Take it or leave it

Instead of laying people off it’s now high fashion to tell them to work a shorter week and receive less money. Or if they’re employed by flint hearted employers to work the same number of hours and still take reduced pay. The alternative is for the company to go bust and for everybody to lose their jobs. End of story. So it’s not really much of a choice.

Variations on this type of deal are being offered in different sectors right across the economy. Vehicle maker Vauxhall led the way at its troubled plants in Ellesmere Port in Cheshire and its van making production line in Luton.

Now five hundred workers at Corus steel plant in Newport, south Wales, have been told to stay at home on half pay because there’s no work. There are a thousand workers at the Llanwern plant.

The stay-at-home policy has been agreed with union bosses. Staff who go into work will still get full basic pay but the shift premiums that could shove their wages up by as much as 30 per cent have been axed.