MORE than 1,000 anxious employees at the LG Philips TV tube factory in Newport may know what their future holds after a top-level meeting today.

They have been waiting for news since a leaked document said the company was discussing the possibility of re-locating its UK operations to mainland Europe.

Despite rumour and speculation following the leak from the company's European works council, which reached the Amicus union, LG Philips says it has made no decision.

Amicus has already held one inconclusive meeting with the company's UK representatives but today's meeting in Manchester will involve Dutch management, who make the big decisions.

However, the company's official line given to the Argus is that the Newport plant will not close, though it admits to discussing "a number of scenarios" concerning its UK activities. At today's meeting is Graham Smith of the South Wales office of Amicus, which is responsible for its members at the Newport plant.

"We could do with any information," he told me. "At the moment, the company is denying everything and telling us nothing.

"Whether we will be any the wiser after today we just don't know but we need an answer one way or the other. I think the idea is that if the UK management couldn't give us an answer the European might."

LG Philips is an alliance of LG and Dutch company Royal Philips Electronics NV and makes colour picture tubes for TVs and computers. It also has manufacturing capacity in the North-East of England. The company is battling to maintain its prominent trading position against aggressive competitors.

Sales of cathode-ray tubes have been falling worldwide due in part to a drop in demand for personal computers and its replacement by liquid-crystal display screens. Warning signals first arrived in July last year when LG Philips announced the closure of two factories and the loss of 1,000 jobs in Taiwan.

Also in the Far East, many manufacturers began moving their production to China, where labour and production costs are cheaper.

The ill wind began blowing in Britain in May this year, when 100 redundancies were announced at LG Philips in Newport and transferring operations from Washington, Tyne & Wear, to the former Czechoslovakia.