Land Rover is to suspend night shift working on the Range Rover assembly line at its Solihull plant and cut production of other models to four days a week in response to a downturn in its major markets.
But the company said that it currently had no plans to make any of its 5,000-strong workforce at the Lode Lane plant redundant.
Land Rover, which with its sister carmaker Jaguar was taken over by Tata Motors of India in June, said it was cutting production of some models in response to global economic conditions that were resulting in falling sales of new cars in major markets such as the UK, the US and Germany.
From the beginning of October, a spokesman said, production of Range Rover will be reduced from two shifts to one. The company last night would not say by how many units-a-week production is being cut.
Staff who work on the two shifts will either work on day assembly or be redeployed on completing partially assembled vehicles, training or track maintenance work.
Production of Range Rover Sport and Discovery 3 will be cut to four days with the tracks shut down on Fridays, traditionally a half day.
Some affected workers will also be redeployed on Land Rover’s “work horse” model, the Defender, production levels of which are increasing. A decision has not yet been taken on cutting production volumes of the company’s fifth model, the Freelander, which is built at Halewood on Merseyside.
Land Rover insisted last night that after a strong first half, total sales for 2008 will still be the second highest in the company’s 60-year history thanks to continuing strong demand in new markets such as China and Russia which is offsetting falls in the UK, the US and continental Europe.
A production worker who refused to be named said: “We are all worried about the future may hold.”
