WORKERS for British Telecom in Warrington yesterday, Wednesday, protested against plans to transfer thousands of jobs to India.

The 'Stop the UK Job Stampede' campaign, spearheaded by the Communication and Workers Union, has travelled from John O' Groats and will finish in Land's End.

It aims to inform the public that following a rationalisation process, 100 UK call centres were downgraded to 32 and that by the end of 2003 BT intends to transfer 2,200 jobs to India.

Robert Davies, who works in the call centre at Gemini retail park, told the Guardian: "We should be trying to keep jobs in this country so that when the next generation grows up they will have jobs to go to."

CWU regional secretary Tracy Buckley said: "Today is a protest about work being shifted out of this country by a company that makes all of its profits here. I feel BT has an obligation to the UK economy. Moving jobs to India is just ridiculous!"

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The union is worried that all jobs could now be under threat.

But a BT spokesman said that none of the jobs that have arisen in India have come about as a result of the rationalisation in the UK.

He added: "Our project in India is having no effect in terms of job losses in the UK. The Indian offices were set up as part of the national rationalisation process and nobody who has been displaced as part of the process has been made unemployed. They have been moved to other parts of the company or re-trained."

The campaign today moved to Liverpool.