Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced a whopping 4,000 job cuts over the next two years. The Labour government’s response has been to say that they’re in “close contact” with the company but ruled out “any form of bailout”. So much for Burnham’s ‘greater public control’. And speaking down the road from JLR, Chancellor John Healey backed ‘growth’ but then ducked questions about JLR, grumbling about “fiscal instability”.
But the lives of the estimated 250,000 people directly or indirectly employed by JLR, and all their families and the wider community, shouldn’t be cast adrift in the sea of instability. Instead, JLR should be nationalised under democratic workers’ control and management – real public control – to safeguard jobs and the lives of the city that relies on JLR, from lorry drivers to security guards, factory workers, engineers, and maintenance staff, who could be next following this cull of head office workers.
