ALMOST 1,000 jobs are to go at Northern Ireland’s largest manufacturer, Bombardier. The scale of the job losses announced by the Canadian-owned aircraft manufacturer shocked workers, unions and political representatives.
Some 665 sub-contractors will lose their jobs along with a further 310 permanent staff members. The losses will be spread across Bombardier’s four plants in the greater Belfast area.
The company, citing what it called an “unprecedented recession”, is blaming a sudden 25 per cent downturn in the regional jet aircraft market. However, it was stressed yesterday that the company remains committed to a £500 million project to develop the Bombardier C series jet aircraft. Wings and other components will be designed and built in Northern Ireland.
Just over 5,000 jobs remain at Bombardier, formerly Shorts, and the company insists it remains on a sound business footing with all its products going to export.
Workers leaving the Queen’s Island plant in east Belfast yesterday said they were expecting some job losses, but not an announcement on this scale.
Bombardier vice-president Michael Ryan admitted the sharp downturn came as a shock. “Certainly the pace of how it has got worse has taken everyone by surprise,” he said. “The pace in the past eight or nine weeks has really surprised us.”
The job losses follow other workforce cuts announced by other North American-owned manufacturing concerns including Nortel and Visteon, along with FG Wilson which engineers components for Caterpillar.
Almost 1,400 manufacturing jobs have been lost so far this week, Employment Minister and local Assembly member Sir Reg Empey admitted. The scale of job cuts means nearly 2 per cent of all manufacturing jobs in Northern Ireland have been lost in just four days. “By any standards it has been a bad week,” he said.
The losses will push the unemployment total towards 6 per cent – relatively low in international terms.
However, Northern Ireland is heavily dependent on its significant public sector which accounts for nearly two-thirds of the economy. This week’s job losses undermine the wealth-creating private manufacturing sector and prove how the competitive edge afforded the local economy by the weakness of sterling has failed to protect manufacturing jobs.
About 300 job losses were already announced in February by Bombardier. The announcement of a further 975 represents a significant blow both to east Belfast and to the 4,000 other workers throughout the UK which supplies Bombardier.
First Minister and East Belfast MP Peter Robinson said the loss of skilled jobs in a specialist sector was particularly difficult. He said the Stormont Executive would move to ease the blow and help prepare for the eventual upturn.
“In the present economy it is impossible to avoid such job losses, but it is essential that Executive does all that it can to keep jobs in Northern Ireland and the skills base is retained for longer term economic growth,” he said.
“The Executive will do all that it can to ensure that those who have lost their jobs are provided with the opportunity to find new jobs as quickly as possible.”
Peter Bunting of Ictu pressed Stormont politicians for more action.
“It is now time for the Northern Ireland Executive and the Department for Employment and Learning to take urgent action to establish a workers’ protection fund and also examine closely what use can be made of the European Globalisation Fund which has been established by the European Commission to assist workers facing redundancy,” he said.