The Union that represents Vodafone workers is putting pressure on the mobile phone company to transfer people rather than make them redundant.   

It comes after news yesterday that Vodafone is cutting around 125 jobs from its head quarters here - about four per cent of the total Newbury work force.

Vodafone says it is planning to hire 170 people for customer services jobs and another 50 graduates to start in September, but that those who lose their jobs may not have the necessary skills to fill these new roles.

Steve Thomas is from the trade union, Prospect: "I think that makes good sense for the business, it minimises potential disruption for those individuals.

"It's really important for us to try and keep jobs in the local community and for Vodafone to help to sustain that, by working creatively with those vacancies that they've got and seeing whether it's at all possible to redeploy people, particularly in Newbury, into those jobs.

"We don't know whether that is going to be possible or not but it's something that we have challenged the company to come back to us on and to discuss".

The news came as Newbury Sound reported yesterday that out of every county in England, Berkshire, as a whole, saw the biggest jump in unemployment last year.