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No More Job Cuts, Says AgustaWestland’s Caporaletti. After This Lot.
AgustaWestland has made a public commitment that there will be no further job cuts at its Westland facility in Yeovil, UK. At the same time the company has once more pointed a finger at the British Ministry of Defence for not placing promised contracts and therefore putting jobs at risk.
Speaking yesterday at Le Bourget, AgustaWestland chief Amedeo Caporaletti said that all the proper information has been given to the UK authorities for the restructuring of AgustaWestland, “but because contracts that should already have been awarded by now have been delayed, it became necessary to make 600 people redundant this year. However, no further reductions are being considered for AgustaWestland and certainly not in Yeovil.”
AgustaWestland currently employees some 8,968 people across all its sites. So far this year the company has won several key UK contracts, including the Sea King Integrated Operational Support (SKIOS) package, the M-TADS modernization program for British Army Apache AH Mk 1s, and the provision of A 109s for the Queen’s Flight. Most importantly, the Future Lynx was selected as the preferred option for the UK Army and Navy to meet their requirement for a Lynx replacement. It is this contract that caused aggravation between AgustaWestland and the UK MoD. The helicopter builder expressed its frustration at the slow pace of the contract process and made it a sticking point in its acquisition of Westland. The UK authorities in turn have been unhappy at having their hand forced and AgustaWestland’s continued insistence on making redundancies in the first place. The final terms of the Future Lynx deal have yet to be reached. —Robert Hewson
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