US MEDICAL insurance company Cigna is to close its east Galway base with the loss of 180 jobs over the coming months.
Cigna HealthCare, a division of the US Cigna Corporation, has attributed the economic downturn to its decision to wind up its Irish branch in Loughrea, Co Galway.
The company has been based in east Galway for almost 20 years, and had expanded its workforce significantly six years ago. It says it intends to transfer the workload to its existing branches in India and the Philippines.
Cigna Corporation says 1,100 positions are to be cut across over 400 branches worldwide that handle medical insurance claims. At peak, the Philadelphia-based company employed 40,000 people, and currently employs about 28,000.
The company said last night that automation and consolidation of claims processing had influenced the Loughrea decision. “This announcement does not reflect on the quality of impacted employees, rather it reflects our need to realign resources with our business needs,” senior vice-president Brett Browchuk said.
The mayor of Galway, Cllr Peter Feeney, said the decision was a “huge blow” and a “disaster” in a small town like Loughrea, where the value of the company’s base has been estimated at €15 million annually to the locality.
His views were echoed by Fine Gael TD for Galway East, Ulick Burke, who described the company as a great employer for over two decades.
Galway city and county have been severely hit by cutbacks in construction, and last November one of the city’s largest employers, Thermo King, announced 110 job cuts at its Mervue plant. The company designs and manufactures transport refrigeration equipment and has employed more than 600 at Mervue.
Fears have also been expressed this month for the future of jobs at the Galway branch of Nortel, the Canadian telecommunications multinational, since it filed for creditor protection. The company, which employs 300 in Galway, says it has sufficient cash in hand to fund ongoing operations.
Also yesterday there were fears that as many as 60 jobs may be lost at a multinational firm in Shannon, Co Clare. Workers at Molex, a manufacturer of fibreoptic connectors that employs almost 450 people in Ireland, are to be briefed on the situation this morning.
They have expressed concern about their future after senior management travelled to the company’s headquarters in Chicago last week for a meeting.
Molex recently announced an increase to its restructuring plan, which to date has included the closure of a manufacturing plant at Millstreet, Cork. That operation was transferred to Shannon last January with the loss of 80 jobs.
Meanwhile, Sitpu yesterday expressed serious concern about the future of several businesses in the midwest and fears another 1,000 jobs could be lost in the region. Branch organiser Karan O’Loughlin believes the announcement of 200 job losses at Kostal in Abbeyfeale and 1,900 in Dell, in the past two weeks, may be just the beginning.
Since Dell’s announcement to move its manufacturing operation to Poland, there have been serious concerns for the future of jobs at many of the company’s suppliers.
Workers at RR Donnelly, one of Dell’s main suppliers, have told unions they have been put on protective notice and that details of a redundancy package would be made available in the near future.
Management has refused to confirm this.