Luxury Clothing Company Burberry Sheds Jobs

Burberry, the luxury clothing company, announced 290 job cuts yesterday as a fresh wave of redundancies swept across British industry.Burberry, a 153-year-old business famous for its check-patterned raincoats, said that the redundancies, which also include 250 jobs in Spain, would save between £30million and £35million. “It's extremely challenging, volatile and difficult,” Stacey Cartwright, its chief financial officer, said of present trading conditions.

The company angered unions by closing its sewing factory in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, without telling workers. Tim Roache, regional officer of the GMB union, said: “The GMB and its members were given no notice of this announcement. The first we heard of it was from the media. It is completely outrageous.”

Burberry reported a 9 per cent increase in group revenue for the last three months of the year but retail sales fell by 3 per cent in the last quarter, driven by poor performance in the United States and Spain, where sales of the luxury brand slumped by 20 per cent.

It seems that investor's interests conflict with employees in this case and Burberry's shares closed up 25pence, more than 12%, at 231p.

Burberry came in for some critiscism not long ago for using fur on some of their garments.