I sincerely suspect the BBC would only ever use "fired"/"firings" if the employees were being dismissed for conduct reasons, since that's the common usage in British English. I've been let go -- indeed, I've lost my job (it's the employees who suffer job losses, not the employer) -- but I've never been fired.
Which, at least in American English, comes across like corporate jargon/weasel words. Lost their job is literally true and would probably take a bunch more words to describe the precise reasons.
Both things can be literally true. I've lost my job by being made redundant, twice. In Britain redundancy is a very specific thing, where your role no longer exists and you must be let go in a fair way according to employment law. It's quite the opposite of jargon or weasel words here: https://www.gov.uk/redundancy-your-rights
I think we may be hitting an issue in translation between English and American; in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy". "Job losses" is a perfectly reasonable neutral phrase here. Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process.
People like to make too much out of active/passive word choices. Granted it can get very propagandistic ("officer-involved shooting"), but if you try to make people say "unhoused" instead of "homeless" everyone just back-translates it in their head.
> Indeed, under UK law and job contracts you generally cannot just chuck someone out of their job without either notice or cause or, for large companies, a statutory redundancy process.
This is only true when an employee has worked for a company for 2 or more years
I think American English is the same colloquially. “I got fired” means I didn’t perform or did something wrong. “I got laid off” is our “I was made redundant”.
“Fired” is also a technical term for both cases, in academic/economist speak.
> in British English "fired" implies "for cause", while a "blameless" process of headcount reduction is known as "redundancy"
OK. I was fired for no stated cause in a process that didn't involve headcount reduction, or the firing of anyone except me specifically. (The unstated cause seems to have been that I had been offered a perk by the manager who hired me that the new manager didn't want to honor after the original guy was promoted.)
And by applying these organizational changes, each person can become more load bearing and have so much more scope and impact. This is not a loss, it's a great win for everyone! /s