91Èȱ¬

Two days and two stories summing up perfectly how the North East economy is still changing.

Yesterday creating a thousand jobs looking after its motor and home insurance customers.

Today, announce they're cutting 217 jobs at their Newcastle factory.

New service sector jobs replacing traditional manufacturing (BAE, which used to be Vickers manufactures military hardware).

And whatever the merits of call centre working, it's hard to argue the Tesco jobs are of the same quality as those being lost in BAE, even if they are very welcome at a time of rising unemployment.

The problem at BAE though is not the Recession, but Ministry of Defence efficiency savings.

The company announced 50 job losses at the Scotswood plant in April.

But the firm also said it would move work maintaining the British Army's Warrior tanks from Telford to Newcastle to stop further redundancies.

Now though all the defence industry is having to become ever-more efficient to meet the MoD need to cut spending.

So BAE has had to move the Warrior maintenance work to a new site in Donnington where the vehicles are already worked on by the Army.

It makes it cheaper for the MoD but of course Newcastle suffers, losing around a third of its workforce.

Now though the fight is for the very survival of a.

The plant now has to fight for work on two contracts - the manufacture of the Army's new and the upgrade of the Warrior Tank.

If it fails to win those then there will certainly be more redundancies and possibly complete closure.

• Bookmark with:
• |
• |
• |
• |
• - What's this?