Dell’s Dublin workers fearful

WORKERS at Dell’s Dublin facility remain fearful of future job losses.

The 1,300 jobs at the centre in Cherrywood were unaffected by Thursday’s announcement that Dell is relocating 1,900 computer manufacturing jobs from Limerick to Lodz in Poland. However, workers are fearful the company could be planning a similar move for the south Dublin plant.

One Cherrywood worker said: “We are aware that similar work as is done here, of servicing the British computer market, is also being carried out at a centre in Bratislava in the Slovak Republic.

“There are serious concerns due to recent moves to dispense with the services of some long-serving staff,” she added.

Dell opened a call centre in Bratislava in 2003. In recent years it has been expanding the services provided by the Bratislava operation into a business centre.

A press spokeswoman for Dell said: “Dell is a global company which on an ongoing basis reviews all of its operations, but there is nothing specific under way at this time. Thursday’s announcement was not related to the jobs at Cherrywood, it was to do with restructuring of supply chain operations solely.”

However, Labour’s finance spokeswoman Joan Burton said the Government needs a strategy to deal with the outsourcing issue.

She added: “When a company like Dell undergoes a complete change of business model and essentially outsources or sells off part of its core manufacturing and assembly activity, in that kind of shake out it is difficult to have any guarantees of what will survive.”