Rolls-Royce to temporarily shut factories during the summer
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Rolls-Royce will temporarily shut down its jet engine factories for two weeks in the summer, in an attempt to save costs in the midst of the pandemic.
The shutdown – the first in the company’s history – will affect all 19,000 staff in Britain, according to reports.
Workers were told about the planned closure in November, and informed that the loss of two weeks’ pay will be spread across the year to reduce the impact on their income.
Rolls-Royce confirmed the news, first published in the Sunday Telegraph. It said: “As part of the agreement reached with the union… we agreed in principle to enter into negotiations about delivering a 10 per cent productivity and efficiency improvement across our civil aerospace operations in the UK.
“We have now begun complex and constructive discussions with the union on how this can be achieved.
“As we continue to manage our cost base in response to the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the whole commercial aviation sector, we are proposing a two-week operational shutdown of civil aerospace over the summer.
“We understand that this will be disappointing to our colleagues and intend to reduce the impact on pay by spreading it across the year.”
Last month Rolls-Royce stock lowered its forecasts for the number of hours it expects aircraft powered by its engines to fly this year.
The FTSE 100 firm said that it now expected flying hours to drop to 55 per cent of 2019’s levels, down from prior estimates of 70 per cent.
As the blue-chip is paid according to how many hours planes fly using its engines, the fall means that it will lose more cash this year.