NUMBER of workers at Short Brothers will accept early retirement packages this morning according to a senior shop steward, after confirmation that around 1,000 people will lose their jobs.

A week ago 700 workers on the Fokker production line at the east Belfast aerospace plant were sent home on full pay after the collapse of the Dutch aircraft company.

The company said yesterday it planned to end 540 temporary contracts and expected around 250 voluntary redundancies. It said it hoped to keep the number of compulsory redundancies to 300.

Senior technical shop steward Mr Frank Cammock said more than half of the applicants for early retirement or voluntary redundancy would be "seriously interested". And a number would take that option today.

"Some 30 years of work has been put into this contract and people are just coming to terms with the fact that it's gone," he said.

Around 20 people were willing to accept an early retirement package and he said this number would increase dramatically as the implications of the Fokker collapse sank in.

A company spokesman said Short was in discussion with the Northern Ireland Training and Employment Agency (TEA) about a new training grant for up to 300 workers.

The Fokker assembly line, making wings for the Fokker 70 and 100 planes, employed 700 people directly. A further 800 jobs across the company depended on the contract.

A spokesman said the TEA was looking at the application "sympathetically" and it was already funding a number of training schemes in the company. "A decision should be made fairly soon."

The spokesman said up to 250 of the 700 Fokker workers should be put on a short term training programme within the company's own training centre in the next week. However this programme would be timed in weeks rather than months.

The Shorts spokesman said the Fokker production line, which was halted last Friday, may finish up to five wing sets before it finally closes down. Fokker has orders for around 40 planes, he said. Reports that the Swedish car company, Saab, had been looking over the remains of Fokker did not give Shorts cause for much hope, he said.

Shorts is bidding for two separate contracts, one in partnership with Dallas based Texas Instruments. The second is a bid for a British replacement maritime control aircraft. But he said if the company won the contracts, it could take up to four years to get up to full production.