Fórsa trade union met with management at Eir for a briefing meeting last week following the telecom company’s announcement that it's to cut 750 jobs. Fórsa represents IT staff, some management grades and clerical officers at the company.
Fórsa assistant general secretary Eugene Quinn said the announcement followed widespread speculation about job losses following the recent change of ownership of the company.
“We’re obviously very concerned that more jobs are to be shed from the company. We quickly established that the company is seeking voluntary – not compulsory – redundancies. That would be in line with agreements we have in place to provide very strong protections for our members against forced job losses.
“Nevertheless, we sought an early meeting to discuss the many implications of the announcement for workers in the company. We wanted to engage with management as soon as we could in order to get a clear picture of the company’s future, and put an end to any further speculation,” he said.
Eugene said that last week's meeting confirmed the status of the redundancies as entirely voluntary. Up to last Friday (20th April) the company had received 500 expressions of interest in the voluntary redundancy package.
Eugene said the company had also confirmed its intention to vacate the HSQ building, beside Heuston station in Dublin and locate staff at CityWest.
Emergency motion
An emergency motion was tabled by the Eir branch of Fórsa at the union's Services & Enterprises conference in Galway. The motion calls on Fórsa to ensure there are no compulsory redundancies by the new owners and management within Eir. The motion asks Fórsa to engage with the government to "ensure highly trained and specialised work is not continued to be exported from the country."
The motion, which was backed unanimously by conference delegates, states "At the current rate EIR will become a company of 2,000 employees down from a company 15,000, while the majority of work “will” be done off-shore."
