8 November 2001 Edition
Double blow for North East
BY ROBBIE MacGABHANN
It took just 15 minutes for the lives of 320 people and their families to be turned upside down last week. At 3pm last Thursday, 1 November, the workers of US owned AFL Ireland were told they were to lose their jobs between now and next March. AFL produces automobile components for Volkswagen and Audi and has been in Ireland for 14 years.
AFL is based in Dundalk and on the same day as the redundancy blow was announced to its employees, another 700 workers in the North East, this time at Tara mines were issued with protective notice of temporary layoffs which will begin on 17 November.
1,200 jobs were lost in that one day last week as 75 workers in Superquinn's Tusa banking service and 100 temporary workers at Braun in Carlow were also laid off.
By the middle of this week the figure was rising again with notice of redundancies at, phone and pager maker Celestia, RTE and the Irish Times. It seems that no sector of the economy is immune to the economic downturn. The bad jobs news also spread west with the announcement that a planned 900 job investment by US technology firm, Teradyne, had now being shelved
There have now been nearly 16,000 redundancies this year, up 42% on the same time last year. Perhaps the most startling aspect of the job losses was the disclosure from IDA Ireland that 10% of the workers in companies they backed have lost their jobs since January.
Evidence of the impact of the growing number of redundancies was found also in the October Live Register figures which were released last Friday 1 November, which showed a 1,200 increase in people signing on. These figures do not include any of the new redundancy announcements.
It took just 15 minutes for the lives of 320 people and their families to be turned upside down last week. At 3pm last Thursday, 1 November, the workers of US owned AFL Ireland were told they were to lose their jobs between now and next March. AFL produces automobile components for Volkswagen and Audi and has been in Ireland for 14 years.
AFL is based in Dundalk and on the same day as the redundancy blow was announced to its employees, another 700 workers in the North East, this time at Tara mines were issued with protective notice of temporary layoffs which will begin on 17 November.
1,200 jobs were lost in that one day last week as 75 workers in Superquinn's Tusa banking service and 100 temporary workers at Braun in Carlow were also laid off.
By the middle of this week the figure was rising again with notice of redundancies at, phone and pager maker Celestia, RTE and the Irish Times. It seems that no sector of the economy is immune to the economic downturn. The bad jobs news also spread west with the announcement that a planned 900 job investment by US technology firm, Teradyne, had now being shelved
There have now been nearly 16,000 redundancies this year, up 42% on the same time last year. Perhaps the most startling aspect of the job losses was the disclosure from IDA Ireland that 10% of the workers in companies they backed have lost their jobs since January.
Evidence of the impact of the growing number of redundancies was found also in the October Live Register figures which were released last Friday 1 November, which showed a 1,200 increase in people signing on. These figures do not include any of the new redundancy announcements.