This is an absolute bloody disgrace, and appalling way of doing business for all except a few higher level management. This is short term money savings, which is really only going to divert costs to somewhere else. In the short they will save some money on paper in wages. However the redundancy settlement payments will not be cheap if the union does its job properly, and chances are in a years time they will need more engineers again, and start re-hiring and re-training, therefore more cost than they saved. I think we have been here before in the not too distant past. Are lessons really never learnt? Would it not be better to offer to hold people on reduced time until things pick up? Smacks of another FR attempt to boost short term profit margins on paper prior to a quick sell off.
My deepest sympathies to those being royally shafted.