The company behind railway station and airport chains Upper Crust and Caffe Ritazza is set to cut up to 5,000 jobs due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The SSP Group has told staff they have come to the ‘very difficult conclusion’ that they need to ‘simplify and reshape’ the business, Sky News reports. In the message, sent on Tuesday, the company said they would be ‘starting a collective consultation on a number of proposed changes to the business’ from today.
It added: ‘This includes a proposed reorganisation which could lead to a headcount reduction of up to c.5,000 across SSP Group, SSP Finance and SSP UK, which includes all head office colleagues and both salaries and hourly paid colleagues in operations.’
If the plans go ahead, this could mean more than half the company’s 9,000-strong UK workforce are made redundant. Before lockdown in March, SSP traded from around 2,500 global outlets, serving approximately 1,500,000 customers a day across 35 countries.
The travel food specialist reported that like-for-like sales tumbled 8.4% in the half year to March 31 after most global markets were hammered by the virus and subsequent travel restrictions.
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Only 10% of its units continued to trade throughout April, with the company stating that they had had ‘effectively hibernated’ during lockdown.
The company is the latest of many to announce staff cuts. On Tuesday aerospace giant Airbus revealed plans to axe 1,700 jobs in the UK as a result of the coronavirus crisis. The cuts would represent 15% of its 90,000 commercial aerospace workforce
In a statement, the firm said: ‘Airbus has announced plans to adapt its global workforce and resize its commercial aircraft activity in response to the Covid-19 crisis.’
It added that ‘this adaptation is expected to result in a reduction of around 15,000 positions no later than summer 2021.’
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Meanwhile Easyjet is considering ditching more than 700 pilot jobs and closing its bases at Stansted, Southend and Newcastle airports. On Tuesday, an EasyJet spokesperson said: ‘As part of our update to the market on May 28 EasyJet set out that it may need to reduce staff numbers by up to 30% as well as optimise its network and bases as a result of the pandemic.
‘EasyJet has today started formal consultation on proposals with employee representatives including Balpa and Unite on all of its UK based pilots and crew.
‘The proposals include the potential closing of three of its bases in the UK – London Stansted, London Southend and Newcastle. These airports would remain part of EasyJet’s route network.
‘We have also informed all employees who may be directly affected by these proposals and will be providing full support to our people during this difficult time. We are fully committed to work closely with our employee representatives during these consultations with the aim of minimising job losses as far as possible.’
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