British workers are a soft touch for multinational employers seeking to cut jobs, according to one of Britain's leading trade unions.

Amicus argues that workers rights are weaker in Britain than almost any other country in Europe, leaving workers more vulnerable. Among the leading industrialised nations only American workers have weaker job protection, the union said.

"In an increasingly global economy, multinational companies will always choose to make job cuts where it is cheaper, quicker and more politically expedient to sack," said Amicus general secretary Derek Simpson.

"The 'flexible workforce' makes no sense - it just enables quality jobs to be easily disposed of, resulting in a de-skilling of the economy.

"Unless we have employment protection parity with other European countries, UK workers will continue to be the soft touch when it comes to slashing jobs."

The warning follows a series of high-profile job cuts in Britain and Amicus is calling on the government to strengthen employment protection. It says that Britain had more corporate restructurings than any other EU country in the last quarter of 2004 and the most redundancies.

Amicus argues that the recent redundancies at Marconi and the transfer of some 450 jobs to Italy earlier this month were more evidence of the need to give British workers stronger employment rights. The union claimed workers would not be the automatic choice for redundancy if they shared equivalent rights with continental workers.

In France and Germany, for example, Amicus says companies seeking to make more than 50 workers redundant have to put forward a social compensation plan.

Amicus argues that British workers are also being disadvantaged by the willingness of other countries to intervene when companies are facing difficulty. It cites the example of the French engineering company Alstom, which received government support in 2003 but which has cut more than 2,000 British jobs in the past 12 months.

The union also says that while in Britain there is no "right to strike", in continental Europe it is the constitutional right of all workers.

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