I really do believe senior executives at Jaguar Land Rover, (haw-haw) want to be the first in line to be rewarded with a Knighthood for acting responsibly during the Covid-19 Pandemic. But I feel it’s all an act on their part. When the World Health Organisation declared Covid-19 had gone Pandemic on March 13 Jaguar Land Rover (haw-haw) continued production at their UK manufacturing sites. Seven days later they finally decided to shutter production at their Solihull and Castle Bromwich plants until April 20. Jaguar Land Rover may well have given time for the highly contagious Covid-19 to spread. Do we have any evidence of that? no we do not. However, Birmingham has the worst cases of coronavirus in the country.

As the death toll was beginning to rise JLR factory workers, who contacted us, detailed their unhappiness at having to work in close quarters as the coronavirus Pandemic silently spread at an unprecedented rate. During the time from March 13 to March 20 employees grew increasingly concerned with the lack of basic social distancing measures. Indeed Jaguar Land Rover resolutely instructed salaried employees to clock-in even for non-essential work.

Production was only stopped as demand for Jaguar Land Rover products plummeted. In other words, JLR put the health of its workers at the very bottom of the corporate queue. The JLR workers who contacted us couldn’t understand why their company has in place strict health and safety guidelines but nothing for a deadly Pandemic.

Jaguar Land Rover’s lack of concern for the dignity and well being of their employees doesn’t surprise anyone here at DCB HQ. And neither does Jaguar Land Rover’s attempt to airbrush attempted corporate manslaughter out of existence. After putting their factory workers at risk of contracting Covid-19 Jaguar Land Rover is now pushing a narrative to the public that they care about human beings.

Now Jaguar Land Rover is “leaping into action” by manufacturing protective visors for frontline health workers despite giving no fucks about their own workforce. Jaguar Land Rover has also loaned 300 vehicles to support emergency response organisations around the world, despite giving no fucks about the safety of their own workforce.

The aid is welcome but the hypocrisy isn’t, they should have shut down on March 13. Everybody could see what was going on in Italy at the time. Now Italy’s experience is being repeated across UK. Jaguar Land Rover should have initially done the responsible thing, but they didn’t and now they want to paint a different picture, but time will not forget.