Rolls Royce To Give UK Staff Bonus To Tide Over High Living Costs

Over 14,000 staff at Rolls Royce Holdings plc (RYCEF.PK) will be provided with a 2000-pound one-off payment to help them cope with the rising cost of living in Britain. The payment is mainly meant for junior management and shop floor staff, based at its Derby and Bristol offices.

The lump sum will be rolled out to the around 3,000 staff with their August month pay check. The remaining 11,000 unionized workers will receive the payment after their union approves the amount.

A Rolls Royce spokesperson said that 70 percent of the workers in UK will receive the payment, adding that the company is also “offering our shop floor staff the highest annual pay rise for at least a decade”.

There are ongoing discussions with unions about a pay settlement for 2022-2023, the spokesperson said, and the cost-of-living issue will also be discussed. The spokesperson also told said that the 11,000 unionized members will also be offered a 4 percent increase in pay, back-dated to March.

Pay rates and measures to help UK staff have been increasing as businesses have been seeking to recruit and retain staff, after official figures showed that there were fewer unemployed people than job vacancies for the first time since records began.

At present, inflation in UK is 9%, and is expected to increase again later this year.
Rolls Royce was badly impacted by the global coronavirus pandemic, which hit demand for its aircraft engines as international air travel came to a standstill.

In 2020 it announced plans to cut its global workforce by 9,000 by the end of this year, with 3,000 of those jobs going in the UK. At the time it said it would take “several years” for the industry to recover from the pandemic.

In the company’s latest trading update, chief executive Warren East said the company’s financial performance had improved in 2021 and it had made “significant progress on the path to recovery from the impact of Covid-19”.

“We are confident that we have positioned the business to achieve positive profit and cash this year, driven by the benefits of our cost reductions and increased engine flying hours in civil aerospace together with a strong performance in defence and power systems,” he added.

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