Ministers are coming under pressure to boost job opportunities in the North-East amid warnings there have been too many redundancies in the region.
As supermarket workers reel from news that Morrisons is to axe its Gateshead distribution centre, local MP Sharon Hodgson has told employment ministers to start investing more cash in skills training - so she can praise job creation in her constituency instead of lamenting job losses.
Around 130 jobs are under threat at the Felling depot, with another 600 jobs expected to go at the company's Stockton site. It follows news that almost 600 jobs could go at Washington's Goodyear Dunlop plant when production finally stops. However, Gateshead East and Washington West MP Mrs Hodgson said it was down to ministers in Whitehall to show their commitment to the future of the North-East economy, suggesting the recent wave of redundancies had "swallowed up" most of the high-quality jobs in the area.
"My fear now is that those people who enjoyed a good standard of living at places such as Dunlop will now only be able to go into jobs at almost half their previous salary. I don't want people to walk into just any job but a good quality one," she said.
The Government has pledged to achieve full employment - classed as 80% and equivalent to an extra 100,000 people in jobs in the North-East - by 2010, but Ms Hodgson, who is calling for more cash for reskilling, conceded it was a long way off becoming reality. "I want to be able to stand up in the Commons and put on the record how we're all welcoming jobs to the region rather than talking about them leaving. I haven't been able to do that in the past year.
"I want to see a balance. I want to see more jobs created than lost, because if that doesn't start happening, we will fail on our target of achieving 80% employment."
