Motorola, the electronics and mobile phone company which employs about 1,600 people in Ireland, is seeking 125 voluntary redundancies in its Dublin operations as part of a global rationalisation plan. The company, which has been hit by the global slump in the semiconductor business, also plans to close one of its two plants in Swords, Co Dublin. Motorola last week ceded its position as the world's top mobile phone producer to Nokia.
A company spokesman, Mr Mark Durrant, said that staff at the Motorola plants at Swords, Co Dublin, were told at 1 p.m. yesterday of the plan to close one of the company's premises there. The facility, which it bought from the computer company, Amdahl, is now for sale.
The rationalisation plan involves the centralisation of Motorola's divisions in Dublin under one managerial structure at Swords, and affects staff working in managerial and support jobs. The company employs about 1,100 staff in permanent posts in Dublin.
Mr Durrant added that the scale of job losses was less than the projected plan to reduce the worldwide workforce by 10 per cent or 15,000 people. Mr Durrant said that no contract staff, involved in manufacturing, were affected by the announcement. The six-year-old Swords facility produces semiconductor, two-way radios, paging and automotive component products. Motorola's semiconductor centre in Cork, which employs more than 300 people, is unaffected.
An IDA Ireland spokesman said that the announcement marked the end of the Motorola Ireland review and was "quite a positive outcome compared to what could have happened".
Motorola recently announced third-quarter profits of $40 million (£26.5 million), or 7 cents per share, ahead of Wall Street estimates, although its turnover, at $7.2 billion, was down from $7.4 billion a year ago. Meanwhile, the mobile phones group Psion announced yesterday that Motorola had signed up as a fourth partner of its international joint venture aimed at developing standard technology for mobile telecoms. Motorola will invest £28.8 million to join phone makers Ericsson and Nokia for a stake in the Symbian joint venture.
The venture is aimed at making Psion's Epoch operating system a standard technology in the growing market for hand held organisers, computers and intelligent mobile phones.
