SCORES of Nestle Rowntree workers are set to demonstrate outside the Labour Party conference tomorrow against British job losses.

A coachload of shop stewards and union members is set to travel to Manchester to attend a fringe meeting at the Palace Hotel, close to the conference centre.

Union representatives from York's British Sugar factory, which is due to close next year with the loss of more than 100 jobs, and from the former Terry's factory, which shut last year with the loss of more than 300 posts, have also been invited along.

The meeting will be chaired by John Kirk, of the GMB union, and Tony Randerson, of Amicus union, who represent staff at Nestle's York factory where 645 redundancies were announced last week.

Mr Kirk said York MP Hugh Bayley and Selby MP John Grogan were among senior Labour politicians who had agreed to speak.

After the meeting, workers would go down to the conference centre to stage a demonstration to raise awareness of their cause, said Mr Kirk.

He stressed the demonstration was not specifically against Nestle, but against successive administrations which had failed to protect British manufacturing jobs. He said about 1.4 million such jobs had been lost since Labour came to power, and British laws needed strengthening to bring them into line with ones on the Continent - where factories could be saved from closure if there was a strong social and economic impact on the community.

He said Nestle had been forced to reverse a proposed closure of a Perrier factory in France because of such laws.

Nestle is planning to sell off 40 per cent of its 170-acre York factory site for redevelopment with shops, homes and offices, with the capital raised being used towards a £20 million investment in the remaining part of the site. Several key brands, including Smarties, are set to be made abroad in future. The company, which hopes that at least half of the 645 redundancies will be voluntary or early retirement, says the changes should safeguard the remaining 1,800 jobs in York.

The Press revealed on Saturday that Nestle considered complete closure of the factory, with the even more devastating loss of more than 2,000 jobs, before opting for the redevelopment and redundancy plan.

Mr Kirk has pledged to try to come up with counter-proposals which would save at least some of the 645 jobs under threat of the axe.