The UK’s manufacturing sector is facing its bleakest Christmas so far, with another 5615 job losses this month, says the GMB one of Britain’s largest trade unions today, as it publishes the monthly job watch figures for December 2000.

In all there were over 96,000 redundancies in the manufacturing sector during 2000, with counties in the North, North East and Scotland the most affected.

Job cuts this month include:

• 2000 jobs cut at Vauxhall in Luton
• 1,200 redundancies at Marplace (formerly Coats Viyella)
• 470 job losses in Excel Mouldings in Oxfordshire and Devon
• Over the year the hardest hit area was the Midlands with over 6,000 jobs lost, closely followed by the North East with over 5,000.

John Edmonds, General Secretary of the GMB, said:

“As a result of the manufacturing crisis, thousands of working families are facing a black Christmas, nearly six thousand manufacturing workers have lost their jobs in the last month and almost 100,000 have been laid off through out the year.

“We can only hope the New Year will bring good news from the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee in the form of interest rate cuts, so that, once again, our industries will be able to compete.”