Every manufacturing job in the UK will be lost in 25 years if cutbacks continue at their current rate, according to the country's biggest private sector union.

Amicus unveiled a "ticking manufacturing meltdown clock" which showed that 20 jobs were being lost in the crucial sector every hour of the day.

Job losses in manufacturing firms are running at the rate of 13,000 a month and if they continue, all 3.5 million posts will have gone within 25 years, the union warned.

Joint general secretary Derek Simpson announced plans for a demonstration against job losses at this year's Labour Party conference in Bournemouth.

"We are literally staring into the abyss," he told his union's annual conference in Blackpool.

"If we compare manufacturing bases with other leading countries, within five Parliamentary terms we face having a Prime Minister not fit to share a table with his or her G8 counterparts.

"No other country is sacrificing their industrial base in this way because our competitors realise how vital manufacturing is, not only to the people that work in the sector and in related jobs, but for the whole UK economy.

"Further job cuts undermine the UK's capability to sustain our existing manufacturing base, yet if the Government introduced the same employment protection here as is enjoyed on the Continent, UK workers wouldn't be the easy target for redundancy they are now."

Millions of manufacturing jobs have been axed in the UK in the past 20 years and the number of workers left is now at a record low.

The sector still employs 14 per cent of the UK's workforce, while millions of other jobs depend on the success of manufacturing firms.

Thursday June 26, 2003