Tata-owned Jaguar Land Rover to hire 5000 people in Britain

The Dollar Business Bureau 

Britain’s largest car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) will employ 5,000 people in order to boost the company’s skills in electric and autonomous technology, a welcome corporate endorsement as UK’s Prime Minister Theresa May begins Brexit negotiations after the election.

JLR said that it would be hiring 1,000 electronic and software engineers and an additional staff of 4,000 in the manufacturing division. Most of the employees will be based in the UK. The company employs over 40,000 people worldwide.

The recruitment will be done over the next one year, just as Britain begins talks to exit European Union (EU). Car manufacturers in UK have asked the May government to ensure that the talks result in a pact that holds free and unfettered trade in order to protect jobs.

JLR, owned by Indian auto major Tata Motors, will manufacture its first electric vehicle (EV) model - the I-PACE in Austria. However, it said that it wants to manufacture such models in the UK only if conditions like the support from academia and government are met.

The automakers in UK are competing to build greener cars and increase the charging time in order to meet the risingdemand from customers and also to fulfill the air quality goals, but have not been able to do so as UK lacks adequate manufacturing capacity.

JLR, which manufactures one-third of 1.7 million cars built in Britain, has said that around half of all its new car models will come in the electric version by the end of the decade and that would require new skills among its employees.

The announcement by the company on Sunday comes at a time when Prime  Minister May is still trying to close a deal with the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland for supporting her government after a week and a half of national elections, in which her party unexpectedly failed to win a complete majority.