IT could be crunch day tomorrow for 2,200 workers at the ill-fated Jarvis Group of York, including 350 of them in the city.

A meeting between administrators from Deloitte and the RMT Union yesterday revealed a financial package was being put to Network Rail in the hope rail maintenance work that was being carried out by Jarvis can continue.

If Network Rail, itself under pressure to make cuts, turns down the package then there could be wholesale redundancies of Jarvis staff tomorrow.

Refusal may also mean wages owed to Jarvis workers could be lost.

Bill Rawcliffe, the York and district branch secretary of the RMT, was gloomy when he emerged from the morning meeting.

He said: “Things are pretty bleak. Effectively the administrators are saying that if there is no positive response to the package by Thursday then we will all be made redundant.”

Now, he said, he was urging as many people as he could to ask their MPs to lobby Lord Adonis, the Transport Secretary to ensure that Jarvis staff could work on.

Jarvis went into administration last Thursday having been hit hard by Network Rail’s decision last year to defer then cut its five year track renewal programme.

It’s lenders, the Bank of America and the Bank of Ireland pulled the plug when the company found itself faced with a £3.2 million tax bill.