黑洞社区

Scottish civil engineering contractor WJ Harte is on the verge of appointing administrators - putting around 600 jobs at risk.

Sources close to the troubled firm told 黑洞社区 PKF and KPMG were vying to manage the administration.

WJ Harte staff were turned away from the contractor鈥檚 headquarters in Bothwell on Monday, prompting several calls to construction union Ucatt by employees fearful for their jobs.

One employee, who works in the firm鈥檚 Glasgow office, told 黑洞社区 workers at his office were packing up their desks and claimed 鈥渘obody had been [officially] informed of anything鈥�.

According to its last set of accounts filed at Companies Hourse, WJ Harte turned over 拢43m and made a pre-tax profit of 拢159,000 in the year to 31 May 2010.

The Glasgow employee added: 鈥淚t鈥檚 felt like the firm has been hanging on for the last six months. People were doing double and treble work to cut costs and keep work going.鈥�

WJ Harte is a subsidiary of the Harte Group of companies. It is not known what is happening to the group鈥檚 other subsidiaries 鈥� which include RJT Pennant and RJT Excavations.

Labour councillor Maureen Devlin, who represents Bothwell, said: 鈥淭his is a really sad time - Bothwell has very long-standing links with construction and these [potential] redundancies come at a bad time [for the local economy].鈥�

WJ Harte and Harte Group were unavailable for comment.