HUNDREDS of jobs in Sussex are under threat following a merger between two pharmaceutical giants.

Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham today said redundancies were inevitable after announcing they had agreed a £130 billion merger to form Glaxo SmithKline.

The new group would be the world's largest drugs company and would rival oil company BP Amoco as the biggest company in Britain.

But unions fear up to 15,000 job losses among the two groups' worldwide staff of 110,000.

The merger means an uncertain future for the 4,000

staff working at SmithKline Beecham production centres in Worthing and Crawley.

The Worthing plant in Clarendon Road is one of only two sites in Europe specialising in the manufacture of sterile antibiotics. The Crawley centre produces general medicines and is based at the Manor Royal industrial estate.

David Fleming, regional officer for the Manufacturing Science and Finance Union, said: "It cannot be a good thing for staff. It's a time of real insecurity and people are right to be worried. They've announced there will be job losses and we cannot assume that anybody will be safe."

He said the union had written to the Science Minister, Lord Sainsbury, demanding a meeting to discuss its concerns and had already arranged a meeting with representatives from the two companies for the end of February.

A spokesman for SmithKline Beecham said: "It is inevitable that redundancies will arise as a result of bringing the two companies together.

"However it is difficult at this stage to be specific about the numbers involved or how a particular location will be affected."

One worker in Worthing, who refused to be identified, said: "It is a very uncertain time at the moment and we don't really know what is going to happen.

"I think some of us will lose our jobs with the merger and a lot of people are bound to be worried.

"We had the news about the job cuts earlier this year and tit has been unsettling ."

Last July SmithKline Beecham announced it was axing 240 posts at its Worthing plant just months after the company's chief executive, Jan Leschly, was awarded a £30 million bonus.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.