RIYADH, 15 August — British Aerospace ( BAE) yesterday announced that it will review the entire contract manning schedule (CMS) posts as the company is planning to cut jobs.
The new decision comes within days of its announcement that it will withdraw plans to modify the contracts of Saudi staff working in the company after receiving orders from the Saudi Ministry of Defense not to change the contracts. "We will now be conducting a review of every single CMS post that is currently manned," said P.H. Champniss, chief executive of BAE Systems in Saudi Arabia in a notice to all employees of the company.
"We have been asked to submit a report by the end of October with our assessments of where reductions can be made and the impact of those reductions," he said.
"The review of CMS posts comes as per the directives of Saudi authorities in concert with the UK Ministry of Defense.It is then for the Saudi authorities to decide as to whether such reductions are acceptable in the overall scheme of things," Champniss said in the notice which was made available to Arab News here.
For their part, Saudi employees of the company have expressed dissatisfaction over the planned reduction of jobs. "The company states in public what it does not say to employees. We start to question the credibility of the company," said one Saudi employee. "We are very worried about the future. It is as if the company is pushing us to resign," said another.
According to Saudi labor laws, the company has no right to proceed with such measures until the verdict in the employees’ lawsuit with the company is known , said another worker.
BAE Systems has been at the center of a controversy after it asked its Saudi staff to sign a new employment contract with an unfavorable time clause, a move which the staff challenged in lawsuits filed in labor courts. The issue spurred the workers to form Saudi Arabia’s first Labor Committee of Saudi Workers.
The company subsequently announced withdrawal of it plans to modify staff contracts and agreed to protect the salaries and other rights of the employees and continue with the contracts without any modifications. BAE withdrew its plan at the behest of the Saudi Ministry of Defense which supported the rights of Saudi employees.
The Labor Committee of Saudi Workers at BAE Systems welcomed the company’s decision not to pursue it plans to modify work contracts but regretted that BAE had appealed to the Higher Labor Committee against the verdict of the Preliminary Committee to stop punitive actions against the employees.
