Rolls-Royce gives staff £2k to help with cost of living crunch
Rolls-Royce is set to pay three-quarters of its workers £2,000 help with the cost of living crunch.
As reported by Mark Kleinman for Sky News, the UK car maker said employees would be handed a lump sum as well as a backdated four per cent pay rise.
The firm employs around 20,000 people.
A Rolls-Royce spokesperson told City PM: “We can confirm that we are offering 14,000 of our UK shopfloor and junior management colleagues, or approximately 70% of our UK workforce, a cash lump sum of £2,000 to help them through the current exceptional economic climate. In addition, we are offering our shopfloor staff the highest annual pay rise for at least a decade, back-dated to March, and together these measures represent around a 9% pay increase for them.”
As reported by City PM last month, Rolls-Royce’s trading in the first four months of the year has remained in line with expectations following the aviation sector’s gradual recovery and investments into defence.
Despite market volatility and other macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds, the group said today it was expecting “positive momentum in our financial performance in 2022” and maintained its financial guidance for 2022 unchanged.
Analysts forecast the group’s guidance, which was released in February as part of Rolls-Royce’s full-year results, to be around £11.7bn worth of revenues, with an underlying £156m of pre-tax profits and a free cash flow of £50m.
Rolls-Royce’s defence business was not touched by Ukraine war-induced headwinds as its products were delivered and maintained over decades, while order backlogs will give Rolls-Royce the confidence it needs to navigate inflation and supply chain issues.
According to interactive investor’s head of investment Victoria Scholar, the company is still set to face new challenges.
“This is a company that was hit hard during the pandemic but now Rolls-Royce faces fresh challenges from its leadership uncertainty after chief executive Warren East announced plans to leave combined with the slow recovery of civil aerospace flying hours which are both weighing on the business,” she added.