TWO months of uncertainty were due to end today as workers at Worcester firm Metal Castings Ltd found out whether their jobs were safe.

The news was broken to production staff on Friday that nine jobs were due to be axed - part of a redundancy announcement made in June.

Twenty jobs were threatened two months ago when the Droitwich Road engineering firm blamed the losses on problems in the troubled car industry.

But production staff have had to wait until today before knowing whether they will have a job tomorrow.

Union reps were called into a meeting to discuss the job losses on Friday morning and two workers were given the news last week that they would be among the nine to go.

One worker, who asked not to be named, claimed that management were "totally inept" and appeared to be trying to "run the factory down".

"Everybody's so despondent, some wish it would finally close down," he said. "The management just couldn't care less. They've got no compassion."

He said he was already looking for a new job as he was so fed up with the situation.

"No one was surprised to hear about these job losses. I think there will be more," added the worker.

Chairman John Hudson said today the job losses were part of the ongoing streamlining of the factory and that it had "taken quite a long time to sort out these redundancies".

"Nothing has changed, no new jobs are going. This is all part of the same programme that we announced some time ago," he said.

When the announcement was made in June the chairman said that the car industry was "very unpredictable".

"It hasn't helped with the Rover sell-off and the 'Rip-Off Britain' issues," said Mr Hudson.

"At the moment we've got too many workers for our schedules of work."

The car parts firm shed 118 jobs at its factory last year and a further 19 were lost at its Wolverhampton plant.

The company employs a total of 350 people at its two plants.