THE fate of hundreds of Northern Electric retail workers is expected to be revealed later today.

Staff at Northern Electric stores were sent home on Friday after holding company Shop Electric Group went into administration.

An announcement on whether stores would re-open has been delayed until later today.

There were indications that some progress had been made by administrators KPMG, although unions were still predicting job losses.

Dorothy Tokat, senior regional organiser at Unison, said there was every likelihood that staff would be given redundancy notices by the end of the week, although it was impossible to say just how many.

She said: "The staff are naturally very anxious. I have met the administrators and what they are trying to do is to salvage as much as possible of the business by looking for potential buyers for either all or part of it.

"They are in discussions with a variety of people, but I am not optimistic that the whole of the business will remain intact as electrical retailing is absolutely flat.

"The best we can hope for and most likely is that there may be a selection, probably of out of town stores, which will be picked up by other electrical retailers."

The business employs about 200 staff across the North-East with a further 50 split between its head office at Team Valley, Gateshead, and warehousing at nearby Felling.

It was sold by power supplier Northern Electric plc to an independent company last June.