"Eighteen thousand jobs have already gone and another 12,000 may go next year mostly to India and South Africa. It is not enough to cross our fingers and hope for the best," David Fleming, national officer of Amicus said in London on Monday.

"If the economic tide recedes then our communities are going to be left high and dry. You can't simply take thousands of jobs out of the economy, with all the skills and brains that involves, and pretend it won't make a difference,"

Amicus said in the statement that the current high level of employment in Britain was hiding the impact that off-shoring was having on an economy, which it believed was fuelled by those working in banking, insurance and call centre jobs, the areas affected by off-shoring.