Protesters angry over Dairygold job losses

MORE than 1,000 people marched through Mitchelstown, Co Cork, yesterday in protest at the decision of Dairygold Co-op to end pig slaughtering at its Galtee plant in the town.

Dairygold recently announced that it was ending primary pig processing with the loss of 170 jobs in Mitchelstown and another 100 in Roscrea, Co Tipperary.

It was part of a major restructuring programme for the near €1 billion turnover co-op, which has now shed more than 1,100 jobs throughout the co-op in the past year.

Business premises in Mitchelstown closed as a gesture of support for the protest march, which went from the main gates of the Galtee plant to the town’s main square. Farmers, workers, business people and the general public took part.

Mitchelstown Business Association chairman Tony Lewis said the turnout was a clear message to the Government and to Dairygold about the crisis unfolding in the town.

He said the scale of the redundancies in Mitchelstown was not fully appreciated by most people because they have been drip-fed over months. The number of jobs gone was now in the region of 750.

He called on the Government not to turn its back on workers facing unemployment, producers who are not going to have a factory for their produce and the business community.

Mr Lewis said the meltdown is going to take in the region of €20 million to €30m out of the economy.

He said it was also time Dairygold faced up to the responsibility it has to the community which had supported it well over the years.

As a businessman, he said he understood the co-op has to concentrate on making its business viable and on making a profit, but there was one aspect of the current jobs crisis that he could not understand.

The workers had pledged to work with the company to make it viable and keep their jobs and the producers had stated, along with business people, that they will take it over, save the jobs and run it at a profit.

“And, yet, there is nobody in executive management willing to even engage in a meaningful discussion. That is a disgrace. That is shameful and I do not think this town will stand for it,” he said.

A Galtee worker for the past 32 years, Tom Twomey called on the company to sit down and talk with the workers and try to sort matters out. The workers had made sacrifices in the past to help turn the company around.

“We don’t want redundancy. We want our jobs,” he said, adding that they were asking for the chance to make the company even more profitable.

Pat O’Keeffe, a third-generation pig supplier to Galtee, said the issue is a serious one for pig producers, who would not give up the fight to prevent the closure of the slaughter line in Mitchelstown too easily.