Madam, – There is no silver lining to the awful news that 1,900 jobs are to be lost at Dell’s non-union plant in Limerick and production transferred to its unionised factory in Poland. State agencies must make every possible effort to find new opportunities for the workers who will lose their livelihood through no fault of their own.
This unwelcome development gives the lie to one contemporary canard – that a legally enforceable right to collective bargaining for Irish workers, as enshrined in the Charter of Fundamental Rights annexed to the Lisbon Treaty, would cost jobs at home because US multinationals would refuse to invest in a country where basic labour standards were respected and enforced.
We ought to remember this if, in 2009, the Government once again asks us to approve a Lisbon Treaty effectively shorn of its “social Europe” dimension. – Yours, etc,