JCB cuts production in response to impact of Coronavirus on supply chain
Workers at JCB, which makes heavy plant machinery, are to go on a shorter week.
Overtime is being suspended and around 4,000 company and agency shop floor employees will start a shorter working week from next week.
3,600 people are employed in the Midlands. That's spread between the Headquarters in Rocester, and factories in Cheadle, Uttoxeter, Rugeley and Foston.
UK production employees will work a 34-hour week until further notice, although JCB employees will be paid for a 39-hour week and will bank the hours, working them back later in the year.
JCB chief operating officer Mark Turner said:
He says it's inevitable that they will not have the parts needed to build the number of machines they have planned.
JCB said that, while it would be producing machines in lower than anticipated numbers, it would do so with the same number of employees and would keep the situation under review.
The GMB union have described this as "an unfortunate, yet unavoidable, consequence of an outbreak that is hitting manufacturing around the world"
Stuart Harrison, GMB Organiser, says that he is keeping in continuous touch with JCB no GMB member will suffer a loss in contractual pay during this period.