UPS to close Tallaght centre - 200 jobs to go

Parcel delivery company UPS is closing a call centre with the loss of 200 jobs because it cannot find multi-lingual staff in Ireland, it announced today.

Workers are to be laid off on a phased basis between October and next May at the customer service offices in Tallaght, south Dublin.

Around 60 jobs will be relocated to another plant at Ballymount in north Dublin.

Nigel Goodson, UPS director of human resources UK and Ireland, said the shutdown was unavoidable because of a lack of language skills in the Irish workforce.

“We’ve found that it is increasingly difficult to source those skills locally which means we’ve had to go abroad – outside of Ireland – and recruit employees from overseas,” he said.

“[That] incurs a relocation expense, because we support those overseas employees that we recruit by helping them to relocate to Ireland, and our experience has been that they tend not to stay with us very long.”

Mr Goodson said many of the staff brought in from overseas use the opportunity to improve their English language skills at the firm before moving on to other employment.

UPS will now contract out the services provided at the Tallaght call centre, which dealt with inquiries from Belgium, France, the Netherlands, parts of Switzerland, as well as Ireland and the UK.

Labour TD Pat Rabbitte said it was difficult to understand how the company were having difficulty in sourcing people with the necessary language skills.

“A very high proportion of the staff, perhaps over 80% are non-national,” he said.

“Together with available indigenous Irish, it is difficult to understand why there should be difficulty finding employees with the appropriate language skills.

“If it is true that language skills are in short supply, it would appear to raise questions about our policy towards call centres generally.”

Mr Goodson insisted there will be a long-term future for around 650 workers employed at other UPS plants in Ireland, including at Dublin, Cork and Shannon.

Fine Gael TD Brian Hayes branded the pull-out from Tallaght a devastating blow for the area.

“Effectively, unemployment in the Dublin 24 area has doubled over the past year with a number of high profile manufacturing operations closing down,” he said.