Lotus making 350 staff redundant

[Chris_w]

Not good news...

Group Lotus, the Norfolk-based sports car builder, is to make 350 non-manufacturing staff redundant out of a total workforce of 1,500.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/norfolk/4004785.stm

[Bernard100]

Thought Lotus were increasing production ?

[boxy]

exactly, non-manufacturing staff = highly skilled and qualified engineers and technicians.

It's just a shame Proton don't seem to recognise that they won't get these sort of people back again.

Used, chewed up and spat out again...

[Snapper7]

Why don't they move these people over to production for the short term to help meet the orders which they seem to have flooding in untill their own departments pick up.....

For all the good news at Lotus they alway seem to be laying people off.....

[anonymous-user]

I guess once you only have one car in production and all the oily bits come from Toyota you don't need many engineers etc. Just a few gruntz to bolt the rice parts to the aluminium tub.

[neuron]

I think you'll find that a lot of the people involved in the redundancy are staff involved with Lotus Engineering, the people who do engineering projects for all sorts of other car companies, the likes of Alfa, Bentley, Jag, BMW, Land Rover etc etc etc. These are NOT just spare staff, they are vital resources if the company wants to continue to be a VERY talented engineering company with a large amount of ability. This point gets lost sometimes as people think all that Lotus does is make the Elise......IT AIN'T SO !!. Usual story, too many chiefs and not enough indians !!!