A senior SIPTU official in Cork has confirmed that the 380 workers at the ISPAT Irish Steel plant in Cork will be made temporarily redundant unless a replacement transformer can be made to work, writes Dick Hogan.
The plant's existing transformer was destroyed in an explosion over a week ago which caused serious damage to the plant. The union's spokesman said that the company called a meeting of all the plant's unions on Monday and told them that all staff would be receiving redundancy notices. The unions asked for a further meeting with management, only to learn that from Friday the workforce would be laid off unless the temporary transformer worked.
The spokesman added: "We were shocked and the workforce was shocked to learn that this was the position. The accident at the plant was something not of our doing and we did not expect this outcome."
The Indian conglomerate, ISPAT, took over Irish Steel in 1996. The company has a track record of taking over troubled steel companies throughout the world and bringing them back into profit.