THE axe has fallen on 350 jobs at the Gwent telecommunications firm Solectron.

The jobs cut, at the fifty- year-old former Nortel Networks plant in Cwmcarn, will leave just 170 jobs in the manufacturing section of the factory - and a question mark remains over their future.

Assembly First Minister Rhodri Morgan is due to meet managers from Solectron at the Welsh Development Agency offices at Treforest today.

A spokesman for the First Minister said: "Solectron asked for the meeting with the First Minister and the WDA. We have no details on what the meeting is about but assume it will centre on funding."

In total, Solectron employs just short of 800 with the most, 520, in manufacturing and the rest in servicing and support areas.

Solectron says the "approximately 350 manufacturing positions" are being lost as part of its "company-wide restructuring programme".

A spokeswoman for the firm said full and part-time manufacturing jobs are being lost.

The 350 jobs being axed represent equivalent full-time positions and so the number of actual jobs affected could be far higher as many people are part-time.

A source said each full-time position represented two part-time equivalent jobs on the production line which, with the axings, was to be reduced to just one.

Today a production worker said: "We heard the news about the 350 jobs being lost in a meeting yesterday afternoon - it is very, very upsetting. "I have been in work for 26 years but now my prospects for getting another job around here are grim."

He said the feeling in the factory was of anger and shock and he said: "It is now a case of everyone for themselves as no one knows who is to stay and who is to go."

Solectron said the factory was switching from manufacture to servicing. US-owned Solectron, which bought the Nortel Networks factory in April last year and has factories all over Europe and the rest of the world, says it is switching production from Cwmcarn to a lower cost factory out of Britain.