Telecommunications company Nortel has announced 200 jobs are to go at its Monkstown plant in County Antrim.

The company said the job losses follow a global decision by the firm to reduce its workforce in an affort to get back into profit.

The Monkstown factory currently employs just under 1,000 people.

The job cuts follow an announcement by the telecommunications company last month that it was making more redundancies worldwide.

We are very disturbed as this is a blow for the whole of south east Antrim

Roger Hutchinson DUP assembly member

Eddie Miller, a spokesman for the engineering union AMICUS, said the firm's immediate future was not positive.

"One feels for the workforce," he said.

"Just a few months ago we had another few hundred job losses.

"We thought that the telecommunications industry had bottomed out and that the company would start to recruit again.

Impact

"Here a few months later, with another 200 jobs losses, I am being told that it will be towards the end of 2003 before the telecommunications industry picks up worldwide."

Democratic Unionist Party assembly member Roger Hutchinson said the announcement was a blow for the entire area.

"It has not come as a great surprise," he said.

"We have known for a long time that the telecommunications industry worldwide was in a bit of a downward trend.

Nortel: a market leader in fibre optics

"We are not really shocked but very disturbed because not only is this a blow for the Newtownabbey area, which is very important, but it is also a blow for the whole of south east Antrim.

On Tuesday, a spokesman for the firm said they were assessing the impact of that decision on the factory.

In the last two years more than 1,000 jobs have been cut at the Newtownabbey plant as a result of the recession hitting technology companies.

The plant makes telecommunications transmission equipment and has been a market leader in the provision of fibre optics.

The Newtownabbey operation is Nortel's largest optical systems house in Europe. Last year the company won the Northern Ireland Exporter of the Year Award.

The company is a subsidiary of the Canadian-owned global hi-tech corporation which operates in 100 countries.