UNION leaders have warned “nobody is safe” from the mounting job cuts hitting the county.

The message came yesterday at a demonstration over hundreds of job losses in Oxfordshire in the past six months.

More than 60 teachers, nurses, former BMW workers and union officials joined the march from East Oxford to Bonn Square, in the city centre.

They waved banners and placards, chanting: “Our jobs are not for sale, throw the bankers into jail” and “Stop the jobs massacre, put people first”.

The demonstration, organised by the Oxford and District Trades Union Council, came after 850 agency workers at BMW’s Mini plant in Cowley were axed last month.

Many of the workers had been at the plant for several years, but received no redundancy pay.

There are also concerns over more than 400 jobs at the Oxford mail centre in Cowley, amid plans to shift postal operations to Swindon.

Ex-BMW worker Doug Foreshew, 50, from Witney, spoke to the protesters in Bonn Square.

The father-of-two, who was accompanied by his 11-year-old son Conor, said agency workers had been treated appallingly by the company and badly represented by the Unite union.

He said: “I want to try and get the law changed to give agency workers more rights.

“The amount of help Gordon Brown has given me, just about amounts to the same as the union – nothing.

“I understand the need to employ temporary workers, but I worked for the company for nearly five years.

“It’s not right to employ agency workers forever and a day without offering them a contract.”

George Thomas, 70, from Kennington, worked at the Cowley plant for 15 years more than 30 years ago.

He said: “Where is all the money the union took from the agency workers? That’s what I want to know.”

Unions including Unite, Unison and the National Union for Teachers, plus the Communist and Green parties, were represented at the march.

Ian McKendrick, 45, from Cowley, is a nurse at the Warneford Hospital.

He said: “Cowley has been badly hit. We have lost over 1,000 jobs at BMW, and Royal Mail jobs are under threat.

“It’s becoming an unemployment black spot and people need to stand together.

Ruskin College student Ben Singleton, 22, said: “We don’t think it’s right that normal people are being laid off because of a financial crisis which wasn’t caused by normal people.

“I’m disappointed there weren’t more people on the march because I think it’s really important people protest.”

Mark Ladbrooke, Unison branch secretary for Oxfordshire, told protesters: “Nobody is safe and unions must start working together.”

Police on horseback led the march. There were no arrests.

tshepherd@oxfordmail.co.uk