Yesterday’s announcements of 3,800 job losses in BAe Systems confirmed trade unionists’ fears. The majority of the jobs will go at plants in the north of England, with 850 redundancies at Brough near Hull in East Yorkshire and a further 750 posts going at two sites near Preston in Lancashire.

BAe’s shipyards at Govan near Glasgow, Barrow in Cumbria, and Scotstoun on the Clyde will lose 500 jobs between them.

Some of BAe’s sites will close completely and these include one at York with the loss of 50 jobs, and one at Ilford in Essex. The future of a defence factory at Nottingham is still uncertain but the factory will lose 250 jobs.

At Filton in the southwest however, workers breathed a sigh of relief at escaping the job cuts and were further buoyed by the announcement of 300 new engineering jobs this year and a further 300 for next year.

The cuts follow last year’s merger with Marconi and rationalisation of resources, whilst the Filton operations are benefiting from the award of contracts for new A400M military aircraft and the proposed A3XX superjumbo.

Full details can be found in the BAe press release