General Electric’s Scotland-based employees will not be affected by plans to cut about 600 UK jobs, the US firm said yesterday.
The redundancies at General Electric (GE) form part of the industrial giant’s wider plans to lay off 6,500 staff members in Europe, where it employs 100,000 people.
Most of the 600 UK job losses are expected to take place at GE’s sites in Rugby and Stafford in England, a spokesman for GE said yesterday.
GE’s Scottish employees, most of whom work for the firm’s oil and gas division, will escape the latest round of cuts, he said.
The company employs 1,320 people in Aberdeen, 492 in Montrose, 74 in Peterhead, and 47 in Glasgow.
It also employ between 500 and 600 people at its aviation business in Prestwick.
GE’s streamlining measures are a result of its £6.4billion takeover of the power business of French firm Alstom late last year.
The transaction boosted GE’s ability to service and maintain gas turbines, but demand for the equipment has dropped off.
GE’s cuts will include 765 positions in France and 1,700 in Germany.
GE had promised to create 1,000 new jobs in France to win government support for the deal with Alstom.
The company insisted any positions lost during the restructuring will be restored on top of the 1,000 it is duty bound to create.
Despite avoiding the latest round of cuts, GE’s Scottish business has had to downsize during the oil price downturn.
In August, the GE’s oil and gas division said it would make an unspecified number of staff members redundant in Peterhead, citing low oil prices as a factor.
At the time, GE Oil & Gas said it employed about 130 people at pressure control supply chain facility, where components used in the oil and gas industry are made.
GE Oil & Gas also has facilities in Aberdeen and Montrose, where it recently spent £13.5million on upgrading its manufacturing facilities.
Cutbacks across the energy sector have come as a natural consequence of falling crude prices. On Tuesday, BP said it would axe 600 jobs from its North Sea business.
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