HUNDREDS of staff at one of Oxfordshire’s biggest employers have been asked to take a pay cut of up to 20 per cent.

Bicester-based printing firm BGP said it had made the unusual move to make about £2m worth of savings as it battles the recession.

The company employs about 550 staff at three sites, in Bicester, Banbury and Buckingham.

Last night, David Holland, chairman of the Launton Road company, said consultation had started with staff.

He said: “We have asked everybody to take between 10 to 20 per cent pay reduction across the board. That’s everybody. We’re obviously doing this with sadness.

“It’s not the kind of thing staff jump up and down with a balloon about.“ The employees are not being asked to reduce their hours and there are currently no plans for redundancy.

Mr Holland said the company – founded in 1973 under the name Goodhead Press – had made losses of £70m over the past five years, triggered by the loss of its contract to print the BT Phone Book, after a deal was instead struck with a Spanish company in 2006.

At one point the company was making yearly losses of £18m, although last year that was reduced to £3.5m.

One worker told the Oxford Mail it was an extremely worrying time.

She said: “We’re all feeling very low and annoyed about it. We are being asked to do the same or more for less.

“The conditions here have got progressively worse over the last year, and now this.None of us know what to do.”

Mr Holland, who has already volunteered to take the pay cut, added the average BGP worker gets a salary of about £32,000 a year.

An employee committee is being formed to consult on the proposals and determine the percentage of the pay cut.

There will then be a secret ballot of all staff to determine whether employees are willing to accept the cut. If they are not, Mr Holland said there was ‘no plan B’ alternative at the moment.

Nigel Wild, president of Oxfordshire Chamber of Commerce, said the move was not unheard of but he did not know of anywhere else in the county which had asked staff to take such a significant cut.

He said: “It tends to be the more responsible companies which do this sort of thing. It’s seen as better than making redundancies.

“Generally staff do go for it as they work on the basis that 50 per cent of nothing is nothing.We could see more of this in the coming six months.”

The company was last year listed as the 22nd largest employer in the county.