THE future of 550 workers at Eastleigh's train repair depot today hangs in the balance, the Daily Echo can reveal.

Alstom, the debt-laden engineering giant that runs the operation, is reviewing the future of the site, along with three others across the UK.

There are growing fears from employees that the troubled company will shed hundreds of jobs at Eastleigh and then mothball the depot, running it with just a skeleton crew.

A crisis meeting is being held between French-owned Alstom and major unions tomorrow in Rugby, Warwickshire, in a bid to thrash out a cost-cutting plan acceptable to both sides.

The depot, where trains are repaired and refurbished, is one of the town's biggest employers.

Alstom, which built Southampton's £550m Queen Mary 2, repeatedly made the headlines after racking up debts last year of £3.2 billion.

It has been an open secret that the Eastleigh depot has not being doing well, despite assurances from Alstom eight months ago that there were "green shoots" and "encouraging results". The company, which was saved from bankruptcy last summer by the French government, declined to give any job assurances.

One worker at the depot claimed the decision was going to be made tomorrow on both redundancies and a possible closure of the Eastleigh operation.

He said: "The final decision hasn't been made. They are not winning any contracts."

The worker, who did not want to be named, added: "I think they will mothball the site and have 50 to 100 people there."

At present the workforce at Eastleigh stands at 450 and about 100 contractors.

An Eastleigh Borough Council spokesman said: "We have been aware of rumours about redundancies for a while but we have had no formal contact with Alstom about the future of their business."

An Alstom spokesman said: "We are currently reviewing the performance of all our renovation activities in the UK. We have a meeting with trade union representatives this week to go through the entire review with them. Until we have had that meeting, we wouldn't want to speculate about the closure of any plants."

The uncertainty surrounding Alstom is another blow for Eastleigh, which has a seen a series of major employers leave the area, including pharmaceutical giant Pfizer which relocated and left behind scores of employees.

Manor Bakeries is in the process of shutting, with 423 jobs to go by the end of next year.