A TRADE union fears that specialist workers at QinetiQ’s Malvern site could shoulder up to half of the 400 redundancies proposed by the defence firm.

This would translate to 10 per cent of the company’s scientists and engineers employed at the St Andrew’s Road facility.

The news comes as members returned a 72 per cent vote in favour of strike action over the company’s decision to impose a pay freeze for this year.

Prospect, which represents just under half of the firm’s 1,900 Malvern staff, believes the site’s reliance on Ministry of Defence contracts could mean it would bear the brunt of job cuts proposed two weeks ago.

National secretary David Luxton said: “A lot of the research that QinetiQ does on behalf of the MOD is done in Malvern and we’re anticipating half of the job losses would be there.”

The proposed cuts are the second in as many years, with QinetiQ having made 360 redundancies, both voluntary and compulsory, between January and March 2008.

In April this year the firm announced a pay freeze despite reporting preliminary increases in group profits for 2008/09. Negotiations between Prospect and senior managers at QinetiQ over the freeze broke down at the end of May.

The results of the ballot, which were released on Monday, also showed 85 per cent backed taking industrial action short of a strike, such as a ban on working overtime.

Mr Luxton continued: “We would rather say to the company that there’s a window of opportunity at the moment and they can avoid disruptive strike action by continuing negotiations on pay.”

QinetiQ, which also has facilities in Hampshire and Wiltshire, said the ballot result was based on only 835 of Prospect’s 1,945 members returning their votes.

Chief executive Graham Love said the decision not to award a blanket inflationary pay increase was the right one in the current economic circumstances.

“Overall our UK business failed to grow last year," he added, referring to the company’s preliminary results released three weeks ago.

These results state that “revenue grew only marginally (0.1 per cent) on an organic basis,” which was “a consequence of a contraction in MOD research revenues of some £38m from last year”.

Union representatives will meet on Monday to discuss the ballot results. Any industrial action that takes place will begin by Friday, June 26.