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Workers are being ‘abandoned’ after report reveals one in three companies expect redundancies

WORKERS have been abandoned by the government, trade union Unite said today after a report revealed an expected jobs massacre caused by the Tories’ mismanagement of the coronavirus pandemic.

One in three companies expect that they will have to make redundancies by the end of September, according to research carried out for the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) and the Adecco recruitment organisation.

The survey revealed that 42 per cent of firms had frozen recruitment, with the worst-hit sectors being hospitality, business services and IT. Almost a fifth of employers have cut wages, with construction workers worst affected.

The report comes as Britain’s economy is expected to officially enter recession this week after a record 20 per cent fall in the spring quarter.

In October the government will end the taxpayer-funded job-retention scheme, which handed employers’ money to pay workers temporarily laid off due to the pandemic.

Labour’s shadow work & pensions secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “The removal of government support while some businesses have yet to even open their doors again has created a jobs crisis.

“Every job lost is a tragedy. We know that unemployment scars employees, their families and their communities. The government must act now to put an end to this jobs crisis.

“The government’s one-size-fits-all approach is clearly not working and they must now adopt a tailored approach, getting support to where it is needed to prevent even more redundancies.”

Unite general secretary Len McCluskey accused the government of a “criminal lack of engagement.”

“We warned that the tapering of the jobs-retention scheme would see redundancy notices fly around like confetti and, sadly, this is coming to pass,” he said. 

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