Union's fury as jobs axe falls at holiday

Tenon Recovery announced the job losses yesterday morning, the last working day before the factory workers' summer holiday.

Peter Booth, TGWU national organiser for manufacturing, denounced the timing of the announcement as cynical.

"Workers and their representatives are shocked and angry at the way these redundancies have been announced," he said, "The receivers have not even bothered to fulfil the basic requirements of redundancy consultation and notification.

"It appears that some members are receiving redundancy notices this week backdated to July 20, and others are being made redundant on the basis that it was their turn to be laid off on a short time working rota system.

"Given that meetings have taken place earlier in the week with both union representatives and the local Member of Parliament, Terry Rooney, we are appalled that this announcement has been made in this way."

In a statement Peter Dunn, director of Tenon Recovery, said: "At the meeting on Tuesday the union was advised about 18 to 20 office staff redundancies and they were told to expect that there would be others, but at that stage we weren't able to say how many."

Tenon Recovery blamed the mill's problems on economic factors, citing the high value of sterling together with the recession affecting US manufacturing..

But Bradford North MP Terry Rooney said he did not accept this argument.

In a letter sent to the firm, he stated his belief that staff interests have not been taken into account, and said he would be contacting the Secretary of State at the DTI.

"It is my belief that the circumstances leading up to the receivership are worthy of much closer inspection especially in view of the track record of the principals involved," he wrote.

Meanwhile remaining staff face an uncertain future. Existing orders will only provide a few weeks' work when the 402 strong workforce returns from the summer break.