About 140 Co-op store workers could see their jobs saved as the East of England Co-op negotiates with another firm to take over four department stores.

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More than 100 new jobs have come from the co-op, many of which have been taken up by the Latinos who now form a growing part of the local population.

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Within a few weeks he had offers for three sales jobs: at an olive co-op, the copier division of Smith-Corona and the diagnostics business of Dow Chemical (nyse: DOW - news - people ).

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