The landscaped gardens surrounding Celestica's Swords plant were eerily quiet yesterday afternoon. The staff who would have been milling around the state-of-the-art facility had been gone since early morning, having been sent home with the news many of them had been expecting for several months: half their number was to go.
"We knew it was coming," said one worker, who had used his unexpected day off to drown his sorrows in a local pub, The Slaughtered Lamb. "It has been dead for the last six months and was very laid back. There was an air about the place." A technician from the north Dublin area, the young man said that he had doubts about his chances of finding another job if he accepted the redundancy deal on offer from Celestica. Still, he said, the offer was "the best you'll get in the current environment" and he would probably have little option but to take it. Another worker said that he had found a new job last week, ahead of the inevitable cutbacks.
A French colleague had joined Celestica two years ago, having arrived in the Republic two years previously. "Last year, no one would have expected that we would be in this situation," he said. "It was the dotcom boom and we were the best people in the world." His situation was not quite so bad as that of many of his fellow workers, he claimed, since he held good qualifications and had the option of returning to France if he chose. "If I can't find a job, I'll have to go," he said, adding that he would prefer to stay in Ireland if he could, because "it has been very good".
Most of the Celestica employees who spoke to The Irish Times said they would probably offer their names for voluntary redundancy and try to find alternative employment. Many expressed doubts about the company's capacity to stay in operation, even after the 450 redundancies had been achieved. "The whole industry's gone to nothing," said one.
A Welsh employee said that he had decided to exit the electronics industry altogether, such were his concerns about the future. "I want to get out, maybe into pharmaceuticals," he said, describing how he had relocated from Wales to England a few years ago in search of work and had then been tempted to the Republic.
He had now decided to return to the UK, he said, because "the Celtic Tiger's gone". None of the sombre party, whose ages ranged from 21 to 25, said they blamed Celestica or its management for the bad news, instead citing "the whole economic situation". They were not as badly off as some of the older employees, they added, many of whom had families to support. Celestica's general manager, Mr Noel Fogarty, said the workforce had accepted that morning's redundancy news with maturity. He had only received confirmation of the cuts a few days ago, he said.
