Workers will return in the next few years, but Evtec’s chairman David Roberts told the BBC the stoppage has had a dramatic impact on communities in the West Midlands, and uncertainty remains.
“It has had a really detrimental effect, it’s devastating. There’s a lot of vulnerable people out there who are now really concerned – the cost of living, Christmas coming up, when will they return to work in earnest?”
Engineer Ben Brindley said the length of the disruption has fuelled fears about his job.
“There’s only so much refurbishment or decorating you can do whilst you’re at home,” he said.
“The longer it goes on for, the more worried you get really. You start to think – will I have a job to come back to?”
Experts have warned while production will gradually resume, the impact of the cyber-attack on JLR is not over.
The company said its recovery programme was “firmly under way” and that its global parts logistics centre, which supplies spare parts to dealerships for vehicle servicing, was “returning to full operations”.
But when it comes to restarting carmaking, experts point out the process is not like flicking a switch. Some industrial processes can take days to get back up and running, while JLR has already said the restart will be done in phases.
Secondly, suppliers that have lost income during the shutdown may not be able to bounce back as quickly.