Shipbuilder Vosper Thornycroft is to
make 650 staff redundant because of delays over the start date on work to build
a new warship.
The company said it was making the
announcement because of delays for the design and construction of a Type 45 destroyer
for the Royal Navy.
A total of 150 jobs will be lost in
January and the remaining 500 during the course of 2001 unless the shipyard is
able to secure more work.
All the redundancies will take place
at the Woolston yard in Southampton.
An estimated 200 jobs could also be
lost at Glaxo Wellcome following its planned merger with SmithKline to form a
huge pharmaceuticals group, according to the Manufacturing Science Finance
Union.
Union officials claimed the job
losses were kept "under wraps" until the merger was given the
go-ahead by the High Court this week.
Phil Thompson,
a spokesman for Glaxo Wellcome, told Personnel Today some redundancies were
inevitable following the merger but said the actual number of job losses had
not yet been decided.
By Ben Willmott
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