JCB’s shop-floor employees have returned to work to a New Year pay rise of 3.9% and the “strongest order books” in the company’s history.
The 2018 pay increase is part of a three-year wage deal. It follows a £500 Christmas bonus paid to all of JCB’s 5,500 employees in the UK.
Over the past 12 months JCB has recruited more than 1,200 people at its 11 UK factories in Staffordshire, Derbyshire and Wales.
In addition, JCB says that it has increased its purchasing spend globally to more than £2 billion a year. In the past 12 months spending with the company’s 2,500 UK suppliers has risen by 13% compared to 2016. This, claims JCB, came as it launched 46 new products.
JCB has, this week, gone into production with a new range of site dumpers at its world headquarters in Staffordshire; this development is expected to create around 70 new jobs over the next year.
JCB chairman Lord Bamford said: “The industry in which we operate is doing very well at the moment. This is not only good news for JCB; it’s also good news for our region.
We are already off to a very strong start in 2018 with a very healthy order bank in place. In my view there is every reason to be optimistic about the future and, in particular, the future of the British economy.
“With unemployment at its lowest level for more than 40 years, we face some challenges with recruitment but that is a great challenge to have to overcome and a very positive position for the UK to find itself in.”
The pay increase follows acceptance in 2016 by GMB members of a three-year deal. It affects around 3,200 shop-floor employees at JCB’s Staffordshire plants in Rocester, Uttoxeter, Cheadle, Rugeley and its factories in Wrexham and Foston, Derbyshire.
Chief executive officer Graeme Macdonald said: “The long-term pay deal agreed last year gave us the stability we needed to plan and has delivered a robust pay rise for JCB’s shop-floor employees.
The outlook for 2018 is positive with markets all over the world in exceptionally good shape.
