GMB calls for urgent action over manufacturing job losses

The latest figures show that manufacturing employment slumped from 3.5million in 2006/07 to just 2.8m last year, with more cuts being announced in recent weeks. Among the areas worst hit were Staffordshire, Worcestershire, Kent and Hampshire, with the West Midlands said to be the worst affected region in the country. GMB general secretary Paul Kenny said: "In the UK as a whole the first four years of this recession has cost 706,300 manufacturing jobs. That is an average of 3,398 job losses a week. This fall is on top of the 1.25m fall between 1994/5 and 2006/7 an average of 2005 job losses a week. "Governments since Thatcher, from both parties, have ignored warnings from GMB and others that this migration of manufacturing jobs is not sustainable. This 'march of the makers' - two million of them in sixteen years - is the most tragic economic story from Britain in the last two decades. "Unless action is taken to support and develop manufacturing, the economic future for this nation is bleak. Only the British state has enough strength and power to halt and reverse the decline." Kenny called on the government to increase support for medium sized companies, encourage more small firms to grow and develop a smarter approach to procurement. He also said that urgent action needed to be taken to deal with the country's growing skills shortage, using Germany as an example of how a good vocational system can create a sustainable economy. Kenny concluded: "There should be a concentration of effort on high skill, high value manufacturing sectors - for example in the field of environmental technology - on those British companies most likely to succeed in the face of global competition. "UK manufacturing should be used as the supply chain in the multibillion pound capital investment programme needed to up-grade and modernise the UK's infrastructure."