, the engineering group, said it was cutting a quarter of staff at its loss-making rail maintenance division. The 300 cuts are to be spread equally between Birmingham, York, Crewe and Scotland.
The decision to shed jobs followed a restructuring of the business and the appointment of a new management team. Rail revenues have plunged after Network Rail, one of its biggest customers, delayed some rail-renewal contracts.
Babcock has also been trying to extricate itself from unprofitable civil engineering work for the railway network operator. The RMT, the rail union, said that skilled workers were being jettisoned in a misguided attempt to save money.
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