MORE than 1,000 employees of the York-based Jarvis Group could end up on the dole while others do their work.

About 350 North Yorkshire staff were among those receiving redundancy notices as Network Rail started seeking other companies to take over track work previously allocated to Jarvis.

Workers gathered outside the company’s Meridian House HQ in The Crescent, York, early yesterday morning after rescue talks between Network Rail and the administrators collapsed, and the redundancy news was broken.

Bill Rawcliffe, secretary of the York branch of the RMT, told employees that the York-based company could not pay five weeks’ pay owing to them.

One of the workers, Tom Stanger, a skilled Jarvis Fastline trackman from Clifton Moor, said: “It has really hit home now. My partner Hayley and I have a two-year-old daughter plus a £900-a-month mortgage which will be leaving my bank account next Friday with no money coming in. There are no jobs out there. The future is bleak.”

York MP Hugh Bayley and Selby MP John Grogan are putting pressure through Government and other channels on the track authority to force any company taking over Jarvis’ work to employ Jarvis staff to do it.

Mr Grogan said: “Network Rail has a moral if not a legal responsibility to the dedicated workforce of Jarvis, some of whom have worked there, man and boy.”

And Mr Bayley said the workers’ skills were a vital resource for the country.

Chris Mole, railways minister, told both Labour MPs that Jarvis staff could be compensated through the Government-run National Insurance Fund for unpaid wages and possibly redundancy money.

Meanwhile, the Unite union was preparing unfair dismissal claims for all its Jarvis members in York and Doncaster.

And at Whitehall, efforts were made to get the Government to intervene on the grounds that part of Jarvis was classed as a “protected railway company” which gave ministers legal powers to step in if it hit financial difficulties. But MPs were told that Network Rail claimed that these did not apply because Jarvis’ work was not “strategically significant”.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail Maritime and Transport union (RMT), said: “The total cost of the administrators’ Jarvis rescue package would be £19 million, money that would be easily recouped by the Government and Network Rail. That plan has been thrown out with callous disregard for the livelihoods of the Jarvis workforce.

“Instead, as a result of the Government refusing to use its legal powers to intervene and ignoring the administrators’ proposals, over 1,000 workers will be sacked and their pensions destroyed. That is a scandal.”

Anne McIntosh, Conservative Vale of York MP, called on the RMT Union to “examine its conscience” over its decision to call a strike over redundancies at Network Rail and called on it to make a statement explaining how “it can hold one part of the industry to ransom and not expect other areas to suffer.”


Statement from administrators

Jarvis administrators from Deloitte said in a statement: “After reviewing the business and conducting negotiations with key stakeholders, the administrators have concluded that it is not possible to continue to trade the business in the absence of further funding. It has regrettably, therefore, been necessary to make some 1,100 redundancies across the three companies (Jarvis Plc, Jarvis Rail Ltd and Fastline Ltd).

The redundancies would be at the York head office as well as at key sites, including Doncaster, Glasgow, Leeds, Newcastle and Peterborough.

But Jarvis Accommodation Services Ltd, which builds and manages student accommodation among other facilities management contracts, will continue to trade as normal while a buyer is being sought. Already there had been “a significant amount of interest”, Deloitte stated.

Network Rail described the decision as “a matter for Jarvis” and declined to comment further.