A DARK cloud was hanging over Rolls-Royce's two plants in Barnoldswick this week as workers wait to hear how the company's 3,800 job cuts will affect them.

John Boardman, union convenor for the Barnoldswick sites, said an announcement wasn't expected until next week at the earliest. In the meantime, around a thousand workers at the twin sites - Bankfield and Ghyll Brow - must wait to hear what the future holds for them.

The job cuts are blamed on the terrorist attacks in America on September 11 and the resulting crisis in the civil airline industry.

Redundancies at Rolls-Royce were already programmed, but spread over three years, the hope being to achieve targets through natural wastage and voluntary agreements. The effect of September 11 has been to bring the bulk of those redundancies forward, to take immediate effect.

Speaking this week, Mr Boardman said the mood was bleak at Barnoldswick, where people were once again in fear of losing their jobs.

"I spoke to one man who said he'd worked here for four years and only had one good worry-free Christmas, without the prospect of unemployment hanging over him. It's just a constant drain on people," he said.

But he dismissed rumours that Rolls-Royce might close down its Barnoldswick operations completely - a move that would have a disastrous effect on the town.

"There's been a lot of scare talk about closure, but I think it's extremely unlikely," said Mr Boardman.

"We make fan blades and front bearing housings here and we're the only people who make them. We also have the biggest chemical processing plant of its type in Europe. The work we do is very specialised.

"It's not impossible to move all that to another site but it would be a huge logistical nightmare and cause massive disruption to the business."

Mr Boardman added that while it was relatively straightforward to move machines, it was extremely difficult to get them up and running, especially without the highly skilled workforce currently employed at the Barnoldswick plants.

But individual workers still fear falling victim to the accelerated redundancy programme.

"People are a bit shell-shocked by it all to be honest," said Mr Boardman, adding that the unions would negotiate to keep any redundancies to an absolute minimum, as they had successfully in the past.

"We believe we've got enough people for the workload here and that if we can look first at issues like overtime, there won't be any need to cut back the workforce any further."

Pendle MP Gordon Prentice has arranged to meet Rolls-Royce chief executive John Rose and other senior board members early next month to discuss the crisis facing aerospace and the company's plans for the future.

Speaking from Westminster, Mr Prentice said: "Clearly this is a very worrying time for Rolls-Royce workers. We all want to see the company's detailed plans so we know what we are talking about.

"Business traffic is significantly down on the trans-Atlantic routes. We all hope it picks up again rapidly on the back of the tightened security that is now in place."