Motorola cuts 400 jobs at UK plant

The cuts come on top of the 1,600 jobs already lost

Mobile phone giant Motorola is cutting 400 more jobs at its Swindon plant.

The move comes on top of the 1,600 posts already shed by the Wiltshire-based company over the last 18 months.

A three-month consultation period has now begun to determine who will lose their jobs.

It is thought managers, sales, research and shop floor staff will be among those to be made redundant under radical restructuring plans.

We have started consulting our employee base to see how we can make many of these redundancies voluntary

Dyfed Evans

The factory, which once employed more than 3,000, will now be reduced to a workforce of about 1,000.

The Wiltshire plant makes base stations - the control unit which sits at the foot of mobile phone communications masts.

A spokesman said the redundancies came as a result of a sharp fall in the telecommunications market.

Dyfed Evans, Motorola's human resources director, said: "It's been a very difficult market, especially in Europe recently, so we had to consider downsizing in order to reduce our overheads.

"We announced to staff that we would have to consider making 400 people redundant in Swindon.

"We have now started consulting our employees to see how we can make many of these redundancies voluntary.

"In Swindon we develop the technology that will make the new generation of 3G mobile phone happen.

"As that picks up, we would hope the situation will improve."