MORE than 150 jobs have been lost as a result of the redundancies at the Safran Seats factory in Cwmbran.

The airline manufacturer has been consulting with staff since April, and confirmed that 87 members of staff took voluntary redundancy, while a further 68 were made redundant.

This amounts to roughly a fifth of the workforce in Cwmbran.

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"We have worked closely to look at ways of reducing the impact on compulsory redundancies through continuing to encourage the voluntary redundancy process, and by sharing any recruitment opportunities as they arose," said a spokesman for Safran Seats.

"In order to support our workforce through this difficult time, we have put in place employee support services for health and wellbeing through our Employee Assistance Program as well as provided outplacement support with an external company to support colleagues for up to three months.

"Our facility in Cwmbran has seen a reduction of 87 employees through voluntary redundancy at the end of July which helped to mitigate roles which were placed at risk.

"Approximately 60 vacancies were advertised to mitigate roles which were placed at risk and over 40 appointments have now been made which include a number of internal transfers from our Camberley site to Cwmbran.

"We are in the final stages of the individual consultations with some staff, but unfortunately 68 employees have been made redundant in Cwmbran due to the impact of Covid-19 on our business/industry.

"Since March 2020, this an approximation reduction of 20 per cent of our permanent workforce in Cwmbran."

Last week, a Unite spokesman said they were assisting those affected, and Torfaen's representatives, Lynne Neagle MS and Nick Thomas-Symonds MP issued a joint statement on the job losses.

“This is clearly an awful time for the families of those who have been made redundant,” they said in a joint statement. “Our thoughts are with them at this very tough time.

“We are very disappointed that these job losses have happened, particularly as the furlough scheme was designed to protect jobs in this situation.

“We will continue to work with Torfaen Council and the Unite Union to save local jobs, and also continue to make the case for the vital sector-specific support for the aviation sector that is so desperately needed.”