 Birds Eye's Grimsby factory will close early next year |
The government is being asked to provide help to find other work for the 600 people who will lose their jobs at the Birds Eye factory in Grimsby. Parent company Unilever announced on Thursday that the frozen food plant will shut early in 2005.
Darryl Stephenson, chief executive of North East Lincolnshire Council, said Grimsby has now lost a total of 1,000 jobs in the past 12 months.
Mr Stephenson wants help to set up a task force to find work opportunities.
Other jobs
He told BBC Radio Humberside that he had already written to officials at the government's regional office in Leeds.
"What we are saying," he said, "is that we shouldn't be asked to finance by ourselves moves to get people into other jobs.
"Grimsby is a small town and 1,000 jobs is like shutting the whole of the car industry in Coventry."
Bird's Eye's Grimsby site was said by Unilver to be too small to be competitive in the ready meals market.
The company added it would have preferred to sell the factory to a specialist third party, but efforts to do this had failed.
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