TUC leader John Monks today warned that next year may see huge manufacturing job losses.
In his new year message he said, “The trends suggest that we can expect to lose 10,000 manufacturing jobs a month through 2001, unless there is an unexpected recovery in manufacturing fortunes.”
Monks drew attention to Vauxhall’s recent announcement that it is to end car production at Luton, saying it came at the end of a bad year for manufacturing.
“Week in, week out jobs were lost in a range of manufacturing sectors. Textiles and clothing, engineering, ship building, printing and paper have all been hit. In the new year there are highly publicised threats to steel and car industry jobs and more if less publicised bad news for jobs in other industries,” he said.
On a more positive note, Monks said that 2000 had in many ways been a good year for people at work in Britain, citing full employment, the minimum wage and new rights for workers.
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