FIFTY jobs - an eighth of the workforce - have gone at Eastburn engineering company Landis Lund.

Finance director Mike Molyneux said that the redundancies had been made due to problems in the global automotive industry.

The plant is part of international company UNOVA, a 1.5 billion dollar industrial technologies company, with its head-quarters in Southern California. America.

Landis Lund manufactures and supplies high precision cylindrical grinding machinery for the car industry.

Mr Molyneux said: "We are basically suppliers to the global automotive industry.

"If you look at the industry around the world, various automotive companies are in trouble.

"We have just re-sized the company to the right level for the size of business that is out there.

"We still employ over 350 people. We have a healthy order book and have orders throughout 2003.

"Obviously employees want to know their jobs are safe and people in the area want to know that the businesses are going to be safe, but there are no guarantees forever.

"We have had 50 redundancies, but we still employ over 350 people," he repeated.

The redundancies have been made across the board, with a range of skilled, clerical and engineering staff losing their jobs.

Keighley MP Ann Cryer told the Herald this week that she was saddened to hear the news, and that it was a sign of further de-skilling of the district's workforce.

She said: "It is a great pity. In the past the Keighley district was a highly skilled area and now we are going more and more for the soft option of the service industry or assembly, rather than making parts.

"While we are still buying and using cars we should be at the forefront in putting those cars out.

"In Keighley we were producing the machines that produced the equipment that went into cars and Landis Lund was one of those. You can't get more basic than that."

She added that it was not just the industry as a whole that was suffering, but there would be difficult times ahead for families in the district which relied on those workers' wages.

"I am very sorry indeed. It is not just the 50 people who have lost their jobs, but it is a terrible blow for the families who rely on them as chief wage earners.

"It is a sad day for the whole area, we are moving further and further away from Keighley being a centre of excellence for tool engineering."

She said that it was a shame to see villages which had been built up on industry now losing employment opport-unities.

"I think the local authority has a part to play in encouraging industry to move here, rather than centres such as Leeds.

"We need to keep jobs in these villages that are becoming dormitories."

She added that she would assist anyone who approached her with concerns about these redundancies.