Black & Decker cuts jobs in Czech move

Power tool manufacturer Black & Decker plans to axe nearly 1,000 jobs and transfer work to the Czech Republic, it was announced today.

About 550 production and office jobs will be cut from the factory at Spennymoor, County Durham, by the end of 2003 and the contracts of 400 temporary workers employed will not be renewed.

Tony Blair said the announcement was a "tragedy" for the workers. Speaking at a press conference at the Labour party conference in Blackpool, the prime minister pledged that the government would make sure laid-off workers were "properly looked after".

The job losses are the latest to hit the area near Mr Blair's constituency in recent years. About 3,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in and around the Sedgefield area in the last three years from such major companies as Rothmans, Fujitsu and Sanyo.

"This is the nature of the international economy," Mr Blair said, pointing out that although jobs had been lost in the north-east in recent years, new companies had been attracted to the region.

Black & Decker said it was transferring assembly and packaging operations from Spennymoor to a new plant in the Czech Republic because of the increasing numbers of low cost imports from Asia. The transfer will begin this month and is expected to be finished by the end of next year.

"Global competitive pricing pressures have been a key factor in our decision to make these changes," said Barry Bloomer, the Spennymoor plant manager.

Black & Decker said the redundancies would be achieved through a voluntary redundancy scheme and, "where necessary", compulsory cuts. Workers affected by compulsory redundancies would be offered help in finding other jobs and the company said it would try to transfer employees to other sites.

The redundancies will leave about 450 people at the Spennymoor plant to focus on the manufacture of motors and components as well as the design and engineering of new products - compared with 2,300 two years ago.

Earlier this week financial giant Prudential announced plans to transfer 1,000 call centre jobs out of Britain to India, in a cost-cutting drive branded outrageous by union leaders. The jobs constitute about a third of the company's workforce at its site in Reading, Berkshire.