477 Dell supplier lay-offs set for March
By the end of March, 127 of the staff will be laid off.
A further 76 are expected to leave by the end of April and 274 by the end of October.
Dell supplier RR Donnelly was doomed once Dell made a decision last month to move its manufacturing production lines from Limerick to Poland with the loss of 1,900 jobs.
Dell is RR Donnelly’s sole customer in Limerick and the company will also move its operation to Poland where it has built a new facility adjacent to the new Dell plant in Lodz.
RR Donnelly have offered workers six weeks’ pay for every year of service along with a 20% shift allowance and a cash payment of €500.
Workers at RR Donnelly on average are paid €13 an hour.
While the formal announcement on the closure was made last Thursday, RR Donnelly management told workers that their jobs would be phased out over coming months in tandem with the scaling down of production at Dell.
One worker, Patrick Curtis, said his plans to get married will now have to be put on hold.
Patrick, 23, said: “I doubt very much if we can [get] married in the near future.”
He and his fiancée have a mortgage and he had planned to move to a night shift work in order to complete a degree course at the University of Limerick.
His education plans, he said will now depend on what assistance will be on offer from the Government.
Up to 50 security and catering workers who do contract work at RR Donnelly will also lose their jobs.
RR Donnelly is thefirst big casualty of the decision by Dell to move to Poland.
It is feared that up to 8,000 workers employed by companies dependent on Dell will lose their jobs in coming months.
A government task force, headed by former head of Kerry Group Denis Brosnan, has commenced working on strategies to tackle the fallout from the Dell closure and its wider impact on the region.
Mr Brosnan, led the worldwide growth of the Kerry Group in the teeth of recessions through the 1970s and 1980s.
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