Job taskforces have poor track record

IN 2007, then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern greeted the loss of 330 Motorola jobs in Cork with the response: “Thankfully, unlike in years past when we set up taskforces that were able, in reality, to do very little, in the last six or seven years we have been able to send in taskforces that can train, retrain, skill and upskill.”

However, as one of those taskforces prepares to offer support the 1,900 Dell staff whose jobs are to go in Limerick, the nagging doubt remains that, as one senior trade unionist put it: “Taskforces are a smokescreen to make the Government look like they are actually doing something and hide the reality that they are doing nothing.”

The Dell staff are coming onto the jobs market at the worst time. As was confirmed by the Central Statistics Office yesterday, jobs are being lost at a rate of 510 per day. Furthermore manufacturing, in which the majority of the Limerick staff are trained, is becoming obsolete here as cheaper economies attract the multinationals.

So what can the Dell workers specifically and Limerick generally expect from the Government’s much vaunted intervention?

Despite Mr Ahern’s assertions, there is little evidence of success to be seen from past taskforces.

When Fruit of the Loom announced in 1998 that it was to close a part of its Donegal operation with the loss of more than 700 jobs, a taskforce was set up to aid the workers and the region which then had the highest rate of unemployment in the country. It was envisaged the taskforce would create up to 9,000 jobs.

Yet six years later, years that encompassed the boom of the Celtic Tiger, when Fruit of the Loom finally closed its operation, the northwest had not gained those thousands of jobs — in fact a further 6,500 had been lost in the region.

Martin O’Rourke, SIPTU’s Donegal branch organiser said: “These taskforces are a smokescreen to take people’s eye off the ball. Since one was set up in Donegal the jobs have continued to be lost.

“Donegal did not gain from it. It brought no new investment.”

It was a similar story in Macroom. In September 2000, the Government established a jobs taskforce in the town following the closure of General Semiconductors, with 700 job losses.

“The least I can do in the circumstances is to meet with the employees of the company to underline my absolute commitment, and that of the IDA, to finding a new employer for Macroom,” said then Enterprise Minister Mary Harney at the time.

Then Bertie Ahern came to the town on April 18, 2002, six days before he called the general election. He promised pharmaceutical company Elan would create 300 jobs at the former GSI plant. The promise fell through and no new industry arrived.

It was not until the end of last year that the Irish wing of multinational company Donovan Medical Equipment finally breathed some life back into the former GSI facility by taking 85,000 square feet of the site.