Half of quarry workforce face redundancies (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Half of quarry workforce face redundancies

10:23am Wednesday 14th January 2009

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HALF of the workforce at a Shap quarry could lose their jobs as another industry falls victim to the global credit crisis.

Workers at Shap Beck Quarry, which supplies lime to the steel industry, have been told that they could be made redundant if steel producer, Corus, ends their contract.

The quarry is owned by building materials giant Hanson Aggregates, part of the HeidelbergCement Group, which is one of the largest suppliers of heavy building materials to the construction industry.

A spokesman for Hanson said that up to 12 of the 24-strong workforce could lose their jobs.

“Because of the downturn in the steel market (Corus) have come back to us and said they are going to have to scale right back on the amount of stone they are taking,” said the spokesman. “Effectively they are saying that their contact is coming to an end.

“At the moment it’s not clear whether they want nothing or they just want to scale back, but it will be much reduced and obviously we have to cut back on our production. We’re in talking with Corus as to how we might minimise that and continue to supply at least some stone. Until we know exactly what they want we can’t decide on the scale of operation that we can continue with.”

The spokesman said that whatever happens, redundancies will be made: ”We’re already finding that the general construction market is falling. A combination of that as well as the potential loss of output to the limekiln is really disappointing. We are complete victims of the global recession. The only question is how many jobs we can save.”

He said that the company is doing all they can to try and minimise the impact: “It’s tough. The entire workforce has been with us for a long time, some of them for generations. It really is very disappointing.”

A decision will be made by the end of this month, said the spokesman, with any job losses becoming effective from early to mid February.

Hanson has cut around 1, 500 jobs in the UK in the last 12 months.

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