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LOCAL POLITICIANS EXPRESS CONCERN FOR PERTH JOBS FOLLOWING AVIVA ANNOUNCEMENT
The Scottish National Party’s Ms Roseanna Cunningham MSP, Member of the Scottish Parliament for Perthshire South & Kinross-shire, and Mr Pete Wishart MP, Member of Parliament for Perth & North Perthshire, have expressed their concern at the announcement today (Thursday) by Aviva that they are to shed 2,000 jobs across the UK, Europe and Asia with half of those expected to be from their UK operations.
Speaking today Ms Cunningham said:
“Aviva is a huge part of the Perthshire economy and the Pitheavlis set up is an important aspect of Aviva’s business in the UK, so this news is obvious concern. I know that it will be very unsettling for my constituents who work for Aviva
“Pete Wishart and myself are in frequent contact with Aviva and we have both expressed our concern about the prolonged period of uncertainty for staff, particularly coming so soon after question marks have been raised over their continuing the lease at Pitheavlis.
“We will be monitoring the situation at Aviva very closely indeed and I sincerely hope that the workforce in Perth can avoid the worst of this round of redundancies and that the company can return to a position of stability and then growth.”
Mr Wishart continued:
“I had a conference call this afternoon with senior staff from Aviva and I appreciate their candour and willingness to keep lines of communication open.
“Clearly, this news will be very unsettling indeed for employees right across the group and coming on top of other recent news reports, there will be added concern for workers in Perth.
“My prime concern, of course, is to ensure that my constituents are not going to be disproportionately hit by these job losses and I certainly got an assurance in that regard. What Ian Ferguson was not, unfortunately, in a position to provide, at present, was more detail on what precise impact this announcement will have on Perth.
“I was told that will not become clear for a few months although Roseanna and I have a meeting scheduled with Aviva’s CEO, Mark Wilson, at the end of next month and I hope that there will be a clearer picture available by then.
“As well as job losses, today’s announcement referred to changes to the company’s redundancy policy which they have described as having been more generous than their competitors. I regret the changes they are making but I am pleased to learn that they will be phased in so as to ensure that anyone facing redundancy as a result of this process should not be affected.”
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