FURTHER job losses have been announced at Ravenhead Glass in St Helens, following the 69 redundancies made just before Christmas.

The company, who produce glassware for licensed trade, retail and export markets, appointed administrators, Begbies Traynor, at the end of November after experiencing cash flow problems but were unable to prevent the 69 job losses at the end of the year.

Now following discussions with union leaders, the company have announced that a further 53 jobs are also to go, leaving just 200 staff left from a workforce which once numbered more than 300.

Debbie Brannan, regional officer for the MSF union, said: "Obviously this will be devasting news for those employees who have been earmarked for redundancy, particularly the nature of those redundancies. As the company is now in the hands of the administrators, anybody who is made redundant will only be paid until they finish. They will not receive any pay in lieu of notice and any redundancy pay will be at the statutory minimum. This also means they will have to go in the same line as anyone else that is owed monies by the company. Therefore, applying to the Government for redundancy payments which could take four to six weeks."

It is estimated that Ravenhead's production, already cut to three from an original four machines, will now be further reduced to two. However, Debbie added: "We believe Ravenhead bosses are currently holding talks with an American company who may be interested in investing or buying them out but as of yet, nothing has been decided."

Liberal Democrat councillor, John Beirne has called on the town's MPs, Dave Watts and Gerry Bermingham, to "get the guns firing" on the Government to act on the redundancies.

He said: "Some people have worked at Ravenhead for over 40 years yet no one seems to care that they are only receiving the minimum redundancy pay. Some of these people may never work again and we should be fighting against the unfair way they are being treated. St Helens may be getting more jobs through new retail parks being built in the area but it is losing them from factories that have been around for years."