Phantom new jobs at Diageo

A further illustration of the paucity of new jobs about comes in the announcement by Diageo that it was to ‘create’ 400 new jobs at the same time as it made 900 redundancies, which is beginning to unravel. As this report in the Daily Record shows, many of those new jobs are in fact unlikely to be permanent being just six or nine month contracts offered to redundant staff. Of course if the economy starts to grow again it is quite possible that those jobs will continue beyond their initial term. But if it doesn’t, the jobs will simply dry up again. While it might be reasonable for Diageo to claim that it is doing its utmost to balance the needs of the business with the interests of its employees, the episode shows that businesses should take care when announcing job creation - non-permanent jobs are only a temporary solution, and businesses like Diageo should make this clear.