"We're the forgotten people," observed a teenage temporary worker, sheltering from a bitter wind outside the Seagate plant's staff entrance before the early morning shift began yesterday.
It was a cruel dawn both for the workforce and for the town of Clonmel. There will be no buffer of severance pay for more than 300 temporary workers. They will be laid off in just a week's time without a penny.
The workers were waiting for Mary Harney, and they were far from happy. "We've a bit of a problem," said Victor Donnelly, from Dungarvan. "We've been told by management that she will meet a representative group of 25 and that's it. But all the employees want to be there. There's 1,400 votes in there. We want answers." A persistent complaint was that the employees had been kept in the dark, perhaps even callously misled. Bernie Roche said: "Our production manager stood in front of us last week and told us there was a three-year plan." The "temps", most of them in their late teens or early 20s, felt particularly hard done by. "When this place opened you worked six months and you were made permanent," said one of them. "That was put back and back. Now some temps have been here 11 months, and they're getting nothing." The temporary staff were paid £4.44 an hour on 12hour shifts, with no higher rate for weekends. They thought this was low, though some employers in Clonmel later suggested that it was well above the going rate in the town for untrained staff.
The personal stories of impending hardship continued to unfold.
One worker said she knew of a family where husband, wife and two teenage daughters were all working in Seagate.
Many deplored the strictness of the management regime in the plant, alleging that they had to sign a book before going to the lavatory, and that absence - even with a doctor's certificate - was not tolerated. As for worker organisation - "You couldn't even mention the word `union'. "
Impatience grew as there was no sign of Ms Harney. "She's putting on her bullet-proof vest, I'd say," one girl joked.
In the event, however, the encounter was relatively mild. The Tanaiste arrived at 9.30 a.m., along with Minister of State Noel Davern, and immediately confirmed that she would face all the workers.
In spite of protests, the media were excluded from the meeting. "It's a decision that we've made that it's going to be a private meeting so that the staff aren't inhibited from talking to the Minister," said Mr Ian O'Leary, corporate communications manager.
Ms Harney addressed the several hundred day staff in the canteen for 15 minutes. She told then that the aim had to be to get an alternative employer for the site, one that would stay there, not for one year or two years, but for the long haul.
She was applauded, according to accounts, when she said she would find it difficult to support the allocation of State aid to any future Seagate projects in Ireland.
Afterwards the workers were confused rather than placated. One comment was: "I suppose she's trying her best, but at the end of the day . . ." Trust was at a low ebb. "There's absolutely no confidence in the company at the minute," said Natasha Barrett. "I mean, people are worried - are we really going to get the redundancy money? She did assure us that we would."
In the absence of shop stewards, ad-hoc representatives were beginning to emerge. Cllr Joe Walsh confirmed that the Tanaiste had agreed there should be a representative of the employees on the task force she is setting up. This might ensure "that the political will is there". Ms Harney then faced the press and defended the record of the electronics sector in Ireland: "It employs 33,000 people here and accounts for 30 per cent of our exports. It's a large generator of wealth and of very high-quality jobs. This is just an exception to the rule." In a local radio interview, she confirmed that she wanted the task force, which will be chaired by South Tipperary county manager, Ned Gleeson, to negotiate with the company on a number of issues. These included the plight of the temporary staff, the arrangements for whom, she admitted, were "clearly not reasonable". Peter Knight, a director of Seagate's Irish operation, insisted that the decision to close the plant had not been made months ago. He said: "You cannot imagine that a company comes to a town like Clonmel and hires 1,400 people with the intention of laying them off in two years.
"Clearly we've come to this decision with huge regret. We fully recognise the impact on the town and the employees and we didn't intend this two years ago. Circumstances have changed, and we have to react to the way circumstances are now." He stressed that the deferred proposal to locate a Seagate plant in Cork would still be reviewed, as planned, next April. Though he acknowledged the signals that the Government would be extremely wary of supporting a further Seagate project, he insisted that the operation considered for Cork was of a totally different nature to that in Clonmel.
The Clonmel plant was involved in the assembly of disk drives - "relatively speaking, a low capital content and high labour content operation". The production of the disks themselves, as proposed for Cork and as in operation at Seagate's plant in Northern Ireland, was much more high-tech, involving relatively low labour costs and high capital investment. He elaborated on the severance payment scheme to be applied to the Clonmel workers. Most of the workers have four weeks' notice built into their terms of employment, but some "recent hirers" had a one-week notice period.
He said that workers who had been with the company for less than one year would get seven weeks pay, plus the pay for their notice period - that is , they will get either eight weeks' or 11 weeks' pay. Those employed for two years (about 700 in all) would receive 15 weeks' pay. Workers with between one and two years' service would get amounts between these limits.
Calculated on average earnings of just under £200 a week, 15 weeks' pay would amount to about £3,000. Mr Knight added: "We are also granting all employees an additional two weeks of paid leave." He asserted that these terms were "at the high end" of the severance packages generally offered by electronic companies when jobs are cut. It is understood that severance pay will cost the company in excess of £6 million.
All of which is cold comfort for the several hundred "forgotten people" who will depart on December 20th with nothing.