Hundreds of people are set to lose their jobs after Hewlett-Packard announced it is to shed workers from its Erskine site in the united Kingdom. HP plans to close manufacturing operations at the site and transfer work to the Czech Republic. Reportedly, 843 workers will be affected, of whom 70 are permanent HP staff and 773 employees of HP manufacturing partner Manpower. In HP's view, only the HP staff are entitled to redundancy or notice pay. Labour activists are protesting this stand.

Jim McCourt of the Advice and Employment Rights Centre is calling on Hewlett-Packard and staff agency Manpower to get together and grant all employees their ‘basic rights’, including the hundreds of workers employed by Manpower. McCourt: "For the bulk of the workers being dismissed there will be no redundancy or notice pay on the basis they are employees of an agency. We call on Hewlett-Packard and Manpower to afford these workers the very basics in decency. It is bad enough looking at an uncertain future, but doing it without redundancy pay makes thing much worse. Both of these companies are wealthy international corporations."

Some of the employees have been working for HP for more than 15 years.

The race has not yet been run - there are signs that HP is going to change its mind and pay Manpower the money to give these employees their redundancy pay.