By our Industrial Staff
MORE than 9000 employees fell victim to the latest ravages of the
recession yesterday.
British Rail (5000 jobs), the Royal Bank of Scotland (3500 within five
years), the country's biggest cement manufacturer Blue Circle (550), the
nuclear industry (270), and Eagle Star Life insurers (200) all declared
redundancies, making it inevitable that unemployment, climbing for two
and a half years, will surpass three million in the new year.
The swingeing job losses at British Rail were blamed on a ''massive
drop'' in revenue as a result of the recession and there was a warning
of more redundancies to come.
The Royal Bank gave as its reason restructuring plans to cut costs and
Eagle Star referred to ''tough market conditions''. Blue Circle cited a
cost-cutting package which affects plants at Grangemouth and Irvine.
The nuclear industry jobs were doomed after the Government said it was
pulling out of the European Fast Breeder Reactor programme. The Dounreay
prototype is due to shut down in 1994. At Nigg on the Cromarty Firth 35
oil platform jobs are to go and the fate of the Rosyth naval dockyard is
still in the balance.
It was the worst spate of job losses since a wave of redundancies hit
leading British companies including Ford, Rolls-Royce, VSEL, and Cadbury
Schweppes in the autumn.
More than 30,000 miners' jobs are also threatened in the new year
under plans to close 31 pits.
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